Some companies know how OTA should work

[JoeDimwit]

I'm with you on the technologist front and loving the MME yet not having it meet all expectations. That being said, I also realize there's a lot more complexity between software for automotive systems here then what most of us probably realize.

Realistically, I think Ford had the best intentions, but probably underestimated the effort of having a regular software development and release cadence from the backend platform teams. It's the same challenge a lot of other legacy organizations face when going from a Waterfall methodology to Agile, and I'm sure they're having to deal with a bunch of organizational change management to get into this mindset with existing teams that are used to operating "the old way".

Does that make it acceptable how they've handled OTA so far? No, they are behind and they will need to improve if they're intending up keep up with the other EV competition. On top of that, they should definitely work on having more transparency around communications.

That all being said, things will get better and moving faster. I can speak personally from having a December 2020 build and in the span of last 3 weeks I got 3 releases (1.4 - 1.6 - 1.7.1) so I'm chalking that as a win!

I get what you’re saying about automotive software complexity and safety concerns. BUT, we are talking about software that is considered safe enough to be shipping on new construction (namely 1.7.1 and BlueCruise). Have you heard any safety concerns over BlueCruise? How about issues related to 1.7.1? Me either. This isn’t a software issue. This is an OTA system issue. Maybe they need to hire more people to enter the vehicles into the update queue. ?‍

the reason to do OTA at all is to push updates QUICKLY. What we are seeing is nowhere near “quickly”. At all. It would be faster for Ford to tell us to take our cars in to dealership service departments to have these updates apples at the rate they are pushing them OTA. That is a complete failure.

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[benk016]

I get what you’re saying about automotive software complexity and safety concerns. BUT, we are talking about software that is considered safe enough to be shipping on new construction (namely 1.7.1 and BlueCruise). Have you heard any safety concerns over BlueCruise? How about issues related to 1.7.1? Me either. This isn’t a software issue. This is an OTA system issue. Maybe they need to hire more people to enter the vehicles into the update queue. ?‍

the reason to do OTA at all is to push updates QUICKLY. What we are seeing is nowhere near “quickly”. At all. It would be faster for Ford to tell us to take our cars in to dealership service departments to have these updates apples at the rate they are pushing them OTA. That is a complete failure.

More and more evidence points to them having an issue with the OTA process. The early access team has ceased all communications, except for a canned response. I've heard from another contact that there was an OTA that had its rollout stopped. Not sure what happened there or which update it was though.

There is definitely something going on and they are working on it, but the complete silence from Ford is frustrating.

There are updates pending waiting to be rolled out, but they haven't released them yet for unknown reasons.

Once they do start releasing them, I suspect we'll see a few release pretty quickly. Just wish we had an idea of when it would happen or what is holding them back now.

 

[JoeDimwit]

Just wish we had an idea of when it would happen or what is holding them back now.

Incompetence. Incompetence is holding them back.

 

[GoGoGadgetMachE]

I know I should not reply, but here we go. I completely understand the sentiment of all the people here who point out other companies or say they are selling their Mach-E and leaving. Personally, I love my car but I am extremely disappointed in the marketing versus reality disconnect of OTA with Ford.

And I understand people saying they are selling and leaving too. That's why I called out someone for not doing so, but instead whining on basically every thread at this point.

I could have bought a Tesla, but frankly the Mach-E looks better and I generally like Ford. At my heart, I am a technologist and have to admit that Ford sold me on how they were going to modernize things. I expected a hugely improved Sync system and to receive regular updates. Instead, Sync is surprisingly underpowered for me and OTA is absolutely nothing but wishes and hopes still. I believed that they were going to turn a leaf and really throw themselves into this car from a tech perspective. In my opinion, what we received is not even close.

Yes, people like me upset with the technology are probably a small minority. Yes, this forum is an echo chamber and forums are always filled with complaints. But frankly, this effort by Ford is an absolute embarrassment for what they said this car would be. Maybe the flood gates will open or maybe we'll all still be waiting for our new charge curves and tic-tac-toe 4 years from now.

And maybe Tesla will start shipping cars where there aren't videos from people all the damn time talking about basic build issues. We all have hopes.

There's literally zero value to coming on this site and saying "look at how this other company does it" except on the competition part of the site, where that's the whole point. Posting it anywhere else is just trolling.

 

[Stang68]

why are you still here? I thought your car was terrible and awful and so on. why haven't you sold it yet?

No need to berate the guy for saying what many of us are honestly thinking when it comes to OTAs.

 

[Stang68]

More and more evidence points to them having an issue with the OTA process. The early access team has ceased all communications, except for a canned response. I've heard from another contact that there was an OTA that had its rollout stopped. Not sure what happened there or which update it was though.

There is definitely something going on and they are working on it, but the complete silence from Ford is frustrating.

There are updates pending waiting to be rolled out, but they haven't released them yet for unknown reasons.

Once they do start releasing them, I suspect we'll see a few release pretty quickly. Just wish we had an idea of when it would happen or what is holding them back now.

I think more evidence to your point is how many different versions we're seeing out in the wild. Some people have 1.6, some have 1.7 now, and then the GT owners have something else it seems which enables vertical Carplay. Why so many builds out there?

 

[GoGoGadgetMachE]

Incompetence. Incompetence is holding them back.

Or, maybe they found something and are working to fix it. I know that there are some on here that insist that is completely impossible - that nobody at Ford has ever written any code ever or has any idea how to build a car or has any idea how to do software in a car (psst anti-lock brakes suggest otherwise) - but anyway...

There is definitely something going on and they are working on it, but the complete silence from Ford is frustrating.

yes, I'd like to know more about what's going on, and I have educated guesses, but we all also know - as a direct, inarguable fact - that as soon as Ford says anything at all about, well, anything, this very site lights up tearing them apart, no matter what they say or how they say it. We have seen that time and time again. It's just how it goes on a site like this. So, as has been said again and again, they are damned if they do, and damned if they don't.

 

[mpshizzle]

damned if they do, and damned if they don't.

I agree. If they announce they have a problem there will be angry backlash.

That being said, from a PR standpoint, some level of communication the better option. It demonstrates that they have the consumer in mind, rather than leaving them in the dark entirely

 

[GoGoGadgetMachE]

I agree. If they announce they have a problem there will be angry backlash.

That being said, from a PR standpoint, some level of communication the better option. It demonstrates that they have the consumer in mind, rather than leaving them in the dark entirely

yeah, that's fair. I just don't know legitimately what they could say except "sorry, we missed this, we're working on it, we know you're disappointed" or whatever and even that would get people answering "no sh*t, Sherlock."

 

[fokkerlit]

At this point, I think its pretty obvious Ford has discovered an issue with how they are rolling these out and are working on resolving that. No idea what the issue might be, but all contacts at Ford have went silent and stopped responding to any contact at all. There is something more than just a slow rollout going on.

I think you had said that the most recent update is 7.8GB in size, depending on how many cars are on the road that is a lot of data to push out. The first number I found said about 18,855 MME's have been sold in the US through September, which would be 143TB of data if everyone of those cars needed that update. Not sure how they are distributing the data but this was also only available over cellular, so that will be the limiting factor. I wouldn't be surprised if ATT isn't limiting how many vehicles can be updated at once due to that size.

It also appears from what I was able to find that BMW updates are significantly smaller in size than the ones Ford is rolling out. Something as big as 7.8GB looks to be an entire image for the Sync OS, rather than just updates to certain parts of the app. Ford has a lot of work on their hands to make that more efficient.

 

[fokkerlit]

Actually, BMW says it right on their own page:

https://www.bmw.com/en/innovation/bmw-software-update.html

Their average update is 800MB, that's significantly smaller than what I read the most recent Ford update is in size.

 

[mpshizzle]

I think you had said that the most recent update is 7.8GB in size, depending on how many cars are on the road that is a lot of data to push out. The first number I found said about 18,855 MME's have been sold in the US through September, which would be 143TB of data if everyone of those cars needed that update. Not sure how they are distributing the data but this was also only available over cellular, so that will be the limiting factor. I wouldn't be surprised if ATT isn't limiting how many vehicles can be updated at once due to that size.

It also appears from what I was able to find that BMW updates are significantly smaller in size than the ones Ford is rolling out. Something as big as 7.8GB looks to be an entire image for the Sync OS, rather than just updates to certain parts of the app. Ford has a lot of work on their hands to make that more efficient.

Obviously we are just grasping at straws and guessing here, but I suspect they aren't worried about data size. If they were it's easy enough for them to say "wifi only" and have us download on our own internet

 

[macchiaz-o]

I think you had said that the most recent update is 7.8GB in size, depending on how many cars are on the road that is a lot of data to push out. The first number I found said about 18,855 MME's have been sold in the US through September, which would be 143TB of data if everyone of those cars needed that update. Not sure how they are distributing the data but this was also only available over cellular, so that will be the limiting factor. I wouldn't be surprised if ATT isn't limiting how many vehicles can be updated at once due to that size.

It also appears from what I was able to find that BMW updates are significantly smaller in size than the ones Ford is rolling out. Something as big as 7.8GB looks to be an entire image for the Sync OS, rather than just updates to certain parts of the app. Ford has a lot of work on their hands to make that more efficient.

If I'm correctly understanding the posts you may be referencing from a few weeks back:

7.8GB or whatever it was, that was how much data they observed the vehicle pulling through their home wifi. It excludes cellular downloads from AT&T's network, and it doesn't take into account retransmissions due to connection interruptions or other issues.

We do not know the actual SYNC image size at this time, but I'd guess it's closer to 1 GB than to 8. ?‍

 

[benk016]

I think you had said that the most recent update is 7.8GB in size, depending on how many cars are on the road that is a lot of data to push out. The first number I found said about 18,855 MME's have been sold in the US through September, which would be 143TB of data if everyone of those cars needed that update. Not sure how they are distributing the data but this was also only available over cellular, so that will be the limiting factor. I wouldn't be surprised if ATT isn't limiting how many vehicles can be updated at once due to that size.

It also appears from what I was able to find that BMW updates are significantly smaller in size than the ones Ford is rolling out. Something as big as 7.8GB looks to be an entire image for the Sync OS, rather than just updates to certain parts of the app. Ford has a lot of work on their hands to make that more efficient.

Ford's contract with AT&T would determine what they can/can't do in regards to bandwidth, and unless you get someone from Ford or AT&T to comment on what their setup is like, we'll never know that. I have worked with AT&T on corporate contracts for my last job, and have seen some of the things they can offer outside of what is available to regular customers.

Typically if they do have a data limit, it will be one giant bucket that all the cars share from. Speed limiting could be a thing just to keep from congesting the network, but that wouldn't stop the rollout from happening.

 

[benk016]

If I'm correctly understanding the posts you may be referencing from a few weeks back:

7.8GB or whatever it was, that was how much data they observed the vehicle pulling through their home wifi. It excludes cellular downloads from AT&T's network, and it doesn't take into account retransmissions due to connection interruptions or other issues.

We do not know the actual SYNC image size at this time, but I'd guess it's closer to 1 GB than to 8. ?‍

The full sync OS package for North America, appears to be 13.6gb in size.

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