"Update not successful, vehicle cannot be driven"

[DennisD]

The problem with investing in the future is it's hard to do when the federal government is broke. Printing too much money makes it worthless.

Let me ask you this.

Did you go to College? Many people (if not most) can't afford to pay for it upfront and they borrow the money. They are basically investing in the future to hopefully gain more income thus making a for a wise investment.

Now that "investment" may be not always be wise but to blanket that investments should not be made if you are broke is a poor analogy IMHO.

If the future of the Planet depends on "investments", I think those would be wise investments to avert future disasters. Whether the dollar is worth more with a Planet on fire is moot. The old adage you can't take it with you applies 10 fold in this example. ?

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[dtbaker61]

If people can't trust that their car won't be bricked overnight by a software update, then they're more likely to turn off updates altogether or, worse, start to doubt that your company has the technical expertise to build a reliable vehicle in an industry that increasingly revolves around features that are entirely software-based.

I turned off updates long ago.... running on 4.2.4 with a couple of known annoyance bugs, but not having any surprises is more important for me.

 

[Tomatoboy]

Yeah I commented to that effect on Reddit. It's not an EV issue, it was a failed OTA update, and we don't even know all the circumstances around it or what module it was (or maybe someone does now).

Then someone responded "Well find me an example of this happening to an ICE vehicle", and within 10 seconds I found an article about Volvo X60s (or XC60... something 60) that received an OTA update a year ago that was bricking a bunch of them because it was activating a theft deterrent system. Same end result though, drivers couldn't use the vehicle and it had to be towed.

The person, in typical Reddit fashion, just said the article was "Hearsay", despite having as much if not more evidence around the issue than a single image of a Ford infotainment screen.

Lesson learned, or at least reinforced, if people want something to be true and are already set against it, they will just move goalposts as needed to secure their position.

Yup. It’s an OTA issue, not a BEV issue, this exact thing has even happened to other Ford ICE vehicles very infrequently. https://www.fordraptorforum.com/threads/automatic-software-update-bricked-my-truck.96624/

 

[generaltso]

Yup. It’s an OTA issue, not a BEV issue, this exact thing has even happened to other Ford ICE vehicles very infrequently. https://www.fordraptorforum.com/threads/automatic-software-update-bricked-my-truck.96624/

Very frequently?

 

[Tomatoboy]

Very frequently?

Infrequently. The current generation F-150 is the most numerous OTA receiver currently in Ford’s fleet, it hasn’t been a frequent issue amongst those vehicles, but it has happened to a few people here and there.

 

[generaltso]

Infrequently. The current generation F-150 is the most numerous OTA receiver currently in Ford’s fleet, it hasn’t been a frequent issue amongst those vehicles, but it has happened to a few people here and there.

Sorry, I misread.

 

[Mandretti]

There is another plausible explanation for this. Likely one of the first things the update process does is to check the current state of the hardware and software. If it finds anything along the way that indicates a problem or indeterminate state it stops the process and, to be 100% safe, bricks the car. In this situation there is no safe rollback.

The shop laptop has far more diagnostic and repair capabilities than the car itself; much of it focused on the various hard aspects of the vehicle including sensors and firmware, the state of various software modules and storage areas, and the relationships between these various components.

 

[bigredx86]

So tired of seeing this same exact photo posted over and over again on all the sites, super annoying. Every time, I am like, oh maybe someone else got this error, nope, same photo.

 

[Carlos R]

Well I just was unlucky enough to have had this problem today. Entire waiting for a Ford arranged towed that never arrived. Will try again tomorrow with a different one.

 

[Shepherd]

Well I just was unlucky enough to have had this problem today. Entire waiting for a Ford arranged towed that never arrived. Will try again tomorrow with a different one.

Can you tell which update failed? My 23GT had so many updates in the last couple months. My last one was to allow a more dependable update experience. ECG-24.2.5.6.2

 

[Carlos R]

How can you tell? The update happened Thursday night.

 

[Snakebitten]

How can you tell? The update happened Thursday night.

PTS is probably the best place to review OTA activity between a Vehicle and the Motorcraft cloud.

And if the owner is lucky, FordPass might have an alert, as well.

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