"Update not successful, vehicle cannot be driven"

[Krom2040]

Where are these numerous people? I am genuinely asking, I think we have seen this one and there was supposedly another instance from some months ago. I don't doubt that there are more that just don't make it online, but based on available evidence I haven't seen "numerous" people, just the same picture reposted in a hundred places recently.

I observed multiple threads about this issue on this forum from multiple people, both referencing the Reddit thread and as people claiming that it happened to them - you can see links to those threads in posts here. Others in those threads also responded along the lines "this also happened to me and it was resolved quickly", so it was my assumption that this happened to some number of people that is greater than three.

As for number 2, bigredx86 didn't say hardware failure. There are a lot of issues that can come up that make reverting impossible. Corrupted storage, as was said, is one possibility. Especially if there was power loss during a write. The fact is, we have no idea what happened prior to this screen. Could the owner have pulled the 12v for some reason? Could a fuse have gone out messing with the update process?

Everything you mentioned there is something that can be mitigated. They can check the status of the battery before beginning the operation. They can keep a separate device or multiple separate devices that are read-only throughout the course of the operation, which they can write prior to beginning the operation and validate the health of before beginning. I sincerely doubt that the operator of the car pulled out the 12V battery midway through the process but it can nevertheless be done in stages so as to avoid that impacting the process. Even a hardware failure can likely be avoided, though as stated earlier, it doesn't appear that a hardware failure is in play here.

Also, while redundancy is possible, how much more cost and complexity are customers willing to take on to avoid a 1 in, let's say, million chance of an issue like this? Do we need redundant modules and entire APIMs? If we do, why do we suddenly need these things for a super rare failure like this but have survived for a century with ICE vehicles that have blown head gaskets, busted timing chains, blown spark plugs out of the block, and any number of other things that require a tow if the owner isn't experienced enough to fix it themselves? Those are also rare issues that have impacted "numerous" people that aren't problems for BEVs. But a couple pictures show up on the internet and suddenly this cannot stand!

If it's a storage issue, then storage is very cheap, especially in bulk, and would be a relatively small price to pay compared to having to do service calls and DEFINITELY compared to the damage to the brand of potentially having a reputation of "sometimes the car just gets bricked overnight". I don't know if this is a storage issue, but that's just an example.

Again, I love my MME so far and I'm optimistic that it continues to give me no trouble. But issues like this need to be taken seriously because they make potential buyers uncomfortable about the technology in the car and because they're perceived as being imminently avoidable. And in fact they are avoidable, though I concede that it's a complex problem.

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[Vulnox]

I observed multiple threads about this issue on this forum from multiple people, both referencing the Reddit thread and as people claiming that it happened to them - you can see links to those threads in posts here. Others in those threads also responded along the lines "this also happened to me and it was resolved quickly", so it was my assumption that this happened to some number of people that is greater than three.



Everything you mentioned there is something that can be mitigated. They can check the status of the battery before beginning the operation. They can keep a separate device or multiple separate devices that are read-only throughout the course of the operation, which they can write prior to beginning the operation and validate the health of before beginning. I sincerely doubt that the operator of the car pulled out the 12V battery midway through the process but it can nevertheless be done in stages so as to avoid that impacting the process. Even a hardware failure can likely be avoided, though as stated earlier, it doesn't appear that a hardware failure is in play here.



If it's a storage issue, then storage is very cheap, especially in bulk, and would be a relatively small price to pay compared to having to do service calls and DEFINITELY compared to the damage to the brand of potentially having a reputation of "sometimes the car just gets bricked overnight". I don't know if this is a storage issue, but that's just an example.

Again, I love my MME so far and I'm optimistic that it continues to give me no trouble. But issues like this need to be taken seriously because they make potential buyers uncomfortable about the technology in the car and because they're perceived as being imminently avoidable. And in fact they are avoidable, though I concede that it's a complex problem.

They do check the battery level before the operation, and Ford does do things in stages. But nothing is infallible. It doesn't address the underlying part about redundancy and how much is enough. You also can't use consumer metrics like the cost of storage when it comes to vehicles. Much like someone talking about military spec, there is automotive spec equipment and it is always more expensive per unit than a consumer equivalent.

I dunno, I am not going to say these issues aren't preventable, almost everything is preventable. Without knowing the underlying cause we can't say for certain that the cure is worth the cost in these cases. As you noted yourself, the owners were able to get it resolved fairly easily by the dealership once it got there. It's also possible whatever this fail state they are running into is already being corrected by Ford and it was an edge case nobody saw coming.

You mentioned working in Software, I would hope at this point you have seen that even with best of intentions and preparation, things can fail in new and exciting ways you don't expect. Planning for every conceivable eventuality is almost impossible. If it were simple then we wouldn't have software bugs in anything, but that isn't the world we live in. So my position here isn't that this is not a problem, but more, what exactly do people think the alternative is when no other industry on earth has managed to make a completely failure proof product... ever?

 

[eleven24]

thanks for the clarifications. the rare exception has brought out thousands and thousands of ppl raging against electric cars :\

It seems a certain former President who is now running again for office has been on an anti electric car disinformation rant over the last few weeks. I got a good taste of it on Christmas Day from my Aunt who was in complete disbelief that I had an electric car. She told me the house can catch fire, the car can only drive 20 miles before needing to be charged, it's actually worse for the environment that gas cars, I'm putting people out of work in America and my car is made in China.

Makes me wonder if the transition from horse and buggy to the automobile was met with such resistance way back when.

 

[KevinS]

Makes me wonder if the transition from horse and buggy to the automobile was met with such resistance way back when.

I have no doubt that it was. We have evolved so little since the early 1900's.

There have always been hucksters and grifters in the American culture willing to prey on the fears of people intimidated by changes that they don't understand.

 

[Krom2040]

They do check the battery level before the operation, and Ford does do things in stages. But nothing is infallible. It doesn't address the underlying part about redundancy and how much is enough. You also can't use consumer metrics like the cost of storage when it comes to vehicles. Much like someone talking about military spec, there is automotive spec equipment and it is always more expensive per unit than a consumer equivalent.

I dunno, I am not going to say these issues aren't preventable, almost everything is preventable. Without knowing the underlying cause we can't say for certain that the cure is worth the cost in these cases. As you noted yourself, the owners were able to get it resolved fairly easily by the dealership once it got there. It's also possible whatever this fail state they are running into is already being corrected by Ford and it was an edge case nobody saw coming.

You mentioned working in Software, I would hope at this point you have seen that even with best of intentions and preparation, things can fail in new and exciting ways you don't expect. Planning for every conceivable eventuality is almost impossible. If it were simple then we wouldn't have software bugs in anything, but that isn't the world we live in. So my position here isn't that this is not a problem, but more, what exactly do people think the alternative is when no other industry on earth has managed to make a completely failure proof product... ever?

Listen, I’m not saying that there isn’t value in the points you’re making, but I just respectfully disagree with you about this problem being too difficult or costly to solve in a way that it’s *extremely* rare. It’s good that Ford seems to be dealing with it in an expedited manner, and I would expect that for sure. This is also new technology and I don’t expect Ford to have worked it all out right out of the gate.

I’m just saying that this is a problem that they should be able to solve going forward, and that I hope they put enough thought into the architecture beforehand so that they can fix these problems in the current iteration of the vehicle by process constraints rather than having to wait until Gen2. As a software developer, I absolutely know that something *always* goes wrong in new projects that go to production, but I have yet to personally encounter a problem that wasn’t ultimately fixable in a way that it didn’t happen again as we learned more about the problem. Much easier when the problems are effectively in code rather than in hardware, so that’s why I hope that their hardware setup is moderately robust.

I actually like to see this problem getting some mainstream eyeballs, because it means there’s pressure on Ford to carefully evaluate what they can do to minimize the risk. That’s fine, and totally part of the process.

 

[EELinneman]

Ford seemingly cannot get the speedometer correct in the last few OTA's, how do we expect them to get stability in patching? Their quality seems to be dropping as fast as the resale value.

 

[Krom2040]

It seems a certain former President who is now running again for office has been on an anti electric car disinformation rant over the last few weeks. I got a good taste of it on Christmas Day from my Aunt who was in complete disbelief that I had an electric car.

I’m going to go on a tangent a bit here, because I agree with your sentiment.

China seems to be in a very good position with regard to EV’s and some other forward-oriented industries. While the United States seems to have been focused entirely on oil & gas, they’ve invested heavily in establishing a solid lithium supply chain. Now they’re producing cars that are very desirable compared to competitors, at larger sizes and with superior charging characteristics, partly because their batteries are produced domestically with lithium that’s mined domestically or in friendly client nations.

I’m definitely concerned that the United States and other Western nations are catching on late to the idea that it’s important to invest in where the future is headed. I’m also concerned that democratic systems, while overall being better places to live in along many axes, are fundamentally hamstrung by a turbulent political environment that caters to low-information voters who are easily and happily manipulated by bad actors with a profit motive.

We seem to be on the right path, with the Inflation Reduction Act providing incentives in a relatively free market way to get us pointed towards where technology is going anyway. Just really hoping that we don’t whiplash right back in the other direction after subsequent elections. And also worried that 1970’s-era regulatory frameworks will prevent us from putting in the legwork to establish our own lithium extraction capacity and things like that (even though we never seem to have problems getting oil rigs put up all over the place).

 

[eleven24]

I have no doubt that it was. We have evolved so little since the early 1900's.

There have always been hucksters and grifters in the American culture willing to prey on the fears of people intimidated by changes that they don't understand.

Right now there are just too many people stuffing their pockets with money from Big Oil for there to be a societal tipping point toward EV"s.

 

[Space_Pony]

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.

 

[StormTrooperEV]

This same thing just happened to my Mach E last week. Getting ready to go to work and totally found myself stranded!

 

[Vulnox]

Ford needs to come up with a recovery program you can run from a USB drive if this kind of thing happens. Some combo to put the vehicle in a recovery mode, then just load all the module defaults. Would still be tough for some, but many of us did software updates by USB drive in pre-2021 Ford vehicles. Nice insurance if nothing else.

 

[Krom2040]

The problem with investing in the future is it's hard to do when the federal government is broke.

It just ain't so.

 

[Fixbear]

Wondering if this may instead be a security problem or reclaim situation? Late payments? I think we need to know a lot more back round.

 

[ChasingCoral]

(1) It's happened to numerous people

Please define numerous. From what I’ve seen there are only a few reports, some of which have been reposted often.

 

[Krom2040]

Please define numerous. From what I’ve seen there are only a few reports, some of which have been reposted often.

I should rephrase: it's happened to multiple people. I don't know how many but there seem to be at least three separate reports right here.

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