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65,000+ Land Rovers Recalled Due To Software Bug
An anonymous reader writes with word that owners of Range Rover and Range Rover Sport SUVs (model year 2013 and newer) will need to get their cars' software updated, which means a visit to a dealer. The update will fix a bug in the cars' locking system, which occasionally resulted in car doors randomly unlocking and opening themselves (in one instance, when the car was moving). This is not the first time that a car manufacturer asked customers to contact dealers for a security update. In July, Ford has recalled over 430,000 cars in North America because of a bug that prevented the engine from shutting down even after the ignition key was put into the "off" position and removed.
Only makes sense that car called the Range Rover would have either an off-by-one or Out of Array Bounds error.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is this the new incarnation of Lucas electrical systems?
http://www3.telus.net/bc_trium...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Does the software in cars fall under any particular standard for quality? Like actual engineering standards?
No.
Or do we really have auto makers doing little better than people making apps for phones?
Well, it's quite a bit better than that, which is still terrible.
It just seems like if it controls any part of a car it should really be required to be subjected to much more rigorous verification.
They're nowhere near that. The complexity has gone way up, but the quality hasn't...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Doors unlocking, that's one thing. Doors opening and engine not halting when ignition switched off, that's horrible design. Always, always keep physical means that override any other possible means to do things like opening doors and disabling engine. Person approving those designs should be shot and then sent to the Russian front. Stuff can go wrong mechanically, but why would you ever add yet another possible point of failure?
I am not sure how many software engineers are employed by Range Rover, but I expect that the subsystem providing the central locking features will have been outsourced just like all the major components to companies like Bosch, Visteon, Wipro, Yazaki etc.
In order to reduce costs the software engineers will have been outsourced to Eastern Europe and India, and although just like everywhere else the software teams will be a mixture of the competent/incompetent, it will likely be the management who will have screwed up trying to do things cheaply and quickly*
* Jaguar/Land Rover, made in Britain owned by Tata (Indian company)
As an automotive SCADA programmer, its the hillarity of a marketing driven product that causes outright lethal problems like this. We finish coding important things like o2 and knock profiles, 3d cylinder maps and such into the engine and give the vehicle the ability to start or stop with ease in damned near any environment. we also write in cockpit code that handles fun stuff like TCS and ABS for the driver. Then, suddenly, our competitor one-ups us in either horsepower, torque, or some other mundane argumentative ego stroke brought up at the dinner table of automotive shows and product spotlights. And just like that, some marketing drone instantly tasks us with a new, untested, and wholly remarkable feature we are to provide.
so another project is created in git, branches are furiously spawned, we're given a deadline to make this new system work with everything (including the legacy stuff thats 10 years old) and things like lighting controllers as well. We're told we will deliver this feature on time or all hell will rain down from above, and so we do. Its another set of servos, and because we dont have a 2 year test cycle we have to use the same ones you have to close the trunk, but this time we bolted it to keiths new handler code based on a fork of the trunk code that he spent 90 hours hacking. Sure, the newest vehicle comes out and all is well, but we just do not have enough time to make sure everything works before some talking head gets up on a stage and rails about our latest "innovation." And chances are the average driver with more brass than sense is too old to understand the technology, how it works, or when to use it so it gets disabled at the dealership for them along with a half dozen other bells and whistles that confuse and bewilder the OAP.
Good people go to bed earlier.