Fiat Chrysler Is Being Sued Over a Software Flaw (ieee.org)

"Last week, a California judge decided to allow a class action lawsuit filed in December 2017 against Fiat Chrysler to proceed," reports IEEE Spectrum. "The lawsuit, which could have major ramifications for car makers, was filed in response to stalling issues with 2017 Chrysler Pacifica minivans that the plaintiffs allege were caused by known software defects." From the report: The plaintiffs allege that Fiat Chrysler, despite numerous owner complaints about the Pacifica stalling out, concealed knowledge of defects in Pacifica's powertrain control module (PCM) to keep customers from having concerns about buying the vehicle. Fiat Chrysler attempted to get the lawsuit dismissed, arguing that consumer complaints don't prove that a vehicle defect exists, or demonstrate that the company knew about the alleged defect a priori and concealed it.

The judge agreed with Fiat Chrysler on those points, ruling that the plaintiffs could not use consumer complaints alone as evidence of a defect. However, he pointed out that Fiat Chrysler had issued two technical service bulletins relating to Pacifica's PCM software before the plaintiffs had purchased their vehicle, and two more following their purchase. The judge ruled that there was sufficient evidence to believe it was "at least plausible" that Fiat Chrysler knew that there was a stalling problem with the vehicles before the plaintiffs bought them.

Comments

Re: Why waste time here?

[niittyniemi]

If they make it to Slashdot, the fanboys will explain how it's actually a feature and how every other car brand will copy it.

I'm not sure how the fanbois managed to explain away Tesla's recent problem with the software for the braking system on the model 3 as a feature.

Oh yes, now I remember:

They focused on how "brilliant" it was that Tesla could write a patch for the faulty software and apply it 'over the air' in a couple of days.

They ignored the fact that Tesla had managed to release software for a critical subsystem of their cars, the brakes, into production which had bugs which significantly impaired it's performance. Seemingly, a fairly trivial bug as they managed to test and apply the patch in a couple of days.

I suspect that if that happened with any other car maker, the NTSB would have instructed that their cars be removed from the road immediately and not allowed back on the road until the maker (or subcontractor) had demonstrated the safety of their software and it's development.