Almost every modern car has some software platform or other running it, screens, bluetooth integration, etc etc.
Quoted for truth. Here’s an example...
My wife’s prior Buick had an engine start/stop “feature”, that couldn’t be disabled.
One day, on a fairly steep incline, she stops for a red light. Light turns green, she lets go of the brake, hits the gas, and the car started lurching and then rolled backwards. Engine started, sputtered, died and had no power.
She had to shift into park, shut the entire vehicle down and restart. In traffic. Then, it started OK and she was able to get out of the way of all the PO’d drivers behind her.
Had it at the dealership about an hour later. 2 days later they call me and said “yeah, GM knows about it. It doesn’t happen that often so it’s fine.”
Seriously - that’s the answer - we know what it is, but it happens randomly so you probably won’t be unlucky again. Maybe.
The root cause was basically a software timing bug. The cam phasers would be at, say, 65% when the engine shut down. But due to the bug, when it restarted, the ECU memory register for “current cam position” would be reset to 0, so the entire engine was completely out of timing.
A full restart so the phasers could retract to zero and re-sync with the ECU was all that was why it was drivable after the event.
Took GM over 2 years (!!) to release a software fix. And even then, I’d have had to call, convince them I have this problem, schedule time to bring it in, let the dealer spend a day with it flashing the firmware and hopefully it’d solve the problem. I’d almost guarantee that whomever has that Buick now has no idea about any of this.
Tesla types “git push .....” and a critical bug goes away.
So ... yeah, it’s a different experience for the less technically inclined but I’ll argue it’s actually better, since critical problems can be resolved with zero owner interaction.
