OTA software updates are a double-edged sword... on one hand we may get new features and improvements on our vehicles, but on the other hand sometimes updates introduce bugs or cause other problems.
On my 7 hour drive home from picking up my Model 3, a PT sensor failed. This left us with no cabin heat on a *very* cold day. Fortunately the seat heaters worked. Apparently this was a widespread failure (bad batch of PT sensors), and so Tesla's short term solution was to fix it with an update. I installed that update that night when I got home and in the morning when I drove the car the heat was working again. The update bypassed the failed sensor. Magical!
I got a call a few weeks later from my nearest service center and scheduled an appointment to replace the failed sensor. That whole experience was impressive.
Fast forward to today. I'd been holding off on updating because I wanted to keep my radar... but recently gave in and installed the latest update. Immediately after, the GPS location of the car was intermittently offset during navigated directions - this causes the car's map marker to appear off the road which then causes the directions to get confused at each intersection (turn right onto main street, turn right onto main street, turn right onto main street...).
I scheduled service for this problem and they pushed another software update, but said if this doesn't fix it I'll have to come in to have my GPS antenna replaced.
So here is the point of my long-winded post... I'm reasonably confident that this issue was introduced by a software update, yet they're suggesting replacing hardware to fix it. Should we be expecting to pay for repairs like this once we're outside of warranty? Is there a precedent for this?
My guess is that the software that dealt with this GPS map marker may have been rather hairy, perhaps needing to solve many edge cases and even interoperability with many different GPS hardware vendors.
Whoever rewrote the software probably missed some of those edge cases. Perhaps code was removed that was there to bypass hardware failures or deficiencies (like my PT sensors). I wouldn't even know there was a problem because they pushed a software workaround. But perhaps then a few years later and out-of-warranty they remove that software fix (even unintentionally).
How can Tesla expect owners to pay for labor and parts to fix a problem that was caused by software (or unveiled by removing a software fix)? What recourse do we have as owners? Do we really have to go to arbitration for these things?
It's not as though I can prove that they caused it with an update (even though I'd wager my left pinky toe on it).
On my 7 hour drive home from picking up my Model 3, a PT sensor failed. This left us with no cabin heat on a *very* cold day. Fortunately the seat heaters worked. Apparently this was a widespread failure (bad batch of PT sensors), and so Tesla's short term solution was to fix it with an update. I installed that update that night when I got home and in the morning when I drove the car the heat was working again. The update bypassed the failed sensor. Magical!
I got a call a few weeks later from my nearest service center and scheduled an appointment to replace the failed sensor. That whole experience was impressive.
Fast forward to today. I'd been holding off on updating because I wanted to keep my radar... but recently gave in and installed the latest update. Immediately after, the GPS location of the car was intermittently offset during navigated directions - this causes the car's map marker to appear off the road which then causes the directions to get confused at each intersection (turn right onto main street, turn right onto main street, turn right onto main street...).
I scheduled service for this problem and they pushed another software update, but said if this doesn't fix it I'll have to come in to have my GPS antenna replaced.
So here is the point of my long-winded post... I'm reasonably confident that this issue was introduced by a software update, yet they're suggesting replacing hardware to fix it. Should we be expecting to pay for repairs like this once we're outside of warranty? Is there a precedent for this?
My guess is that the software that dealt with this GPS map marker may have been rather hairy, perhaps needing to solve many edge cases and even interoperability with many different GPS hardware vendors.
Whoever rewrote the software probably missed some of those edge cases. Perhaps code was removed that was there to bypass hardware failures or deficiencies (like my PT sensors). I wouldn't even know there was a problem because they pushed a software workaround. But perhaps then a few years later and out-of-warranty they remove that software fix (even unintentionally).
How can Tesla expect owners to pay for labor and parts to fix a problem that was caused by software (or unveiled by removing a software fix)? What recourse do we have as owners? Do we really have to go to arbitration for these things?
It's not as though I can prove that they caused it with an update (even though I'd wager my left pinky toe on it).
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