Smart doorbells and thermostats that upgraded in the night often became a nuisance or an expensive brick. But a faulty software upgrade on a car can kill you and others.

Car company execs need to take a chill pill followed by a reality serum. Monetizing subscription based basic features and delivering in-car advertising is the absolutely worst way to go.

As consumers we need to stop buying into the bells, whistles and trinkets and demand essential and safe transportation.

Consumers have very little power in this space. Have you tried buying a non-premium car with physical buttons instead of touchscreens in recent years? There used to be hardly any option because carmakers all somehow decided this was the way forward, even though science clearly said it was making cars less safe. So if you needed a car and didn't have a ton of money, you could merely accept it. Only now that safety ratings started to include usability of key vehicle controls car makers decided to turn around again.

Yeah, the only updates I want are map data for a GPS. And even then, go ahead and leave out the GPS and give me a dumb screen to attach my phone to.

Or manufacturers should learn from Tesla. Did you know - if your Tesla shuts down (screen goes blank) you can still drive it! If done right, it works like magic.

I mean there are multiple, multiple boundaries in place for this reason. I’d start by saying most “in the middle of the night” updates target non-safety critical systems in the car like the IHU. The update I received last night has a build date of 2024 reflecting extensive validation before general availability in 2026. It was field tested in limited markets after factory validation and had staged rollouts through dealers before going to general OTA availability.

Independently, I had to take my car into the dealer to get a safety critical recall installed via Ethernet that affected a braking system in certain edge cases and this was not installable OTA “in the night”.

While, yes, I am annoyed that the dealer price for my “infotainment” unit is $2k and reflects the technical specs of a 2016 mid tier android tablet running Intel cores; I do feel that vehicle is far safer with its airbags, 360 camera, lane keeping, and AEB on net than my 1970’s classic.

What does any of this have to do with EVs?

We've had software upgrades on cars for years now.

The used car market has, in many ways, usurped what used to be the role of the basic car used to be.

As a result, you see fewer and fewer new cars sold, and automakers have to more intensively monetize the cars they have. They must create ever-increasing returns to shareholders.