• jkjustjoshing@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    As someone who might be plowed into by one of these things, I care about the difference. Is it something where 80% of them will be automatically fixed within 72 hours by an auto-update, or is it something I’ll need to worry about for weeks/months. There’s no way to know which recalls have been fixed when encountering a vehicle in the wild, so if it’s a software-only recall fix that applies automatically, I feel less concerned about it once the fix is available.

    None of this should be taken as support of recklessly shipping unfinished software into a car.

    • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      or is it something I’ll need to worry about for weeks/months

      Try years. For example the 2020 Takata airbag recall… wouldn’t be surprised if there’s still a hundred million cars around the world that haven’t been recalled. If you don’t live in a first world country, it wasn’t even possible to get parts for the fix until recently.

      Even if the fix was smaller, there aren’t enough mechanics in the world to check/update/test a significant percentage of cars quickly, and manufacturers share components so that can easily happen.

      And the biggest time sink for a recall is often not the repair, it’s all the time spent with humans scheduling/testing/documenting the recall. Only way to speed that up is with automation/OTA updates.