When one of China’s once-popular electric vehicle startups went bust, car owners encountered an unexpected problem: Their vehicles went “offline.”
Richard Qian didn’t know what to expect when he heard that WM Motor, a Shanghai-based EV maker popular for its low prices, filed for bankruptcy in October 2023. He tried to drive his compact EX5 SUV as he normally would, but discovered that he could no longer log into WM Motor’s smartphone app, which remotely controlled the car lock and air conditioner. He also couldn’t see his car’s mileage and charging status on the dashboard.
↫ Tianyu Fang at rest of world
Chinese car makers are heavily pushing to gain a foothold here in Sweden, it seems, as ads for these brands are popping up all over the place, and dealerships – although most likely not dedicated dealerships – are present even here in the Arctic high north. I have no idea how successful they are, as I don’t think I’ve ever seen one out in the wild, but with such massive presence they must be doing something right. Considering most of the cars they sell are electric, I assume if any of them go under, buyers would suffer the same issues as Qian did.
Of course, EV startups aren’t exactly a China-only thing, but there are definitely more of them than there are non-Chinese ones, since even brands already well-established in China will effectively be startups again when entering the European or American markets. If an otherwise successful Chinese car maker doesn’t survive in Europe, the end result is the same as if it were a European EV startup: no dealer network, no spare parts, and most likely, no servers to run your EV app.
This issue alone keeps me from taking EV startups – Chinese or otherwise – seriously until they’ve got several solid product generations under their belt. The idea of spending tens of thousands of euros on a car that randomly loses a bunch of its functionality because its brand went under sounds like a nightmare to me, especially since so many features are now shoveled into electronic black boxes, down to even the door handles.
I’ll stick with established brands, for now.
Most cars don’t get updates to their software, EV or not. Get a car that’s 5+ years old and you’ll see unpatched android smart screens and sat navs that don’t know what road they are on.
In terms of EV brands.. Volvo, the flag carrier car brand of Sweden, was sold by Ford to China’s Geely Holding. So even “established brands” are simply the same Chinese startups with a different badge.
Chaces are there is an update many of the car componies offer updates for the “infotaiment” software for example useing a fast search I found the update software for Chrystler’s Uconnect. problem is the idea of running a software update on your car feels like an odd concept still so most people do not bother.
Yep you are right they do tend to offer (paid) updates at later intervals for maps, but many now don’t, relying on Google or others to supply the maps. My car only offered a single update post launch to the infotainment system. So that’s that for the remaining life of this car!
I’ll probably keep running until it physically can’t pass an MOT or I win the lottery.
That isn’t true.
Most EVs DO get OTA updates. And many newer cars do as well.
Teslas alone account for 20% of all EVs. BYD accounts for another 15% and they got OTA updates that enabled for example wireless android auto in the head unit.
I am so against cars being designed this way. This isn’t the first and won’t be the last. I’m against this for all devices actually, smart phones, smart televisions, smart themostats, smart lights, smart printers, smart cameras….Owners should be have local control! It’s the manufacturers who should be loosing access on the owners say. But as things go, it’s the owners who loose control.
I don’t know what the tariff situation is like in europe, but here in the US both the trump administration and biden administration have signed in very steep import taxes ..
https://www.npr.org/2024/08/28/nx-s1-5089990/what-expected-tariffs-on-chinese-imports-may-mean-for-americans-and-their-jobs
So a $15k car from china becomes $30k, and that’s still before sales taxes, markup and other fees. Macroeconomically these taxes are ultimately passed onto consumers. Given that a large portion of our goods are from China, the average family may be paying a couple thousand dollars more every year than we used to. This inflation is killing us. I don’t know Harris’ position on import taxes, but for his part Trump stated he would raise import taxes them even more if elected a second term.
While it’s true that we’ve been loosing the manufacturing war with China, I think import taxes may be causing more harm than code. What we need is for US manufactures to be more competitive, but these protectionist measures don’t actually do that. 🙁
Established brands are trying to normalize this too though. Monthly subscriptions to unlock features in our own cars. It’s a bunch of BS but with enough pressure car manufacturers may just get what they want. They’ll all jump on the subscription bandwagon and we’ll all have to deal with the new normal being restricted cars,
As much as I want to avoid this future, in a few more product generation we might be there.
I currently have a plain polluting ICE car. It does have a few online update capabilities, but luckily they neither work nor are mandatory. But I do worry about my next car, because it’s pretty clear that all the car manufacturers (ICE, EV and whatever) wants to hoard and control data (and therefore practically the whole car).
I hope someone somewhere makes a database with new cars providing (because in the world we live in, freedom to actively avoid using online services, is default off) offline only day-to-day operation.
I gave up on newer cars, and currently drive a car from 2009 and just go thrugh the process of getting it inspected regurlly and have any worn out parts replaced and anyy issues resolved before they become real problems. My main motivation is its a type of care you cant get new any more (Subcompact station waggon) having real controlls and no data tracking is just iceing on the cake.
peterpop,
Same. I’m really not looking forward to replacing it. New cars are so darn expensive it’s a real economic hardship.
As for EV versus ICE, I get the EV pros, but we’re not ready for EVs at scale.. Their true costs have not been internalized. There’s an obvious lack of charging infrastructure, but even charging at home has hidden problems. EVs and A/C put huge loads on the grid and both of these can be projected to get worse. Here, on hot days when everyone’s got AC cranking, the utility voltage coming into the house drops to 90VAC and the UPS regulators kick in. This is in the dangerous range that warrants cutting off power. Rolling blackouts may be in the future, they’re already happening in some parts of the country.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/heat-california-issues-urgent-power-appeal-warns-blackouts-possible-rcna46583
These predictable grid problems are detractors for EVs. Say your utility issues a plea to stop using so much electricity, are you going to stop running AC and charging your car? Keep in mind it’s not that they’re not generating enough electricity at the source, but that they can’t safely deliver it over overloaded utility lines / transformers / etc, which is a fire hazard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_(2018)
People want technology to save us without compromising on our energy hungry activities. I like the idea that green energy will save us and the thought of powering the car with residential solar panels is appealing, however I don’t own a house to do this myself, and it doesn’t help if you’re out during the day without more costly battery banks that themselves are dirty to construct. It seems to me that we have to come to some sort of reckoning about sustainable ways of living. Ironically the pandemic’s stay at home mandates showed us that very significant reductions were possible, but nobody really wants to commit to it full time.
“Killing us” what a bunch of utter nonsense.
kragil,
It’s an expression of speech. I guess it may not be as familiar an expression internationally. Still it is common in US vernacular where expressions like “you’re killing me” can be understood to be figurative depending on context. Honestly it did not even occur to me that anyone would take it literally, haha.
Think of the song…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Me_Softly_with_His_Song
There’s no cloud. There’s just someone else’s computer.
And in this case it’s a CCP computer
My brother bought a Fisker Ocean a year ago. He’s very worried it will stop working and won’t be repearable. Time will tell.
Is his sunroof still working?
Everything works for him he says. He asked me how to take over the cloud operations of Fisker and I told him it would be near impossible. He’s a member of some Fisker owners club, I suggested they should talk to Fisker to see if something can be done.
Is your sunroof not working anymore?
I don’t own one, but I remember news a few weeks back, that for some owners the sunroof stopped to work.
Apparently in a few weeks the cloud services are going to be switched off. He’s really afraid of that event.
Fantastic. Now the big automotive makers integrating cloud-based services will have another excuse to receive government bailouts next time they almost go belly-up from greed and incompetence.
“Well, Uncle Sam, if you don’t bail us out our cars will stop working! You don’t want to be the president that broke tens of millions of your voters cars, do you? Now pay up! Daddy wants to buy his yacht before the layoffs land.”
There should be a law in place, requiring auto makers to demonstrate a non cloud way of accessing every applicable feature, in case of insolvency of the company.
There would be exceptions for non essential things like onstar like customer support services and remote start, unlock features that are impossible without a service.
+1
Cars already have an OBDII port standard for it’s computer. Maybe there should be an standard for their online/web services, so you can change from the manufacturer app (and server) to a different one.
Bill Shooter of Bul,
Let’s keep things simple, non-cloud access should be mandatory period. It shouldn’t be dependent on promises for when a company becomes insolvent.
I agree there are services that are inherently remote. We’re talking about what happens when these services reach EOL, but but we also need rights when it comes to control what gets cloud enabled and to disable cloud completely.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a60175396/connected-cars-driver-data-tracking-insurance/
Hello. It is not only cars, it is the same a “cloud exclusive hardware” from the iot world, We are starting to buy hardware that depends on a cloud software from the manufacturer to operate. Now that since in this case we are talking about expensive item like a car we worry, but it had been happening for years with IP Cameras, Phones, etc. There should not be “exclusivity”, on hardware that we paid, to a cloud software that we can not control.