Obligatory story: I bought a Camaro when the new ones first came out (2009). I ran into some issues with the radio, found out via forums I was 3 firmware versions behind and then slowly found out car dealers were ill-prepared to be software vendors. They had no idea about the radio updates and their system showed nothing for me against my VIN. This was a common enough experience across the country that one of the coders working on the radio started giving the updates out via email. Which is how I wound up sitting in my car with two USB sticks full of C#. Put the first one in, turn the key, updates. Then open the driver's side door to reset the process (yes, seriously) and put the second USB stick in.
Before that experience I used to laugh off the idea of a weaponized mp3 file or people taking control of cars remotely. Now I think about that auto-boot USB port and the fact my driver's side door is a toggle to God-knows-what.
One of my coworkers had some weird bluetooth bug fixed by firmware in her car. Being the hacker she is, she found the firmware, installed it per instructions.... and it bricked the car!
She brought it to the dealer, who initially claimed it had to be done by the dealer, which to their dismay wasn't true. They had no idea what to do, and my coworker ended up talking to the tech, looking at the screens they figured it out -- another bug that froze the update process if the battery was below some level. They charged the battery, everything finished, and the car was back.
She ended up getting a part time gig with them helping folks with these problems, which may become a bigger thing.
Kudos to that dealer for being able to admit their shortcomings and then grab a talent when they see one, instead of knee-jerk scorn for a customer showing they didn't know about their stuff.
My 2015 pickup has a stereo/setup that can get Satellite radio, GPS signals for the mapping program (not activated on mine), regular radio, and a 4G LTE hotspot.
But what really, really annoys me, is I have to push buttons on the screen to update/fix the time.. How the hell does it not have NTP, or get a radio signal, etc?
Our 2011 Lexus CT200h (no longer with us I'm sad to say) would set time via GPS. I don't understand why every car doesn't do this (especially if it has navi, which requires the GPS chipset regardless).
Especially since the GPS signal has the time in it... likely it is to avoid issues with people claiming it is running fast/slow, or changing timezones.
Only the GPS time value has never had any leap seconds applied to it. So it's almost 20 seconds ahead of UTC. Which is probably "good enough" for a clock in a car.
It seems unlikely that the GPS receiver is hardwired directly to the clock display in the dashboard. There's probably some code running somewhere in the middle. So it should be easy enough to make the leap second correction there, and to keep it up to date through routine updates.
The Mazda infotainment system can similarly be updated via a USB stick. In the Mazda case, it's JavaScript code running in Opera on top of Linux. The code is written by Johnson Controls. Enterprising hackers (of the good sort) have made available a variety of customizations.
Someone put together an app which allows you to select the hacks you want, then generates a few scripts that you write to a USB drive. You then put that in the car and turn it on, and it patches the system:
The answer is Dealers. Their dealers would sue them if they lost all the revenue they get from updating customers vehicles. On the flipside, it would save the manufacturers a ton of money because they wouldn't be paying dealers to perform these updates when they're under warranty. This also explains why Tesla has to do OTA updates... no dealers.
Most Tesla customers live nearish to a Tesla repair center. So it's not like Tesla is forced to do OTA, but it sure is convenient to have the frequent updates that OTA enables.
Probably because they would have to support tens of models and tens of millions of vehicles. Big car companies contract their head units out per body style, so one company may design the 2008-2012 head units and another 2013-2016. They likely have wildly different sensors, firmware update formats, etc.
Bigger car companies prefer stability over features and don't design everything in-house like Tesla. Their shareholders also expect them to turn profits, which leads to risk adversion and slower product cycles.
The head units can also be vastly different by region - which doesn't really make much sense to me. Sure in US you have satellite radio which is unheard of elsewhere, but that's about it. I have a 2010 Prius and the US model has a DVD for navigation, where as the EU model has a HDD and needs to go to a dealer for €€€ updates.
Before that experience I used to laugh off the idea of a weaponized mp3 file or people taking control of cars remotely. Now I think about that auto-boot USB port and the fact my driver's side door is a toggle to God-knows-what.