September OTA Update Coming

[whitex]

I never got that notification, even though I used the app even earlier today. After going to the Inbox in the app, there were only old messages there. However, after a bit it loaded two more, one about this OTA and one dated a few days ago. So apparently, messages only show up after you go to the inbox. Unfortunately the message in the Inbox refers to an email which I never got (checked junk mail just in case). But, since there is a copy available on this thread, I read through it, realized I would have never actually stumble upon the process because 1) I never shut off the car while I'm inside with doors and windows locked and 2) I keep my car plugged in to EVSE while at home, which apparently disables OTA for some reason. There would have been a 3) no LTE in the garage, but I installed a Verizon femto cell in the garage for the Taycan to use. But ok, I figured I'd try it - unplugged the car, turned the PCM off and on a bunch of times, even went to the Updates screen which told me the system up to date.

The whole experience left my somewhat disappointed and wondering, is this really what Porsche decided is best customer experience? Polled (vs push) message delivery in their app, special OTA application steps by the driver. After all, Porsche has tested Teslas during Taycan development so they have just seen Tesla OTA user experience - did they think what they came up is better for Porsche customers and/or more aligned with brand image? If so, who are those target customers for the Taycan, who would think Porsche OTA experience is better than Tesla?

For those who don't know Tesla OTA works like this: The car downloads the update whenever it has internet, which includes in garages without LTE since Tesla allows cars to use home WiFi for internet. Once the update is downloaded, the user is notified on the screen when they get into the car, as well as on the Tesla phone app. The user is informed how long the update is expected to last and given an ability to schedule it for when the car is not needed. The update can also be installed immediately from the car or from the app at any time. The app will notify when the update starts and is done (or if it fails, which has only happened to me once due to failed emmc chip in the infotainment, which I then replaced).

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[whitex]

I think it is easier for Tesla.
For a start they have no historical components and (maybe) only 1 controller and a couple of specs, so knowing what code to send to what car should be pretty straightforward.

Porsche, for better or worse, have many model variants and within those a vast combination of potentially different car controller and new plus relatively ancient code.

So first the OTA needs to know which model, does it have torque vectoring, active anti-roll bars and rear wheel steering, all of which possible combinations will presumably have to have been tested for bugs.
And that is before checking non-important combinations like electric charge ports, reversing camera combinations HUD, night view etc.

My guess is that what Tesla have to do is check whether the (non)self driving option is in there then send one of 2 updates, whereas Porsche, whether we or they like it or not, potentially have hundreds of possible combinations to comb through before sending.

The way round it would be not to have an options list so every car is the same, then it is much easier.

Note I write this as somebody who wrote software from 1970 until 1986 so maybe very out of date.

Tesla has accumulated more hardware variations over the years than Porsche. They still OTA update all those cars today (some are 11 years old). Tesla used to change their hardware every 2 weeks, so 52 variants per year - hell for technicians service such wide variety of configurations. This included swapping out microcontrollers with ones using a different architecture, which means completely different software. They also used to have a'la carte options for Model S and X. Tesla OTA deals extremely well with figuring what components need to be updated with what software. I bought my first Model S in 2013 and have participated in forums. In a decade of my Tesla ownership, I have only heard of very few failed updates, even back in 2013 when Tesla was new to this as well. Their user experience was designed from the very beginning.

The point I'm trying to make is that Tesla managed to do achieve user friendly OTA even when they released their first mass production car ever, the Model S, which had a ton of variations on parts and options. So if this is doable by an automotive upstart (back then Tesla was nowhere neat their size today), Porsche is out of excuses.

 

[snstevens]

@whitex - I think you misunderstand the process.

• Porsche will download OTA update in background while you are driving.
• Pull into your garage or parking lot somewhere.
• Doors, windows, sunroof and trunk must all be closed fully (power off the vehicle but do not exit, so the PCM is still active)
• After pushing the Power Off button, a notification will appear asking you to take your phone etc. Wait and see if another notification appears at the bottom that says an update is available to install.
• If an update is available you will be asked to check a box authorizing the PCM to install it, and to exit and lock the car. I believe they also provide a time estimate for the OTA installation.
• Do NOT plug in the car until the update is done.

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

OTA means Over-The-Air. Code or maps, either can be updated via OTA or not. A remember a few of my previous cars required a new CD or DVD to be bought and inserted in the car to get new maps.

I know you know that I’m aware of the difference, or of the meaning of the acronym. Correction accepted, but I’ll consider it a nitpick. ? Still, it’s good (for me) to use words correctly, as it may mislead the casual reader.

Also, later in this thread, the point that @f1eng raised was not that, somehow, Tesla cars lack complexity, or lack a variety of iterations; rather, it was that Tesla had designed their cars a) from scratch (no legacy), and b) around the concept of sw serviceability. All of their hw variations had to conform to the same maintainability spec, and so by design it was easier to make OTA code upgrades be far more robust and user-friendly.

This is not a knock; on the contrary, it was a brilliant strategy, and in a way it helps Tesla stay (far) ahead of the competition. Nor it is an excuse for other manufacturers to stop improving their sw integration and servicing. It’s just an explanation for some of the commenters here who do not grasp the complexities of patching software in running hardware.

 

[whitex]

@whitex - I think you misunderstand the process.

• Porsche will download OTA update in background while you are driving.
• Pull into your garage or parking lot somewhere.
• Doors, windows, sunroof and trunk must all be closed fully (power off the vehicle but do not exit, so the PCM is still active)
• After pushing the Power Off button, a notification will appear asking you to take your phone etc. Wait and see if another notification appears at the bottom that says an update is available to install.
• If an update is available you will be asked to check a box authorizing the PCM to install it, and to exit and lock the car. I believe they also provide a time estimate for the OTA installation.
• Do NOT plug in the car until the update is done.

Will the car show me a notification once the download is complete, so that I will know to shut it down before exiting the vehicle (something I never do normally)?

 

[snstevens]

Will the car show me a notification once the download is complete, so that I will know to shut it down before exiting the vehicle (something I never do normally)?

You've got the order slightly wrong. The notification of an update being available is only visible once you have pushed and held the Power Off button to shut down the car AND are still sitting in your seat with the windows up. If the download is not complete you won't get the "offer" to install it after pushing the Power Off button. They say there is a soft DING when the download is complete and you're driving, but I never heard that in July. My only notification happened after pushing and holding the Power Off button on the driver's door side of the steering wheel.

I had to wait 4-5 days after the July update was announced before I saw the message. I was in a Starbucks parking lot to grab a drink, so I check the "Install" box and went to grab a drink. All done when I got back, but I recall at some point in the next day or two I did a 2-finger reset. I think the PCM was having trouble recognizing my phone or something like that. All was well after the Reset.

 

[whitex]

I know you know that I’m aware of the difference, or of the meaning of the acronym. Correction accepted, but I’ll consider it a nitpick. ? Still, it’s good (for me) to use words correctly, as it may mislead the casual reader.

Actually, I was wondering why you separate between an OTA data update and code update. Whether updating a map, or updating the navigation application - there is very little difference it the update - either way you have to shut down navigation app, load new binaries, restart the app (or whole car?). Perhaps you meant to distinguish between components which are safety critical, like maybe accelerator pedal controller, vs. a calendar app?

Also, later in this thread, the point that @f1eng raised was not that, somehow, Tesla cars lack complexity, or lack a variety of iterations; rather, it was that Tesla had designed their cars a) from scratch (no legacy), and b) around the concept of sw serviceability. All of their hw variations had to conform to the same maintainability spec, and so by design it was easier to make OTA code upgrades be far more robust and user-friendly.

While the above vertical integration may be more and more true with latest Tesla models, the original Model S was a collection of existing automotive parts from traditional automotive companies (like Mercedes) and tier one suppliers (like Bosch). Tesla had to do exactly what @f1eng is saying Porsche's challenge is - they had to figure out how to OTA update all these components talking different protocols, different buses. Elon tried to push suppliers to move to Ethernet interconnect, but back in 2012 Tesla had little to no negotiating power with the suppliers. Tesla OTA approach was also staged, so initially OTA would not be able to update all the components, so you had to take the car in to update the drive unit for the first few months, however they planned and executed it well allowing Tesla to OTA update cars to extend their OTA capability (so no shop visit to make more things updatable).

This is not a knock; on the contrary, it was a brilliant strategy, and in a way it helps Tesla stay (far) ahead of the competition. Nor it is an excuse for other manufacturers to stop improving their sw integration and servicing. It’s just an explanation for some of the commenters here who do not grasp the complexities of patching software in running hardware.

Tesla's OTA is a key pillar of their entire strategy. They essentially do continuous integration on the entire fleer of cars, even those which are over a decade old. It is definitely impressive. Porsche and others had one advantage over Tesla, they could see what Tesla is doing and that it works, so they didn't have to waste time experimenting with a new technology that has never been done.

All that said, I am familiar with Porsche hardware design. I think it is actually easier to get right than Tesla's approach. Porsche design is more modular. They have a dedicated OTA module which has various buses (CAN, FLEX, BR/Ethernet) routed to different ECU's to update them. I think Porsche challenge is lack of solid strategy and software implementation. Lastly, I think their user design is completely missing. Think about it, why require the user to shut the car off while still in a closed car, why require the car to not be plugged in. If this is due to design limitations, it's truly on them. Had they had a proper OTA strategy from the get-go, they could have added a requirement for the onboard charger that its firmware must be updatable with or without it being plugged in.

So in summary, I think Porsche OTA is lacking clear end-to-end vision and execution. It almost sounds like it was an afterthought, adding it towards the end of their design cycle and never actually forming a solid end-to-end plan on how they are going to deploy it in stages, what the user experience should be, etc.

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

@whitex re “Actually, I was wondering why you separate between an OTA data update and code update. Whether updating a map, or updating the navigation application - there is very little difference it the update - either way you have to shut down navigation app, load new binaries, restart the app (or whole car?).”

oh, hell no, a data(OTA) update is as trivial as a file watch and reloading the most recent file. I do think that safety systems are updated differently than, say, maps or EULA-type artifacts.

Interesting insight into how Tesla evolved, and what Porsche does currently - thanks for sharing. I will say, though (speculate, rather) that however of an “all-new” platform the Taycan might have been, some of their subsystems came from racing (919 and the ensuing limited-series 918), and I’m absolutely positive they would not have been designed with updates - particularly OTA - in mind. If they were, then they focused on the wrong priorities at the time. ?

There’s a group at work that is trying to do hardware/firmware updates “as a service”/without evicting the workloads. It is simple in principle, but in reality the sheer depth of the stack makes correlation of health signals (and so to initiate the rollback) an extremely difficult task. And we have the luxury of not being in a safety-critical path. In a car, the stack would be much slimmer/shallower but the consequences of getting it wrong are dire.

As for requiring the car locked and unplugged - it’s simply a scheduling issue/priority yield; im sure there are built-in algorithms that the car runs autonomously when plugged in, and an update would always have the lowest priority. Of course, they could and should fix it - I suspect that’s for gen 2, since OTA was a retrofit to the car.

 

[whitex]

oh, hell no, a data(OTA) update is as trivial as a file watch and reloading the most recent file. I do think that safety systems are updated differently than, say, maps or EULA-type artifacts.

Yes, safety things are updated differently than non-safety, however even for non-safety data update it's simplest and most reliable to just shut down the code which uses the data, then update the date, then start it up. It's easiest to QA, and honestly, most code is not written well enough to handle a re-load after having loaded the old data fist - there are resource leaks, some stuff doesn't get re-initialized correctly, etc, etc.

Interesting insight into how Tesla evolved, and what Porsche does currently - thanks for sharing. I will say, though (speculate, rather) that however of an “all-new” platform the Taycan might have been, some of their subsystems came from racing (919 and the ensuing limited-series 918), and I’m absolutely positive they would not have been designed with updates - particularly OTA - in mind. If they were, then they focused on the wrong priorities at the time. ?

The onboard charger did not come from 919 or 918, so it was part of the all-new Taycan design (or all-new Audi design). All you need is an ability to shut disable the charger if charging would interfere with OTA updating the car. My whole point is that Porsche has not thought through the OTA experience. Why have the user shut down the car and wait, why not pop-up a notification like Tesla, let the user schedule the update, and run it then. This is all just missing software, since we know the car is shutoff when parked, and it can wake on timers, and it can wake remotely via the app - so all component capabilities are there (except maybe they dropped the ball on the onboard charger safety disable feature).

There’s a group at work that is trying to do hardware/firmware updates “as a service”/without evicting the workloads. It is simple in principle, but in reality the sheer depth of the stack makes correlation of health signals (and so to initiate the rollback) an extremely difficult task. And we have the luxury of not being in a safety-critical path. In a car, the stack would be much slimmer/shallower but the consequences of getting it wrong are dire.

I've worked on automotive and embedded OTA. While it seems like a very simple task to accomplish, it's actually very complex, even more so when dealing with components which can launch 2 tons of steel through your garage wall in the worst case scenario. So I am not saying it's trivial, to the contrary, however Porsche seems to be missing the top level user experience design which should feed into all subcomponents.

Btw, notice that even Tesla decided that the most reliable way is to simply disable the car for safety, make sure tall components are present (yes, even something like disconnected seat motor will prevent the car from applying any updates), then apply all the updates, then restart everything so that you end up with all components in a known state after startup, run some sanity checks, then enable the car to move. There is of course more complexity under the hood, like the order of updates, keeping track of dependencies (e.g. making sure you're not updating the switch through which another component is being updated at the same time), and applying it in a manner which can be reverted if some updates fail.

 

[whitex]

You've got the order slightly wrong. The notification of an update being available is only visible once you have pushed and held the Power Off button to shut down the car AND are still sitting in your seat with the windows up. If the download is not complete you won't get the "offer" to install it after pushing the Power Off button. They say there is a soft DING when the download is complete and you're driving, but I never heard that in July. My only notification happened after pushing and holding the Power Off button on the driver's door side of the steering wheel.

I had to wait 4-5 days after the July update was announced before I saw the message. I was in a Starbucks parking lot to grab a drink, so I check the "Install" box and went to grab a drink. All done when I got back, but I recall at some point in the next day or two I did a 2-finger reset. I think the PCM was having trouble recognizing my phone or something like that. All was well after the Reset.

An interesting fact, I never got the July update. I just assumed perhaps they already had it in the factory last December when my car was made. Or it could be because I never shutdown my car while I'm inside with all doors and windows close. I usually just get out of the car, plug-it in, then lock it (which also shuts it off) - obviously not the kind of use pattern Porsche OTA folks anticipated. This still sounds like such a bad user experience to make people shutdown their cars and wait for a notification which may or may not show up - even if I was shutting down the car before exiting, I'd be opening the door at the same time to exit, blocking the update. Out of curiosity, how long is the customer expected to wait before concluding there is no update yet? If the notification doesn't show up in 2 seconds, does that mean no update, or do you have to wait 10, 20, 30 seconds, few minutes?

 

[snstevens]

Yeah, I see the problem. I use your locking model when I'm out and about, but I don't lock the car in my garage, so I use the Power Off/On button.

Regarding the amount of time - I only wait 5-10 seconds, and if no update notification appears I just get out of the car.

 

[whitex]

Yeah, I see the problem. I use your locking model when I'm out and about, but I don't lock the car in my garage, so I use the Power Off/On button.

Regarding the amount of time - I only wait 5-10 seconds, and if no update notification appears I just get out of the car.

Perhaps I will just wait a while, then try the OFF trick see if anything shows up. By then, perhaps some folks here will have more information on what the update does (since I don't see any release notes available). That said, since I never go the July update, maybe my OTA is broken. Maybe I'll try to disable it online, then re-enable it. I did enable when my car was still in Germany, so maybe the servers are confused.

 

[JWreck]

I love the Porsche forums…debating whether an owner will update their cars software OTA. Boomers be boomin I suppose ?

 

[PorscheGuyFromAZ]

I'm always amused at the Porsche is holy and does no wrong attitude anytime someone complains about anything. In this case... sharing what's on an OTA is impossible, or impractical, you dont understand how difficult it is, it takes lots of work cus every car is different, not one says all that is updated, OTAs are complex and difficult interventions, etc etc etc. Yet, Tesla has been doing it for years and years. Release notes come with every update, and updates are as simple as wait a few minutes, no need to do anything. And Tesla is a crappy car! This is Porsche! it should be ten times easier and better than Tesla for heaves sakes.....

I agree 1000% that Teslas are crappy cars and the Porsche should be much better at software updates OTA.

 

[Mr. 2021 Taycan]

Porsche has not figured out technology. There is no reason to be sending text messages and emails. Updates that are not automatically applied are flagged as available in the PCM.

Porsche knows my VIN and my email and cell number. If they wanted to, they could send notifications by VIN the day after they are flagged as available in the PCM.

As it is, their current notification is only an unneeded distraction. Is caused me to check the PCM and to run the update procedure to no avail, as there is no update currently available.

Porsche needs to get with the program.

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