Our Honda Odyssey had a spectacularly broken implementation of CarPlay (see “Honda and Apple CarPlay“). I conjectured that Honda couldn’t leave the car out there with such an embarrassing failure, at least not if it wanted anyone ever to buy another Honda, and, sure enough, recently a software update became available. I accepted the update (nose the car up close to a WiFi source) and CarPlay indeed seems to work without crashing.
However…. the car no longer beeps if you’re about to back into something. It did this on the test drive and I marked that down as a plus for the car (since the world is full of kids, stuff, and other obstacles). It did this during the first months of ownership. Now it just shows you a picture of what you’re about to slam into. The Honda web site shows that “Body-Colored Parking Sensors” are a feature supposedly only on the Touring and Elite models. We have an EX-L. But maybe the hardware is actually present on all Odysseys? They just disable it via software for the LX, EX, and EX-L? But the same programmers who couldn’t implement Apple CarPlay successfully also couldn’t disable this feature the way that the marketing people told them to?
Readers: As consumers, what do you think of this? We were never asked to sign anything that said exactly what the car would and wouldn’t do. Why wouldn’t we expect whatever it did on the test drive to keep happening? Is it reasonable for Honda to disable stuff progressively via software updates and then tell unhappy consumers “Well, if you’d read every piece of our marketing material carefully you’d have seen that the car wasn’t supposed to have that capability to begin with.”?
[Update: Based on reader comments below I verified that the car does not have the sensors on the bumpers that are visible on the Touring model. So the previous beeping behavior would have been coming from the cross-traffic monitoring system (maybe they changed the threshold for whether the “cross-traffic” has to be moving? So a parked car used to be “cross-traffic” but no longer is?). Also, it does work to long-press the steering wheel button to get to Siri if you hold it down long enough. I think perhaps the software update changed some of the timing thresholds.]
Just go to a competent mechanic to plug into the OBD port and turn it back on. Every single company does this although not as common when it includes extra hardware.
Look at the rear bumper for several dime size sensors to see if the hardware is there.
Wouldn’t be the first time fixing one bug broke something else in a surprising way.
Hanlon’s razor – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
Tesla sold two models priced $20k apart with the exact same battery, with the cheaper model having a software limit on the charging capacity. Two years later, they offered an ‘update’ to the cheaper model, costing $2k, that removed this software limit. The folks who had bought the cheaper model were thrilled at the deal, and the folks who had bought the more expensive model evidently didn’t think $20k was a big sum of money and didn’t even notice.
Is there a setting to turn beeps on and off on your console menu? Wouldn’t be the first time a software update had borked a configuration…..
Installation manual found here: https://www.collegehillshonda.com/product/08V67-THR.html
Good place to get discounted easy to install extras like floor mats rather than add them on at purchase. Since the installation manuals are online, you can see if the extra is easy or hard. The backup sensors look difficult.
BTW I remember back in the old days, computer manufacturers would make hardware that could perform better by adding or removing a wire. Some field techs could cash in on this. Today it is over clocking.
Everything on the vehicle is now being controlled by software, down the the windshield wipers. As soon as they get their internal toolchains to support it, the manufacturers will lock out the ECM with a digital signature, and prevent anyone except those who pay the manufacturer’s tax from being able to look at it or make changes. And, of course, this will be done under contractual, do-anything-that-we-don’t-like-and-we’ll-take-your-firstborn legal obligations.
I hope the “right to repair” campaign can do something about this situation. It would/should open up reprogramming/reconfiguring the vehicle to support whatever hardware is on it, option-limited configuration notwithstanding.
Watch the diesel equipment field here. This argument is playing out there, right now. The legal precedents being set in that industry will soon come to the automotive sector.
“Everything on the vehicle is now being controlled by software” – this has certainly been beat into me the last week. 2014 Ford Focus: bad “door closed” sensor affects a huge array of other equipment. Big “door ajar” warning on dashboard obscures other info. Sitting in the just started car, hit the lock-all button, get two warning beeps and the doors don’t lock. Start driving and the auto-lock feature does work. Leave vehicle in driveway at end of day, lights stay on (for several minutes) because it thinks the door is ajar. Thankfully locking the car with the remote does work.
Looking at Youtube videos on how to fix; sensor is apparently further into the door from the lock mechanism. Probably have to tear door apart. Rumor of $500 fix at dealership. Last two times I have torn a door apart it is a full day job. (2000 Beetle window regulator; 2007 Aveo loose door handle)
New appreciation for wife’s 2007 Aveo. Manual window cranks, remote door locks work until the temperature gets below freezing, must use key in lock below that . No computer screens.
You learned that the backup beacon is subject to sudden, unexpected, and total failure. To learn this non-catastrophically is good fortune.
That’s an enormous legal liability. If someone gets backed over and it’s found out that a safety feature was removed, that’s going to be a slam dunk.
Tom: I can’t find any sensors on the bumpers. Maybe the beeping noise was somehow generated from the same systems that watch for crossing traffic as you’re backing up from a parking space in a shopping mall?
Separately, another degraded system after the update is the “press on the steering wheel for voice control” function. With the old software whenever Apple CarPlay was set up this would bring up Siri. With the new software this brings up the car’s own voice recognition and when you say “Call Joe Smith” it responds that “no phone is connected” (by which it means that no phone is connected via Bluetooth, I think, since plainly an iPhone is connected via USB cable).
Philip:
In most cars if you tap the voice control button, you get the car’s voice control. But if you keep the button held down you’ll get Siri or the Google Assistant, depending on what type of phone you have hooked up. That’s how it works in my VW and in most rental cars I’ve tried.