AfterDawn: News

Electric car stops in the middle of street, updates its software, locks passengers in

When car electronics started getting more and more complex back in early 2000s, people used to joke about car requiring a Windows update while driving. Now, this has become pretty much a reality in China.

Car manufactured by Nio, a Chinese car manufacturer dubbed as "China's Tesla", has confirmed that one of their cars had come to a halt in middle of a busy street in downtown Beijing. Car had stopped in Changan Avenue, which is one of the most prestigious streets in Beijing, and started a software update cycle.



The software update lasted for more than an hour and during the process, the car refused to start - and had locked its passengers inside the car. According to Nio, several police officers had tries to open the car windows in order to free the passengers, but they had failed. After the software update was finished, car had resumed its normal operation.

Nio says that the driver "accidentally made a series of operations that activated the system update" during a traffic jam on Changan Avenue. After the incident the company said: "We apologised for affecting the traffic and we will optimise the upgrade confirmation logic."

Several Chinese news sources confirm the story, including South China Morning Post.

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 3 Feb 2019 4:25

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• 5 comments

• bstringer

  This does not happen with Tesla. The car alerts the driver to the availability of a software update which has previously been downloaded. The user is prompted to choose a time to perform the update or to exit the notice and go about their business. The episode in China sounds like a Windows 10 update experience.

  4.2.2019 19:10 #1

• Mr-Movies

  Or Android & Apple, what's the Government funded Tesla based system? Linux? No:
  
  The new system is called ‘Tesla 3DX’ and is based on the 3DExperience platform by the French software maker Dassault Systemes.
  
  Maybe this is a Chinese solution to population control?
  

  4.2.2019 21:58 #2

• cart0181

  Originally posted by bstringer: This does not happen with Tesla. The car alerts the driver to the availability of a software update which has previously been downloaded. The user is prompted to choose a time to perform the update or to exit the notice and go about their business. The episode in China sounds like a Windows 10 update experience. What if you accidentally click "Yes" to perform the update now?
  
  

  4.2.2019 23:19 #3

• ChikaraNZ

  Originally posted by bstringer: This does not happen with Tesla. The car alerts the driver to the availability of a software update which has previously been downloaded. The user is prompted to choose a time to perform the update or to exit the notice and go about their business. The episode in China sounds like a Windows 10 update experience. According to the article, this car also alerted the driver to an update. It said the driver "accidentally made a series of operations that activated the system update". That could just as easily happened with Telsa, just depends if the driver bothers to read the prompts correctly or not.
  

  5.2.2019 02:42 #4

• nownthen

  They are going to have link updating to whether the engine is running or requiring the vehicle to be in park for any update procedure to take place regardless of what the operator presses in the vehicle. Now they know and can fix it.
  

  Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it
  
  
  

  7.2.2019 16:09 #5