New cars are sorta like smartphones, aside from seemingly less well-thought-out software. The modern car is an electronic device connected to the internet, and like a smartphone, your new car will probably need over-the-air updates. This can be annoying at times, and lead to you pressing the in-car equivalent of “maybe later” just so you can get on with things. Don’t lie, you’ve probably done it at least once with some electronic device. After all, what could possibly go wrong? Well, GM Authority recently pointed out that if you delay installing over-the-air updates on certain GM models for too long and something breaks that would’ve been affected by updating the software, GM might deny your warranty claim.
Hang on, what are the stipulations here? As Chevrolet’s 2025 warranty booklet proclaims, “The owner is responsible for ensuring all Chevrolet-provided Over-the-Air software updates are installed within 45 days of software availability to the vehicle. Damage resulting from failure to install Over-the-Air software updates is not covered.”
Weirdly, I kinda get where GM is coming from here. Over-the-air updates are essentially part of maintenance, just digital instead of traditional. If a driver doesn’t go in for a recall fix and something happens, that’s probably not covered under warranty, right? At the same time, shouldn’t software released to something as important and potentially lethal in the wrong circumstances as a vehicle be, you know, stable? I wholly understand cybersecurity fears, as they are valid when it comes to running outdated software on any connected device, but old versions of software shouldn’t impede key functions of a car.
For what it’s worth, if GM does screw up a new over-the-air update, any issues there will expressly be covered under the new vehicle limited warranty. The booklet states in plain terms that “If an Over-the-Air software update causes damage to the vehicle, that damage will be covered for the applicable warranty coverage period.”
It also sounds like issues not addressed in software revisions may still be covered under warranty so long as it can be proved they’re unaffected by this clause. Something like a prematurely worn bushing or an upholstery defect would probably be in the clear, but issues with complex systems may be harder to prove unrelated to software.
So, if you own a current GM product and get a notification on your dashboard that an over-the-air update is available, you’ll probably want to install that ASAP. Sure, it’s more than likely that your car will work more or less fine either way, but if something that could’ve been fixed with an over-the-air update breaks, do you really want to be on the hook for it during the warranty period?
(Top graphic image: Chevrolet; depositphotos.com)
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How do OTA updates even work? you would need to have a passord to a wi-fi signal nearby? So…like…at Starbucks?
Our newest car is a 2013, so I have 0% knowledge of this. I don’t mess around with the settings in rental other then the music equalizer. And at home, our garage door is a fire door and there is zero wi-fi signal in there.
We buy CPO anyway, so for our next purchase, does anything bad actually happen if we dont do updates? The car will run, right? We’d have a much more limited/short warranty anyway.
Genuinely curious.
GMC= Got Mechanic Coming? (over the air)
If the lack of an OTA update voids my warranty, I have serious doubts about the vehicles integrity and quality.
As a car guy, this move pisses me off. As a systems engineer by trade, I can totally understand why they’re doing this.
First, if the failure is caused by canceling or delaying an update, that is fair to not cover the warranty. But if the update is for infotainment and my engine fails, then they would have no leg to stand on. Reminds me about the GR Corolla that Toyota wouldn’t cover for stupid reasons a while back.
With that said, I will never own a car that requires OTA updates. Hell, I won’t own a car that comes with a infotainment screen.
Software is almost impossible to perfect. It’s just too complicated. One tiny error or change can have cascading effects and all that. Because virtually every system is software controlled nowadays there are also safety implications to consider. Thus I totally get the requirement to update.
The best policies are ones that are fair to all parties. This feels like that to me.
45 days is not that long. Some people can be out of town for that time, or lending their car to someone else, or anything else. For that to be the grace period before ending warranty coverage seems pretty slimy to me, especially when GM vehicles are known to need that warranty.
Maybe 90 days would be reasonable, but even so they would have to prove the software update is a meaningful one and not just ‘we added a music icon to the touchscreen’ because the latter would definitely be something most folks would defer indefinitely. I mean, most people ignore software updates on their LG TV, so why should they remember to update their Chevy?
Besides, I’m not cutting GM any slack on software fuck ups. They already had a Silverado stall on a rink because ‘it needed an update’ and the Blazer EV has been nothing but trouble. Surely someone at GM can figure out how to appropriately time and push updates out in a way that isn’t a major inconvenience.
Because update fatigue is a real thing, I doubt they’ll be pushing updates for icons, but you make worthy points to consider.
I despise my LG TVs because of the constant update nags! Grrrrr
GM needs to get their stuff together, I had to push the dealer to check my car why I wasn’t receiving OTA updates, their answer was up to date, my car was falling behind with their new functions etc. The only way the dealer did something is when the car bricked itself and updating the car was the only way to fix it. I would not own one of this software define cars outside of the warranty.
Yet another nail in the coffin for me. Nope.
If the updates are critical to the car’s drivability/safety, then GM should program them to either take place during a time of day the car has not been used in the last week (ie 2 AM for most of us) or happen automatically in the background (“Your car will be updated to the latest software upon exiting the vehicle”). Make it the default factory setting. People who are opposed to OTAs for whatever reason can dig through the menus and uncheck the box, but for the other 99% of us it would no longer be an issue. It makes no sense that their product defect is the responsibility of the owner to remedy (particularly for OTA updates. Having to take a car to the dealer for recall work is a pain, but there’s no practical alternative).
> upon exiting the vehicle
I’d only want that to happen at home. I don’t want to arrange a tow or worse if I’m away from home and the update is borked.
Tesla got it right. They made it so the updates can be scheduled or installed on demand. I let mine do it’s thing at a time when I’m asleep. The car tries to suggest times when it’s historically been idle. It’s usually not an issue.
Seems like GM should offer longer warranties on all their vehicles if this is the case.
…but I do see GM’s point. Sometimes an update needs to be pushed ASAP for safety, durability, or other reasons. Reprogramming modules in vehicles without OTA suuuuuuuucks….
YES. If the lack of an OTA update voids a warranty, the implication is the product is not mature and should be warrantied longer. If something fails out of warranty that can receive OTA updates, is that just tough luck, or was it so poorly engineered from the beginning but they just said I’ll fix it later with an OTA update.
Here’s another scenario. Suppose someones warranty is up in 30 days. On the same day an OTA update is sent to fix something, but they don’t do it, and the thing fails on day 31. Now what? GM admits to the problem existing WHILE they are under warranty, they fell in the grace period, but the warranty is now expired. GM will surely attempt to say tough luck.
Yeah, but there’s no promise that the updates are always forward and desired. Many updates remove features or worse, mask things that should be recalls by forcing the customers vehicles to do stupid things.
#1 prime example, F350 V10 Triton. Turns out they under specced the cooling system and a dealer flash changed the engine tuning to run super rich to “cool things down” when in reality people deserved a better cooling system like promised.
The “fix” took a good 3-5mpg off the vehicle and it was so bad people I knew that worked at Ford in 2011 were getting Calibrators from PDC to come flash their personal trucks back and the mpg instantly returned.
So now I’m not in favor of this. Once I seen the dirty secret of what these updates are I want no part of it. Fix my vehicle if you did something wrong when I bought it. Flooding my cylinders with fuel to hide your cooling problems takes dollars out of my pocket.
That seems ripe for a class action lawsuit. They downgraded the product after purchase without compensation/restitution. It won’t stop the practice, however after a few massive settlements it will at least factor favorably into the cost-benefit analysis when the beancounters debate a proper fix vs an OTA patch.
I’m not sure how GM does it, but I programmed our Mach E to accept OTA updates at 1am, as both I and the car are likely sleeping.
This….isn’t a complicated issue.
I’m not sure this is a GM-specific issue – my work has had a couple cars lately with what should have been an OTA recall that apparently won’t take because of too many prior updates not done, where the dealer says the resolution is a full system reset (at our expense).
Seems like that would be problematic under the Magnuson Moss Warranty Improvements Act.
We have all this OTA stuff now, but it seems like most of it is just bug fixes (like phone apps that inexplicably require an update every 2 weeks…)
What I’ve been gunning for is more like a paid OTA update to, for example make existing, semi-obsolete electronics work better. Or even a new factory head unit! I think the writing is on the wall that people are keeping their cars longer, so to me the industry really needs to pivot towards changing their service model. Sell me ways to keep my car more current. The margins are huge, several times better than selling me a new car (percentage-wise or, in the case of major upgrades, in pure dollar terms).
I think about how aircraft last a long time, but the make-or-break on keeping them “relevant” are often the avionics that have been upgraded along the way. I think it’s a business model worth exploring.
My Tesla does this (OTA updates that make things work better, or adds features that weren’t included initially). Example, when I bought my Model 3 in 2018, Sentry Mode didn’t exist. It appeared after one of the OTA updates that I got after I bought it. Other features added include being able to change dashboard font size, changes to how the stalk controls work, and others. Majority of the updates do just say “update and fix bugs”, but periodically, new features are added.
Yep. My MY had the adaptive high beams added OTA. It’s neat to see them work. The auto wipers have also been noticeably better lately.
My 2017 Mazda CX-5 has this feature. In 2017, Android Auto and CarPlay were not available. Mazda later released a firmware upgrade that supports AA/CP, but it also requires a hardware upgrade that involves replacing the USB hub in the center console.
You can DIY the upgrade for around $60 using knockoff parts and downloading the firmware for free online, or a dealer can do the upgrade for ~$600.
I removed the telecom box from my newest car (Honda), so the factory will not be contacting me. Nor will they be spying on me and potentially selling my info.
Hope you aren’t carrying a cell phone. Or have a license plate on the outside that a automatic camera picks up. Or walk around a city center with lots of automated face recognition cameras. Or use a credit card to buy stuff. Or use GPS to navigate somewhere or find something.
Big brother is here, whether we like it or not.
His comment really had absolutely nothing to do with maintaining perfect anonymity in all circumstances, nor does his comment imply he’s clueless about other areas that might harvest data.
I guess you’re are implying that once some data is out there, you might as well throw your hands in the air and completely give up.
However, some people, like me and apparently Dale, care about their data privacy, and are doing what we can to control what data corporations harvest from us, when and where we can.
I considered buying a Volt for a while, but even before buying, one of my shopping criteria was the ability to DIY remove the radio module.
No connectivity, no need for OTA updates, which are often security related due to vulnerabilities introduced by connectivity. They half-ass fix the problems they create. There should be no need for OTA updates with competent programmers. On the off chance something important actually needs to be updated, I’d rather go to the dealer than have the vulnerability of connectivity in the first place.
> There should be no need for OTA updates with competent programmers.
That’s not how it works. Software is hard to get right, and the best results are obtained iteratively. Bugs happen, same as in hardware (recalls are a thing). It’s impossible to model or replicate every possible set of real-world conditions and account for all of them in your software. And you can’t just delay a vehicle’s release until you’re sure all the bugs are worked out–because they won’t ever be. So having the ability to update the software quickly and conveniently (i.e. OTA, as opposed to sending hundreds of thousands of drivers to the dealership to load up the new code off a thumb drive) is good for everyone.
That doesn’t absolve programmers from their responsibility to write working software, but the field isn’t as mature as mech or elec engineering, which have had hundreds of years to mature.
Source: I’m a software engineer who’s shipped a lot of stuff.
God forbid you go out of the country for a few months, or get deployed overseas.
Laptops have warranties, which aren’t voided if you forget to update the software. Hardware and software should be treated separately. If there is a software problem, make it a recall.
Laptops aren’t running complex mechanical systems.
And that’s why automotive software should be held to a higher standard before it even ships.
I’m not sure what a “higher standard” would entail, but it doesn’t address the issue at hand. “Higher standards” wouldn’t reduce the need for updates since they would be applied to both the initial release and any ongoing issues that would then require updates.
Because software is integrated into every function of a car, any issue might be addressable via software. If some sensor is found to produce data that is occasionally problematic, it might be addressed by a different regimen of power cycling that is controlled via a software update. A software update”glitch” might manifest because that sensor is providing data that is outside the expected value, and that might be addressed via a software update.
The only way that cars won’t require software updates is if software is eliminated from cars.
No offense to GM owners but higher standards and GM don’t belong in the same sentence
I kind of disagree on that. Laptops control many complex mechanical systems.
Only a tiny fraction of laptops. And the software they use, which might be running complex mechanical systems, has updates like any other software. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the warranties on the mechanical systems didn’t cover issues caused by errors due to out-of-date software.
If GM can GM then GM will GM. Waiting for the next mandatory update to be behind a paywall. I just cannot let go of the side saddle gas tank coupon GM thing.
Curious about your comment, I went and read about this. Ford Barbecues people with Pinto’s and gets pilloried. GM barbecues people with trucks and basically skates away. And of course Kenneth f’ing Starr was involved. Donald Trump wants to talk about a witch hunt…
Personal experience: I accidentally over-delayed OTA updates on my 2019 Camaro and got a “you waited too long and you’ll just have to get the update done at a dealer now if you still want it” message.
I have not been to a dealer to “fix” this, and it’s had zero effect on anything. Granted, I have a manual base model without any tech features to disrupt, but I’m still glad the car doesn’t bother me with OTA updates anymore. Saves like 20 minutes of update time every 6 months, and the car’s at 105k miles now without any issues at all.
Nobody will remember the fancy Performance Data Recorder or Adaptive Lane Departure Assist or Rapid Unscheduled Engine Disassembly upgrade you convinced yourself to pay for, but you’ll certainly remember when you’re stranded because one of those “features” went bad and stranded you.
Less updating, more downshifting.
Can someone please explain to me why the car’s computer systems need to be connected?
Legacy automakers have been pretty reliably bad about QA of the electronics in their vehicles, so the ability to do OTA updates can be a gamechanger when bringing those folks to the service center becomes a barrel of costs pretty quickly. Jeep had a number of recalls around their transmissions that were software related (link to one) and it’d have been way more convenient if they’d had OTA instrumented earlier.
This. So many stupid bugs in UConnect. Now if only the OTA updates ever actually fixed them…
So they can harass you about OTA updates to patch security issues caused by the connectivity, of course! The absurdity and unnecessary nature of this kind of nonsense is why people so readily believe in conspiracies: it’s somehow more comforting to attribute it to some grand nefarious plan and cabal of evil villains than to have to accept the reality that so many people are just that f’n useless.
The wording of this scares me, does this mean that if an OTA update damages something while your car is out of warranty that you are SOL and GM is off the hook? Surely that can’t be true right? I can understand that GM may not do fresh OTA updates after the warranty period is generally up due to product age/maturation, but say for example, a rebuilt or salvage titled car that no longer has a warranty due to damage gets ruined by an errant OTA update, what then?
Great question, would be nice if the staff followed up with GM on the details of this policy.
If an OTA update is so critical that not applying it may lead to damage, why make it optional?
So they can save a little bit of money on some warranty claims. They probably, legally, need to tell you to allow the updates, but they’re going to be just fine if you void your warranty so they don’t have to pay for whatever repair you’re trying to claim.
I can think of several examples of performance cars back in the 60s that were delivered to the dealer with performance parts like headers and camshaft in the trunk to be homologated as a “production option”, and a note saying that installing them would void the warranty.
This is amazing
My guess is that they need you to agree to keep your car in range of whatever WiFi access point it is communicating through until the s/w update is complete, just like how PC/phone OS updates tell you to keep your device powered until the update completes.