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About six months after Gary Gilpin rented a Subaru Outback from a California dealer, the screen went black and never turned on. Mr Gilpin took the car to the dealership as he thought it would be a quick reset.
“It was a full month until I got my car back,” said Mr Gilpin, who runs a sailboat charter and brokerage business.
Some people would just smoke. Mr Gilpin sued.
He is among the thousands of car owners encouraged by plaintiffs’ lawyers who have participated in a class action lawsuit accusing automakers of selling vehicles with faulty entertainment and related systems. The complaints are as many as they are varied: screens that freeze, flicker or go black; sound that cuts off or pops unexpectedly at high volume; failed backup cameras. Issues often involve the way the hardware interacts with Apple’s CarPlay or Google’s Android Auto software; this allows drivers to use their phones to navigate, communicate or listen to music and podcasts.
Buggy car software may seem like just an inconvenience. However, plaintiffs have successfully argued that a malfunctioning instrument cluster display is a serious distraction and potential safety hazard.
The suits are a symptom of automakers’ difficult transition into the digital age and their struggle to integrate cutting-edge technology into vehicles that must meet safety requirements that smartphones and other electronics don’t provide. Older generation automakers are losing ground to Tesla and other younger electric car makers who put a lot more emphasis on software. And established automakers are effectively delegating more power in their cars to Apple and Google, which dominate the digital world.
So far, the payments automakers have had to pay have been relatively modest. In 2020, Subaru settled the case brought by Mr. Gilpin and others; It cost the company an estimated $8 million, including attorneys’ fees and an extra two years of warranty protection.
In December, Honda of America and its Acura subsidiary agreed to settle a similar class action lawsuit for an estimated $30 million, including an extension of warranty on systems that buyers complained of were defective, according to plaintiffs’ attorneys. Neither Subaru nor Honda admitted any wrongdoing. Honda declined to comment, and Subaru did not respond to requests for comment.
The precedent-setting lawsuit was brought by Ford Motor customers who complained about their defect. MyFord Touch system. The automaker closed this case for $17 million in 2019 without admitting any wrongdoing.
The totals hardly compare to the hundreds of millions of dollars Toyota and other automakers have paid to people injured in accidents. defective airbagsor billions Volkswagen It is paid to car owners with software designed to mask illegal pollution levels.
But for automakers, the risk goes far beyond the cost of lawsuits.
As the lawsuits show, traditional automakers have struggled to develop navigation systems and other services that work alongside those found on Apple and Google devices. They are also far behind Tesla, which installs large interactive screens in its cars with its own software and does not support CarPlay or Android Auto.
While established automakers remain the target of consumer anger and class action lawsuits when something goes wrong, they have been forced to relinquish their valuable dashboard real estate to Silicon Valley.
Before Big Tech invaded the interiors of cars, automakers were masters of their own kingdoms and dictated terms to suppliers. But Apple and Google have financial resources and software expertise that even auto giants can’t reach.
“The game has completely changed,” said Axel Schmidt, senior general manager at Accenture, who runs the consulting firm’s automotive division. Major automakers are “not used to dealing with partners that are much stronger and larger than themselves,” he said.
Software manufacturers’ influence over the auto industry will only increase as vehicles increasingly include driver assistance systems and other digital technologies.
Automakers are in trouble. They operate on timelines that cannot keep up with the pace of digital technology. The development of a new tool typically takes four years, including painstaking safety testing. Owners have often driven the same car for over a decade, an eternity in the tech world.
“The time window for vehicle development and putting hardware in these vehicles is quite different from a mobile phone,” said Mark Wakefield, co-leader of automotive and industrial applications at AlixPartners, a consulting firm. “When a tool is made, it is made. Software is never really made.”
Apple presents a new promotion iPhone it releases new versions of the operating system about once a year and more often as Google does. Automakers face the nearly impossible task of designing entertainment systems that work flawlessly with software and devices that haven’t been invented yet.
“We get complaints that CarPlay is not working after every update,” said Serhat Kurt, who runs a website. macReportsProvides advice on resolving issues with Apple devices.
Mr. Wolf accused both automakers and Apple of “not being very good at software” and of not doing enough to keep software updates working with older vehicles.
Cases so far have blamed established automakers, not Apple or Google. Sean Matt, a partner at law firm Hagens Berman, who represents the owners in the lawsuit against Honda in Seattle, said he may be “sympathetic to the engineering challenge” that automakers face when designing systems that work flawlessly with ever-changing smartphone software.
But Mr Matt added, “They give you a product and they say it will work, and ultimately it’s all on them.”
That doesn’t mean Apple and Google are immune. “There would be a real possibility for them to be brought in,” said Benjamin Johns, partner at Pennsylvania firm Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith, which represents Subaru’s owners.
Sofia Abdirizak, a Google spokesperson, said in an email: “Our general practice is to give manufacturers adequate notice before major updates.” He declined to comment further.
Apple, which provides beta versions of iPhone updates to automakers and other software developers ahead of their public release, declined to comment.
These types of lawsuits aren’t just a problem for vintage car manufacturers. Tesla came out of Silicon Valley and its software is considered much more advanced than the Detroit giants. But last year, under pressure from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Tesla recalled More than 100,000 S and X models were produced before 2018 as their touchscreens could malfunction. The defect is also the subject of a class action lawsuit filed by Tesla.
Tesla can send software updates to its cars over cellular connections, regularly adding features even to cars that have been on the road for years. The vast majority of cars made by legacy auto companies cannot be updated remotely in the same way.
As established automakers equip vehicles with more and more technology, it seems likely that defective software will continue to be sued. Mr Johns said the firm Chimicles is working on two possible lawsuits based on complaints from car owners, but the lawsuits are yet to be filed. It declined to name the automakers, but the firm does advertise on its website for owners of Mazda or Volvo cars whose dashboard screens are frozen or have other problems.
Mr Johns said automakers are “getting better at technology”. “But the technology continues to evolve.”
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