I would have said the same thing about Apple, then they released an update that make the iPhone 6 unable to make calls. Mistakes happen, and your car could be bricked by one.

I hate the idea that Apple or Google are examples of good embedded coding and their defect ratio is the best humanity can get. I don't understand how people think this way. Embedded development has a very different culture and lower tolerance of faults than general development and ESPECIALLY mobile development which is a nightmarish show of amateur hour.

I have no idea how Tesla does this, but in most cases you're deal with deterministic software or real time OS's, massive testing suites, coding guidelines that guarantee positive outcomes, etc.

JPL published its guidelines. Do you think Google and Apple are this stringent with their mobile toys? Of course not. They have zero economic interest to do so. They just have to make things good enough that kids and housewives won't complain too much.

http://spinroot.com/gerard/pdf/P10.pdf

or more specific to autos

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MISRA_C

Mistakes will always happen, but Apple or Google are not good examples of what well written software is.

Hell, even if you like to believe mistakes only happen to some people- Musk clearly falls in the group of "has made mistakes". SpaceX is proof his ventures are not immune to error.

Which is fine, but I'm unnerved hearing the people who seem to consider Tesla infallible. 'They'll never make a mistake like that, they're Tesla!'

They made fewer mistakes than anyone else ever has when landing a reusable rocket from orbit that way. I'd be OK with driving a car made by someone with that track record.

I'll bite; why do you think SpaceX was a mistake? They've had some pretty impressive achievements, all while actually making profit. Unless you meant individual errors like this month's landing attempt.

> SpaceX is proof his ventures are not immune to error.

Errors probably means errors here. As in yeah, most recently trying to land a booster on a barge and missing.

Mistakes happen. The wrong number in a configuration somewhere and everyone's car suddenly has a vampire that sucks down the battery 50% faster, or causes a misreading of wheel speed for anti-lock braking, or etc.

I really don't think you can consider SpaceX's first actual real-world test of a technology to be an error.

Do you mean "SpaceX was a mistake"? To me it read "SpaceX has made mistakes" (which you'd expect working with nascent technology).

I'm assuming that there's an option to require approval before installing downloaded updates. Yes?

So what if there was ? Everybody including myself (technical) would just install it regardless. We place faith in companies having proper testing procedures.

Yes, but I'd install it in the driveway, and not on the freeway ;)

... and would you then test all critical systems, one by one, when having morning rush to work in example?

Once you trust you trust, and if you don't, you don't update. Not much space between (for me) ...

I'm assuming if you didn't have to accept immediately that you could push it off until you have time to do so. In addition just knowing that there is an update is a boon on it's own. If I know that the code has changed on my car and something starts acting funny, I'm a lot more likely to suspect the software and report issues properly than if it stealth changes it (I would assume mechanical wear and tear at that point).

I don't have an updatable car. But I have used Windows. And it's become my practice to hold off for a few days after updates come out, and check for horror stories. And I typically do a manual backup before updating.

I think they already doing the same: applying the update at the next "reboot" car start, and it's unlikely that the downloaded update is hot-swapping the running code.