New ask Hacker News story: Tell HN: 3G sunsetting is remotely killing every Subaru Outback battery
Tell HN: 3G sunsetting is remotely killing every Subaru Outback battery
8 by siftrics | 4 comments on Hacker News.
Subaru partnered with a service called STARLINK which shares your location in the event of collisions, among other things. STARLINK intermittently tries to phone home by hitting 3G towers. Now that 3G is shutting down, the digital communications module (DCM) gets stuck in an infinite loop of 1. Phone home, expending battery charge 2. Fail, because 3G doesn't work anymore 3. Go back to step 1 This effectively remotely drains the battery of every Subaru Outback built between 2015 and 2020. Even if you drive your car every day, its battery will die and you won't be able to start it. Other models are probably affected, too. There was a class action lawsuit. But this is a pretty egregious engineering oversight, given they were still producing defective cars in 2020, hardly two years before 3G flipped off. Will a brand ever produce a reliable, mechanical car? Why should 3G towers have anything to do with my car being able to start?
8 by siftrics | 4 comments on Hacker News.
Subaru partnered with a service called STARLINK which shares your location in the event of collisions, among other things. STARLINK intermittently tries to phone home by hitting 3G towers. Now that 3G is shutting down, the digital communications module (DCM) gets stuck in an infinite loop of 1. Phone home, expending battery charge 2. Fail, because 3G doesn't work anymore 3. Go back to step 1 This effectively remotely drains the battery of every Subaru Outback built between 2015 and 2020. Even if you drive your car every day, its battery will die and you won't be able to start it. Other models are probably affected, too. There was a class action lawsuit. But this is a pretty egregious engineering oversight, given they were still producing defective cars in 2020, hardly two years before 3G flipped off. Will a brand ever produce a reliable, mechanical car? Why should 3G towers have anything to do with my car being able to start?
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