A post about the Blue Screen of Death on a Ford car has gone viral on social media, which was found to be due to the failure of the OTA update.
Things remain the same more often than they change. The days of Windows 95 are long gone, and as we approach 2024, there’s a brand-new “blue screen of death” that people should reportedly be on the lookout for: it’s in their cars.
This week, a picture that appeared to show a Ford car with a botched software update displaying the statement “your vehicle cannot be driven” went viral on social media. “Please give customer service a call,” the screen begs.
The legitimacy of the screenshot was questioned in a post on a forum for auto enthusiasts, with the user saying:
“This is going around on Twitter, but I couldn’t find any mentions of it here.
Is this even real? The phone number, when Googled doesn’t turn up anything official.”
In response, someone said, “That’s the message you will see on the rare occasion that an OTA fails. It’s a special customer service phone number for dealing with failed OTAs. It’s from a user on Reddit, his car has since been fixed and is back to normal FYI.”
“If an OTA update fails in such a way that this screen would be necessary, they should automatically revert to the last working state and notify the user,” another user posted in response.
Maksim Oreshkin, the economic advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said that the German car industry could be sold to China and cease to be European cars.
“This is essentially a solved problem in the world of computing. I’m sure there’s some wrinkles that make it difficult, but it’s fundamentally something that they should change their systems to make it impossible,” they said.
Another person responded by expressing their problems with Ford’s OTA updates: “I’m still dealing with a failed OTA update. My 6.2.0 was incomplete. Called Ford Motor Company and they confirmed the failed update and stated the update would try again within 30 days. 60 days later, with no update, they sent me to a dealer for service.”
“Dealer claimed to have updated the software,” the nightmare went on. When my car was delivered to my house, it was unfixed. My software actually went back to 4.2.1. My service manager is at a loss for what to do right now. I can’t access the trunk or rear, change drive modes, and the pre-collision warning always comes on. I can still drive, but not very well. It has a sprained ankle and feels like an automobile.”
A screenshot of the image was shared on a mechanics site by another user, who wrote: “I sort of hope this is a fake, but if it hasn’t happened yet, I presume some day it would. The old joke used to be that if Microsoft made cars, every once in a while they would just quit. Everyone would have to get out, walk 360 degrees around the car and get back in. This would be accepted as normal.”
Here’s a YouTube explanation: