A number of posters have indicated their battery went dead after the OTA update or fail process. Has anyone considered having a full battery charger hooked up to the battery before doing the OTA and would that solve the dead battery issues associated therewith?

As an alternative, would just hooking up a Battery tender during the full process (which is much easier than accessing the battery) solve it easier?

 

Duh.

 

The OTA is a complete mess at this time. Many people are successful, some, like me are not. My car was bricked and needed to be towed to the dealer. The risk/reward is not there. No new cool features are added, but obscure bugs are fixed at the risk of bricking your car.

Some lessons learned for me that I posted elsewhere.

1. Never install the OTA update right away. Decline for a good long while and let someone else be the guinea pig since GM does not test these updates correctly.
2. If you can, never install them in your garage. Install them at a trusted dealership driveway so you can push your potential brick into their service department.

 

Also bricked. Also towed to the dealer. :-(

Remember that once bricked, you can't even put the car in neutral to push it. Not pretty.

 

Sorry to hear this. You are now the third person I know that has had their car bricked by the June 10 update.

 

Yep.

My situation identical to both of yours. Car was built 4/15, so less than two months old. Radio stayed on after shutoff for a few days, until I finally agreed to the 60-minute update in my driveway. Returned an hour later to limp-mode car with message that installation failed. Red X on screen, some power (dome lights, horn; screen, radio, OnStar, frunk and trunk) but not others (no startup animation behind steering wheel). Couldn’t put into service mode following manual instructions for putting car into neutral. Window went down an inch or two every time I tried to start, but couldn’t put back up. Battery charger no help. Disconnected negative and reconnected, which removed X but prompted endless loop of searching for new update. Now at dealer after tow that was not kind to front splitter. Ugh.

 

installed, it said complete, any idea what the actual updates are?

 

I performed the latest update yesterday and feel lucky it was successful, especially after reading the failures. I watched the process from outside of the car. It downloaded, installed, verified and completed successful in about 10 minutes. I checked again for updates and non available. I believe the update was a bug fix with the airbag sensor. My car was built on 05/06/21. Update was performed in my garage using home wi-fi and Ctek charger. My wi-fi is in the room above my garage so the single strength is at full.

I wonder if OTA update was corrupted and later GM repaired it? It would be helpful to know the dates of failures and successes.

06/12/21 Successful updated.

 

Mine was bricked. Fortunately, my driver window was open so I could get in the car (whatever that was worth). Disconnected battery from car and charged with a real battery charger. Hooked battery back up and was good to go. Didn't even lose any settings.

 

So for those who's cars have been bricked.. Does the ONSTAR service that includes free towing come into effect? That is has the problem come during the first 6 months (or whatever the initial unpaid ONSTAR service is included, or have you had to
1) Call using your phone or just hit the onstar button .. or was it so dead that you couldn't even do that)
2) Call the tow truck yourself .. or AAA.
3) Get a reimbursement from Chevrolet for the tow?

If ONSTAR arranged and paid, did you get to select the dealer or was it their choice?.. i.e. the closest. . a)authorized or b) signature.. dealer.

 

I haven't had to use the service, but GM's roadside assistance is included with your purchase of the car for 5 years or 100,000 miles and can be used by pressing the Onstar button (if you have an active plan) or calling 1-800-243-8872. It looks like they tow to the nearest dealer.

The info can also be found here Roadside Assistance Link

 

I called the dealer I bought the car from. They were helpful and tried to fix the car in the garage to avoid a tow. They are about 10 miles further away, but actually sell and service new Corvettes, unlike the closest dealer which does sell any due to a lack of allocations. Consider these factors when you decide what to do.

As I understand it, OnStar and roadside assistance are separate. I could avoid OnStar and get roadside assistance under warranty.

 

Stupid question of the day - why can't the update check the battery level before starting, then monitor it during, and abort if it goes down below a certain limit?

 

Good question

 

I called OnStar from inside the car and they transferred me to roadside assistance. I chose a dealer 12 miles away that was open on Saturdays, bypassing two dealers that are closer but closed on Saturdays, without any questions. There was no charge.

 

Not a stupid question at all, but the stupid programmers and management at GM (or whoever they contacted out for doing this OTA update SW)! Reminds me the SW that Boeing contracted out to some idiot company programming the plane leveling sensor that didn't have a sense to double check sensor data and ultimately caused 3 crashes and grounded their entire 737 Max fleet.

First, their programmers should have gotten the program logic right to start with, which they failed to do, such as check the battery level, check the network connectivity (if it downloads anything in the middle of the update) before starting the update, and abort the process if necessary in order to avoid draining the battery dead.

Second, they should have done a better design to find a way to do system restore if update fails, so that the car can at least get to the previous state before the update taking place if the update fails, instead of leaving the car in a unknow or bricked stated. This is a common practices among any morden operating system design, and even mobile phones, modems, routers, and set top boxes nowadays all have this factory reset feature.

Third, the GM OTA Update program apparently have bugs that when it checks for certain flags or status bit in the program for conditions to perform installation, the program is looking at wrong data, such as incorrectly looking at the Apple Play connection as reported by others here, which is a totally bogus logic as the condition for update to run. Such bugs only pointed out that either their programmer is totally incompetent, or their team didn't even follow the proper software engineering practices such as team code review, which would have discovered such mistakes before the program is finalized for release.

Lastly, their SW QA process for the OTA Update software pre-release check is either totally incompetent or nonexistent, which should have caught these type of bugs during QA testing, where they should have put the update SW running against different cars under various conditions, including bad network connectivity and low battery level to test out all edge cases to ensure the update SW can respond properly to these extreme conditions. And we all know they didn't do this job at all, given all the failures we have seen here.

Been in the SW industry for the past few decades and knowing these are the common practices that any responsible company and SW team would do with their SW release, it's very shocking to see GM totally failed in properly managing this process. It's truly pathetic for a multi-billion dollar company doing this in 2021!

 

Now for something positive about the C8........ My car notified me that an update was available while I was driving on 10 June. Deferred upload until I was home and updated mine in my garage - no problems. I did hook up the battery charger and lowered the windows just in case, but I always have the battery charger plugged in when the car is in the garage. First OTA update since I took delivery. From reading the posts on the forum, I was expecting to have problems. Pleasantly surprised to be an uneventful update. Hope the ones in the future are the same. Your mileage may vary. Now back to the regularly scheduled programming...........

 

Anyone have any comments on my original suggestions in post #1? 15 posts and none are responsive to my inquiry.

 

That's not a bad idea. I don't know which battery tender would be best to use with the C8. I want one that can charge it and then maintain it.

But as for updates, I'd probably just go to the dealer and sit in their parking lot. Do the update there and if it bricks my car, I'll just hand over the keys and ask for a loaner.

 

and leave the door, front hood, rear hatch open and the d.s window down a crack, all your bases should be covered.