Q: I own a 2021 MG ZS. Great car to drive and it has okay features. Considering cars are now more intelligent than ever, can a simple software update enhance the performance and efficiency of the car and bring new UX features such as enhanced navigation? And the car be retrofitted with additional cameras? – L McDonnell, Co Dublin
A: Let’s deal with the last part first. In theory, you can fit extra cameras to your car, and indeed fit a reversing camera where the car didn’t originally come with one. There are kits which you can buy online to do this, but it kind of helps if you have a degree – preferably a master’s – in automotive electrical engineering, so it’s not something I’d try to do at home.
Much will depend on getting access to the coding within the car’s on-board computer systems, and if it wasn’t specified originally to have optional extra cameras – such as for a 360-degree view system – then it might be hard, maybe impossible, to get that to work with the car’s touchscreen. However, it’s certainly possible to fit extra cameras which transmit images to their own stick-on screen (rather like an old windscreen-mounted sat-nav), so you can go down that simpler route.
As for over-the-air software updates, the MG ZS electric SUV can indeed receive such things, via the built-in mobile internet SIM embedded in the car’s systems, but that was only fitted to post-facelift models, which went on sale in 2020 (it’s the version with the blanked-off radiator grille).
MG said at the time: “The new ZS EV also sees the first over the air (OTA) software updates from MG. Owners will receive any new software updates, including new features and improvements, through iSMART at the touch of a button, rather than visiting their local dealership. In addition, and another first for MG, customers will no longer get a printed owners manual. It will now be accessible through the iSMART system, thus saving paper and printing costs and ensuring that the most up to date information is readily available.”
All well and good, and you’re absolutely right – cars can be given new UX features, including improved navigation, via OTA software updates. And, yes, the performance and efficiency of the car can also potentially be enhanced. Indeed, with many EV models, OTA software updates have even been known to unlock extra range, as real-world experience means that, sometimes, engineers can “unlock” more of the battery’s usable capacity if the data shows that the system is robust enough to allow such a thing.
Thus far, OTA software updates and upgrades have tended to be free, but that won’t last forever. One particular EV maker – let’s not name names, but it’s currently the most controversial car maker in the world, for a number of reasons – charged customers a four-figure fee for one software update which actually allowed the car’s electric motors to produce more power, improving performance.
Meanwhile, BMW came in for sharp criticism when it tried to introduce a system whereby its cars would leave the factory with all of the most popular optional extras fitted, but you’d have to pay for a software update, after you’d bought the car, to unlock those features (heated seats was the most commonly-noted feature).
A public backlash put that on the back burner, but there’s no doubt that car makers are looking to a future where such paid-for OTA updates are the norm; it not only allows them to sell you the options when you buy the car, but because the car can be “bricked” when it’s traded-in, it means that, in theory, the next buyer will have to pay again to get the same options. We doubt many second-hand buyers will be too happy about that.
Equally, such systems can easily be turned against you – worryingly, if a patent filed by Ford is anything to go by, then the next thing might be cars that repossess themselves.
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No, this doesn’t mean a car that needs to be doused with holy water and reported some secretive agency in the Vatican. It means a car which can simply drive itself back to the dealership if you fall behind in your PCP payments.
This is more of an issue in the US than in Europe, where financial providers are more likely to engage with a customer who’s defaulted on payment to sort things out with a new repayment plan. In the US, things can be more aggressive when it comes to falling behind on your loans, and the Ford tech is the autonomous new tip of that spear.
The patent – titled pretty plainly “Systems and Methods to Repossess a Vehicle” – includes a few interventions before the final act. First, the on-board screens will start reminding you that you’ve missed a loan payment (we don’t think that a buzzer which makes a “deadbeat” sound will kick in but you never know). Then, the vehicle will, petulantly, start disabling major features such as your phone connection, or maybe the air conditioning, or the heated seats.
The systems can even kill the engine to prevent you driving the car at all (with a fail-safe in an emergency, although how long you’ll have to be on hold on a hotline to get the car unlocked at that point is unclear).
Finally, there is a line in the patent suggesting an eventual fully-autonomous ability for the car to drive itself back to the dealership, or even to the nearest scrap yard if it’s decided that the value has fallen far enough to not make it worth reselling. The system can scan its surroundings to check that it’s not been parked in a closed garage to prevent itself driving away, but there’s no word on what happens in that case – is there a chainsaw hidden in the front bumper, allowing the car to cut itself free?
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But there are some upsides to the whole paying-for-updates thing – the primary one being that our cars might last much longer. We’re now in the era of the “softwarexdefined car” in which electric motors and batteries are, broadly, the same and so the defining characteristics of cars will come from the software that controls the batteries and motors (and everything else).
BMW has an idea that in the future you’ll buy a car, and instead of trading it in after three years, you’ll bring it back to the dealership where the interior can be removed and replaced with fresh parts, batteries can be replaced or refreshed, and the software can be updated to a “new and improved” set-up, thereby giving you effectively a new car, but without the carbon-intensive need to actually make a completely new car.
