September 30, 2019

Update.

I’m big on technology, but you knew that. One of the frustrating things about owning a 2016 model year vehicle is the technology in the touchscreen is trapped at 2016. Vehicles are different than smartphones, you’re not going to upgrade every year, and buying a new vehicle to upgrade the touchscreen seems rather silly.

Vehicle manufacturers need to come up with a better way to address this.

There are some hacks to swap the radio/touchscreen out for a newer model but I don’t believe it is sanctioned by the dealer. Back in the day I didn’t mind pulling out the Delco AM radio from my father’s 1978 Impala and replacing it with an FM radio with digital display, but I could accomplish something like that in less than 30 minutes. Today, it’d be well over a grand and take a considerable amount of effort to swap out the “smart display” in our dash.

I’ve mentioned before the updating the software for our car takes about an hour of running the engine, not touching anything while you sit inside, shutting off the car a couple of times. Waiting 90 seconds. Opening and closing the door and then restarting the car again. We’ve had to do the whole “open and close the door three times” to get the car go back into park when computer decided to spazz out, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it takes nearly three parts of a weird incantation to upgrade the software.

Democratic presidential contender Marianne Williamson would be proud.

All I want is a touchscreen that can be upgraded like moving from Mac OS 10.15 to 10.16 or from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Is that too much to ask for?