I'm confused. I've activated the "Software Updates" service, and whenever I check "Over-the-Air Vehicle Updates" (using the "Mercedes Me Connect" app), I see that I'm up-to-date. But on this forum, I keep seeing posts from people who say that they got a software update only when they took their vehicle in for service.

So, what's the deal? Can all software updates happen over-the-air (automatically), or do some software updates require taking your car in for service? If the latter, then how can I figure out if I have the latest software?

 

It's currently unknown if electric vehicles and MBUX v2 will support the full MBUX updates you can get installed at service. Up to now, over the air updates have only been used for recalls and map updates.

 

The large updates would take up too much bandwidth and time to perform over the air so they are directly downloaded at the dealerships.

 

Do we know this for sure, though? (This forum tends to be driven primarily by 'folklore', rather than by definitive facts from Mercedes-Benz.) If this is true, then there should ideally be a way to figure out - either via "Mercedes Me Connect" or from inside the vehicle - whether or not there's a software update available that could only be installed at a dealer.

 

What kind of updates have people gotten? We just took delivery last night and wonder if it’s worth it to take it to the service center to get updates

 

It is amusing that folks who don’t even own a MB are questioning the answers of others who have cumulatively owned dozens of MB’s over the last 25 years. Once you get the “correct” answer please enlighten the rest of us.

 

Of course I own a Mercedes-Benz - an EQS 580 SUV. That's why I posted in this forum. My point stands true, however: "This forum tends to be driven primarily by 'folklore', rather than by definitive facts from Mercedes-Benz."

 

Software updates are targeted toward specific vehicles by options.and production dates. One can see many variations by looking at the 8 NHTSA recalls for the 2022 EQS. The number of units affected varies from less than 10 to less than 10,000. There is a mixture of hardware and software fixes. IMO OTA software updates can't be done for some very basic low level parts of the vehicle's operating system. You wouldn't want to brick your car because of an OTA interruption or failure. Updates are simillar to Windows or Linux where some updates require a reboot while others do not.

In the case of NHTSA recalls, an owner is notified by USPS mail. Similarly Mercedes-Benz USA notifies owners of service concerns via USPS. Not every owner has a Mercedes Me Connect subscription or uses it. I don't have one. Subscriptions expire as do some in vehicle services.

 

You probably have the latest updates already. My 580 SUV was updated between build and shipping and also by the dealership when it arrived locally. Tesla has one of the smartest systems where rather than having cars sitting at the factory taking up time and space they push a lot of their updates while the cars are on the carrier trucks being delivered across the U.S.

 

Thanks 🙏🏼 I wish there’d be a place to look up version numbers and know if it’s up to date. Agree that Tesla’s system is more mature. But shipping updates to a car seems non-trivial — it needs to be robust and can rollback if things go wrong; it needs to be resilient to interruptions; it needs to be able to perform part of it in background and gets user consent when it can’t so it doesn’t strand the user. I don’t blame a dinosaur automotive company who’s still learning how to build software for cutting this corner at this time.

 

I assume you are referring to Mercedes. If so, that "dinosaur automotive company" built an impressive EV (our EQS 580 SUV is the best car we've owned to date) with an impressive MBUX Hyperscreen, which BTW, is better than anything else I've personally seen, including Tesla's tablet displays (we test drove a Model Y which lacks a lot of tech we expect to have in our cars, Instrument display, HUD, wiper control on the stock, etc.). As for software development and deployment, that is admittedly a new venture for the MB software engineers and they will be careful and cautious with OTA updates, because that's how a "dinosaur" rolls.

I think your comment may have been influenced by your experience with your Tesla Model S. Tesla software engineers are aggressive and willing to take risks that frankly, MB will be reluctant or never take. Take Level 3 Autonomous driving for example. MB is the only company in the US to have approval for L3 vehicles in two states so far. They have been developing that tech for many years but are slow to offer L3 because they likely don't want headlines about their vehicles running into trucks while the driver was sleeping. Tesla on the other hand, has been using owners to "beta test" their FSD software on the road for several years. Tesla is only L2 approved but that hasn't stopped them from using their customers to work out the kinks in real-world situations. MB would never do that, EVER! And there is the difference between a "dinosaur automotive company" and Tesla and other companies. One has over a hundred years of experience building, selling, and maintaining their cars while Tesla and some other start ups are relative babies in comparison. Sorry for harping on Tesla. I know they offer some very good EV choices for a lot of customers, just not for me.

Just my two cents.

 

All good points. I’m no Tesla fan boy and am actually selling it pretty soon. I agree with your point that Mercedes’ approach to autonomous driving is safer and more sustainable, and by all means the EQS SUV is an excellent car and in many areas Tesla is years behind. But I think it’s fair to admit that Mercedes’ software practices are stuck in 15 years ago and could use a lot of improvements in their process that many modern software companies have learnt through trial and error. I think it’s impressive that a traditional automotive manufacture who doesn’t have much software expertise managed to build something like this, which is why I used the term “dinosaur company”.

 

I'm a retired networking and softwae consulting engineer intimately familiar with networking issues with OTA updates. Personally, I would never trust an OTA update to core operating software. Evidently Mercedes-Benz doesn't either. Instead MB updates core operating software under controled conditions in their maintnenace shops.

When thinking about OTA transmission quality, compare it to the quality of a cell phone conversation. Some are OK and some are of the "I'll call back for a better connection" kind. Not a day goes by that I don't have several dropped calls. I'm in a metro area with cell towers in sight of each other. My E300 always drops calls when I drive under a canopy of trees near my house that is less than a mile from a tower. To see what is happening enable engineering mode on your cell phone where you can see signal strenth by tower and select which tower to use. The results will be quite informative.

 

There are ways to install OTA updates to core operating software very reliably; for example, Apple does this with iPhones, every time it releases a new version of iOS. It requires very careful software engineering, however. Probably the most significant factor, though, is the time that it might take to download very large updates over the cellular network.

 

Yeah there are definitely safe ways to perform updates. This is a solved software engineering problem.

Chrome OS has an interesting solution where they keep two partitions for the kernel. The actively running one is in one partition, and updates are installed to the other one. Once the updates are done, the system switches the active partition. This way the installation can fail at any time without affecting the active one. The advantage of this is that it moves the entire installation process to the background and once it’s done only a reboot is needed which is usually very fast. Other methods include having various mechanisms in place (abundant battery, disable car functionalities, etc) to ensure things don’t get interrupted during the update.

Either way, like I said it’s non-trivial and takes a lot of engineering effort, and priorities wise there are tons of other features that bring bigger benefits to the customers. So I don’t blame Mercedes if they decide to skip it initially.

 

Transmission quality shouldn’t increase the risk of having corrupted updates. Aside from data integrity mechanisms provided by TCP and TLS, there’s usually a cryptographic hash based checksum for update packages like this that the car can check before installing them. If the download is corrupted it’s easily detected and the car would just download again.

 

What seems to be overlooked is the risk factor. A software glitch in a moving vehicle is far worse than a handheld device crashing and needing a reboot. I have endured software failure in my E300. Fortunately the failure only killed the instruments due to a bad firmware update performed by the MB dealer.

In my career I've seen several corrupted updates that seemingly got past data integrity mechanisms. One I'll always remember was when a realtime ATM OS software update that was later determined to have double parity errors corrupted the OS. The results was cash continuously dispenced until the ATM was empty. Fortunately the ATM was in the bank's lobby so there only a loss of face.

As far as I know TCP/IP is not used for cellular transmission. UDP/IP is used.

 

Cellular transmission is only link layer and physical layer and TCP is above that. Then TLS is on top of TCP. This definitely happens on cellular network otherwise your smart phone won’t work. Then the hash is in addition to that. Anyway, not gonna argue any further on this but it really is a solved problem in software engineering.

 

In my 5.5 years of Tesla ownership, my Model S received approximately 80 OTA updates. Most were bug fixes, but many included new features and even complete UI version revisions (it has gone from version 8 to 9 to 10 to the current 11). I never experienced a single hiccup with any OTA update from Tesla. And I never had to visit a service center for an update.

That being said, I am still looking forward, with great excitement, to the day in February when I trade my Tesla in for my EQS SUV 580

 

Maybe the MB software is more complete than some realize and there is no need for constant updates. I’ve had my 580 SUV for close to two months and 2500 miles and haven’t experienced any major problems. My central screen did go black one time but restarting the SUV solved the problem. Exactly what updates do folks perceive need to be installed?

 

There is also another side to this. The bigger auto manufacturers operate with the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy. So for all those drivers who are not having any issues, they don't want to risk sending an OTA update which may change some screen or introduce a new issue thus frustrating a customer that was already happy. If you bring your ICE car to the dealership to replace tires or an oil change they don't use the opportunity to connect the scanner and update software.

 

My dealership checks for updates and applies them whenever I take my SL550 in for service and has done so with my other two SL’s. Sewell West Houston Mercedes Benz.

 

For updates that fix a specific issue my dealer only updates cars where that issue is perceived by the owner to be present. This is especially relevant to several obscure MBUX issues that were limited to Apple Car Play or Android Auto anomalies.

 

@Utopia Texas - My own EQS SUV 580 and no updates since Sept 2022. I recently found the map version is 2021(V8.1) N.AMERICA and Software Version is RL_NTG7_E316.505. Could you please let me know what is the Software Version you have on your EQS SUV 580? Appreciate your response.

 

Updated by dealer in December


I think this is latest unless someone has something newer.