dmstl

About 3 months into ownership and has now happened twice, anyone experience an instrument panel “blackout and reboot” while driving? Unnerving to say the least but is there a fix? TSB or other update needed?

c4004matic

Map updates happen all the time. This can lead to a quick reboot while driving. When I did my 4000 mile trip it updated every time I passed a time zone. Very rarely you will get a black screen (mbux system) that does not reboot by itself. (everything will keep working but you can't control the system). Park the car, lock it, and wait 15 min or so. Return to the vehicle and it should reboot. The car works fine even if MBUX is having a "moment" The drivers display and controls are a separate system.

MBNUT1

Are you saying that you can no longer read you speed or range?

dmstl

Yes. Driving at speed and suddenly driver screen completely blacked out then slowly comes back to life like a computer rebooting. Car drove fine but seriously unnerving at speed.

grandcurmudgeon

If you actually lost your speedometer or other vitals while driving, you need to file a report with NHTSA, that's very serious.

I had a Volvo EV a couple years ago and both screens rebooted CONSTANTLY -- like 2x per hour, but because that was using Android Automotive OS, the important indicators on the driver display stayed alive even when the rest blanked out. It was maddening enough to make me get rid of it, even though I enjoyed the driving. I would have lemoned it, but those were the days where people were paying more than purchase price, so I unloaded it to a dealer.

But file a report so it gets the attention it deserves. These car companies can't keep shipping crap software just because they're not good at it yet.

MBNUT1

No car should lose it's instrumentation while driving.

dmstl

Update: taking it into dealership and will report back. Can’t get me in with a loaner until 8/1.

c4004matic

The drivers screen has never failed for me, only the MBUX middle one.

capt_slow

This happened to me. It was random, but after I got the car back from one of the software recalls it started doing it once per minute. The entire gauge cluster went dark, rebooted, and came back up about 5 seconds later. Here is a video of it.
Took it back to the dealer the next day and it was ultimately fixed with yet another software update, this time to the gauge cluster. The order reinforced my opinion that Mercedes' software architecture just sucks. Yes, bugs occur, but why wasn't this fixed on my first visit for the recalls? Reason is the architecture is fragmented and doesn't use a complete vehicle integration. The 40+ ECUs on the car are not matched with each other and are only updated individually. By comparison, BMW releases their software as one single whole-vehicle build and tested as such. Individual ECUs on a BMW may stay the same across releases, but at least you know it's been integrated with whatever else was actually updated.

stealth.pilot

I can't comment on BMW but it wouldn't surprise me if the latest generation of BMWs has the same issue.

What I can tell you is that I have had Tesla, Porsche, and Rivian and it happens to all of them, and the Mercedes one is one of the more reliable along with Porsche. The Tesla one had this sort of issue almost every month. In my Mercedes I have experienced a screen glitch twice in 2 years and neither required a trip to dealer.

Crito

Ditto for me, just the infotainment screen, never the gauge cluster.

As a side note, I also haven't allowed the dealer to install any updates. I got a little one over-the-air as I recall but that's it.

capt_slow

My point was less on the quality of the software, the lack of which leads to the issue in the OP, but more on how its packaged and distributed. Why didn't my instrument cluster catch the software update the day before when it was in the shop? Because each ECU on a EQS has a separate release channel and must be updated separately and usually resulting from a service request/action.

By comparison, BMW issues a whole-car integration release called an "I-Level". There are three I-Level releases each year, for each platform: March, July, and November. Dealers get the latest, while OTAs lag one cycle behind. Any time a car is reprogrammed as part of a repair, the car will automatically receive the I-Level that is on the dealer's ISTA (BMW's equivalent of Xentry) instance, usually the latest. When my other car got a new steering rack, the entire car from the steering rack ECU down to the headunit was reflashed from Nov 2020 to Nov 2021 release. Bear in mind that the car initially left the factory with November 2016 software.

If what happened on my EQS occurred on a whole-car integration architecture, the cluster would have automatically received the updated software at the same time it received the recall. You can argue that such a model would prevent updates from rolling out faster, but typically in an integrated release you do the software scoping, planning, development, integration, testing, and regression in context of the whole car, rather than just the ECU.

dmstl

Update and Direct quote: “I’ve never seen so many module updates needed on one car”. True to other info shared here, updates are individually downloaded vs BMW’s singular download strategy. Takes hours apparently. Clearly sitting on the showroom floor for over a year put this car into a virtual black hole for any software updates. What makes me more cranky is that the dealer sold it to me without checking that things were up to date. #Lazy. I’ll report back once I get it back. Hopefully this week.

LastOne

The strategy that MB takes is to only do "optional" update at the dealer IF in response to a reported problem. So a car sitting on the showroom then being prepared for delivery to a customer would only get the updates pushed out via OTA, none of the other updates. The dealer has to put a case to HO to authorize these updates.

capt_slow

I'm also told Xentry only downloads the firmware from MB on demand, and as @LastOne said it's only when authorized as part of a service action. Software updates require labor and someone needs to pay the dealer tech for it, whether it be MBUSA or the customer. So in addition to getting authorization paperwork, the dealer also needs to download the firmware and subject to their internet speed and size of the file. AFAIK, the BMW firmware is stored locally on the tech's workstation, but updated regularly from BMWNA.

MB37

I think MB goes along the line of don't touch if it ain't broken. However, this philosophy typically follows a fragmented software update implementation.

dmstl

You are 100% correct. If a dealer doesn’t have an error code to bill against, Mercedes won’t do anything about it. You have to demand they do the research to find the root cause of your complaint, regardless of error coding. The Best or Nothing slogan leaves something to be desired as relates to class-best customer service. I’ve owned 12 since 1999, and nowadays I feel like I’m at a Chevy dealer by the way I’m treated. BTW, car is back, fresh from 3 pages of system updates, and appears to be ready to roll. All good so far after two days in the shop.

capt_slow

The more I think about it, the more I think MB is just behind the game on OTAs. In the past, the major roadblocks to OTAs were the delivery pipe (cellular, Wi-Fi, etc.) and power, both of them are not really relevant in context. Today's 4G or 5G is enough to deliver delta updates. And for power, you used to rely on a external 100A+ 12V power supply to power the ECUs during programming, but that isnt relevant anymore with EVs and 48V mild-hybrid systems. Other makes have embraced OTAs much more than MB has and it just screams they are behind, either by their own choice or as a by-product of their vehicle software architecture.