Wife's MCS with full NAV had to go to the shop, as the central display computer would drop completely offline for a couple of seconds. It happened about 4 times within the last month (of course I only heard about it at time 4) before we made the appointment.


Mini took in the car and gave the wife another MCS a loaner (kudos to Mini). Funny thing is, they said the computer didn't register any problems so they would have to keep the car and drive it around until they experienced the problem. Looks like we may be driving a loaner for a while, as who knows how often they'll be able to drive it 'til they find it?


Only other issue we have experienced was the LED ring not coming on sometimes. Maybe they are both related? We shall see...

 

I bet you they will both be related. They may try to program the software to the most current version and see if that takes care of it before replacing any parts. Most of the time on these F56's, programing will take care of a lot of odd issues like you are experiencing.

 

I agree, I believe they are both related. The wife got a call from Mini yesterday stating that they could not duplicate the computer dropping offline, but did experience the no LED lighting on the ring. They tried the software push without luck and decided to order a whole new central display computer for the car.

I'm not expecting to get the car back anytime soon, so it looks as though we'll have the loaner a bit longer. I'm pleased with the loaner and their decision to do something as oppossed to nothing.

 

The complexity of the electronic hardware inside all those modules and ecu's and the software running on them and the sheer magnitude of the intellectual property within, will be far far greater then any of the mechanical and physical parts of the car you can see feel and touch. It is little wonder then, that a multitude of problems and their resolution will be from the software. Clever software can even be used to work around real issues with the hardware, avoiding costly re-designs of electronic components.

It costs about $5M just to make the tooling for a silicon chip these days in 28nm technology. Respins are avoided - issues/bugs are worked around if at all possible. Software and integration testing can take years. You have to make a decision as some point when you can reasonably release something into the field, and keep testing it concurrently, otherwise you would never release anything. Engineers are also becoming risk managers.

When you consider just the processor and Nvidia GPU inside the HU_NBT (the central computer/nav unit) will contain around 3-4 billion transistors on a piece of silicon the size of your finger nail, you start to understand that single component alone is more complex to design then the rest of the car put together. When these chips are put into production, we aim for a low as DPM (defects per million) possible, but 100% test coverage is just not possible. You try a way to test 4 billion discrete components on your chip inside a couple of minutes, but you can never get all of them covered. The manufacturing process of making a chip can introduce random and systematic defects into the device. The manufacturing tests aim to screen out all of these. During the design process, you adopt formal, structured techniques to, in theory allow for 100% controllability and observability of every one of those 4 billion transistors. At the end of the day its simple statistics. Once in a while a random defect will show up that your test program with 99.99% coverage fails to find. Transistors on a chip and their connections are subject to aging processes. Again, you try to develop screens for these effects. But, they can never be 100% eliminated. All of these small probabilities will multiply up when they are combined with other components to make complete systems. There will always be a few devices the make it past your testing process that have latent defects. Sometime they can be very subtle, only showing up if a chip reaches a certain temperature, or some other completely unforeseen corner condition.

These are some of the reasons that these days in my view at least, that techs spend as much of their time fiddling with their laptops plugged into the car as they do with a spanner in their hands. Quite honestly, sometimes I wonder how techs are going to fare in the future unless they have two degrees in electronics and software engineering.

 

I was around at Toyota when the second gen Prius came out, I was one of the first ones to see them, get my hands on one and get trained on one, but you are exactly right. They way cars are now, and the way they are going the next few years will draw a very clear line in the sand between technicians and parts changers. My fiance is blown away about how I very rarely get dirty, and that is why. Most of my time spent is with a scan tool, wiring diagrams and a Scope.

 

My wife was amazed that the first thing the tech did was take her fob to the computer to download data. This car is truly a completely integrated platform and I will be watching it closely while it's still under warranty as I imagine the work they are doing right now is not cheap.

 

I'm having this same problem with my 2014 - the nav system will go blank, the LED ring will turn off, then the computer will restart itself. The dealer said they couldn't replicate the issue, but updated the software. Had it happen again yesterday, though. It's happened both while driving and while in park.

Has anyone been able to find a solution via their dealer, or is there anything I can suggest they look at?

 

Our dealer also could not replicate the issue, also tried the software update, but then replaced the entire computer unit (nav/radio/large display unit).


We've only had the car back for about 2 days and have not experienced the problem and are hopeful that it stays that way. I'll keep you posted on whether or not this fixes our problem...