[SoCalGuy]

So after leaving the car with my dealer for the last 5 days, I finally got it back today and really all they did was update my software from 6.12 to 6.14.2. They didn't address ANY of the other issues on the list I sent them last week. They didn't fix the heat shield. They didn't fix the trunk. They didn't fix the body panels. They didn't fix the leather on the passenger seat. Or the wind noise/rattle from the rear window or the driver's window. They didn't even give me floormats!!! (I've had my car for 4.5 weeks, so you think they'd set some aside knowing that I'm owed floormats). Needless to say, I was EXTREMELY dissatisfied, especially because I called them twice this week to make sure they were making progress on the car, and I just got "yes yes, the car's software was updated on Monday and they're working on the rest now." I also noticed they didn't do any on road driving with the car to make sure it was working right with the new software - the Speedo was only ~0.5-1 mile more than I when I dropped it off. That kind of 'service' is just unacceptable, especially for a car in this price range. Needless to say, Fisker HQ will be hearing about this!!!

Also, side note, as most of you know, I had no dash problems with 6.12 but did have some issues with the Command Center. Now having 6.14.2, I've had 3 different "check oil" light flashes (that comes on, chimes, then disappears). It first happened when I left the dealer and put it into Sport mode, and its happened two other times today. No other issues with the dash thus far.

On the Command Center, the energy flow screen showed "0 mpg" a few times despite me driving 65mph and having gone 20-30 miles. The Bluetooth phone quality is still terrible - really unchanged from 6.12. The NAV seems more stable than before (but now the volume for NAV is much louder than the radio, so much so that even at setting 7, the radio is very faint when NAV lady is speaking). Oh, and the satellite radio, I no longer have access to those 20 or so channels I had before - now I'm stuck with two preview channels !!!

Not happy.

 

[siliconkiwi]

SoCalGuy - the sirius xm channels just finished a free preview period, not fiskers fault. They tend to have free preview periods about once every two months, for a week or two.

 

[Dutch]

I think this proves they need to build new software from the ground up, thoroughly test it and then install that on all delivered cars, plus maybe some crucial hardware replacements. All the software updates so far have been two steps forward and two steps backward. I think the engineers best put their time and effort into a completely overhauled control system.

 

[ct-fiskerbuzz]

For what it's worth, Bluetooth audio is always going to suck, at least until the Bluetooth audio people come up with a better codec. It should be able to handle phone voice, but not much more. There is nothing Fisker can do here ... even Apple have not yet convinced the standards people to do something, and clearly they have more weight to throw around than Fisker.[hr]

I think the engineers best put their time and effort into a completely overhauled control system.

I've been nibbling around the edges of CAN-as-used-in-cars and it's a big mess. A lot of it seems to boil down to regulations: carmakers are simply not allowed to use a better system.

The most basic problem here is that the underlying protocol is entirely broadcast. Each CAN-ID-item on a CAN bus always broadcasts whatever it is doing to every other device on the bus. This is great for some purposes—for instance, the audio system can "listen" on the bus for reports from the speed sensors about current mph (or km/h in Europe ) and raise and lower the volume automatically. Unfortunately, it's terrible for other purposes. In particular it makes it difficult (though not technically impossible) to implement reliable datagram or byte-stream communications.

Your Internet web browser uses a "reliable byte stream" protocol to get stuff done, and with this system, every chunk of data someone sends—whether it's you asking for a web page, or the server sending you a chunk of web page—is sent with a sort of "return receipt" acknowledge system. If the sender does not get an ACK, he can assume that the receiver did not hear him and re-send the data. Moreover, the whole send/ACK sequence provides a timing loop by which senders and receivers can adapt their data rates for best performance.

With broadcast, you must know who's listening (and get possibly many ACKs), or fake up single sender/receiver protocols (everyone "not interested" just has to ignore all the jabbering), or rely on "repeat as needed" schemes, e.g., the speed sensor is going to send ten updates a second so he'll just keep broadcasting "going that speed" over and over and if you miss one, so what? That last is how the system was originally designed, and it works fine for those kinds of controls. It's not really meant to handle other data, but it's all being shoved over it regardless.

The idea behind the regulations is not bad—you don't want some junior coder's half-baked protocols handling your steering and braking, for instance—but it's been over-extended to other things, like audio and navigation systems.

This does not mean that Fisker won't fix it, just that they (and their vendors) have to do it with both hands tied behind their backs, typing as fast as they can with their toes....

 

[Willie de Wortel]

MR. FISKER. You want to get sales up?

I am realy interested in buying a Karma; tomorrow if possible. Softwarebugs keep me from making that decision reading more-and-more about software issues. With me, I am sure, a lot of others do!

Reading this forum, the car could stall on a local local terrestrial radiation wich your software couldn't handle . Is it Northern Light proof for our scandinavian drivers? Is it McDrive proof? Important for me, is it Woman proof?

Mr. Fisker, how would you or your wife feel, being towed away in your Aston Martin from a roadside just 5 miles from home, due to a software bug? Heads will turn ...
You can only make a first impression once. Because that is one with hurdles by now, you can only stepdown from your cloud with a ladder and inform your (potential) customers on a final plan to fix your issues and not to forget, act to it.
First adaptors on this forum are most tech. graduated people who can understand your language. They are clearly proud die-hards for your new technology platform cars. They are your friends, supporters and first knight in a new era.
Don't they deserve being treated like that? Your silence on this forum is not prooving any of that however you seem to follow it closely on #twitter.

No or minor aftersales service, especially on technical issues, becomes a rotten wound if you don't act on it swiftly with big progressive leaps. I am driving a Carver One in summertime (a tilting car). They went bankrupt by selling cars (with electronic and hydraulic problems) only for the short term moneymaking as you seemingly do at the moment. They went up producing around 250 of them after wich they could not sell anymore due to all negative resounds on the web.
It is not too late but you have to act now; your resounds are growing too each week added to your financial struggles. You can't fight that with silence or dealers messing up due to lack of manufacturer support! Hope in the end that you'll exceed #5000 this year because that will mean that you must have solved your issues in a rigid way and I would be a proud owner too by then.

I'll wrap it :fisker: stealth black!

 

[Michael]

good writing, my order is also waiting for the worst bugs to be solved. Fisker company seems to answer at their facebook wall though.

 

[SoCalGuy]

In part, I can tolerate the software bugs but my dealer's complete disregard for my fix it list or lack of interest in really checking with the tech's progress / testing is really infuriating. REALLY infuriating. They are being MUCH too nonchalant. I'm only here twice a month and I do not want to spend half that time driving 100 miles roundtrip to/fro the dealer only to have no real issues being fixed ESPECIALLY after I've taken time during the week to call in and check up on them. That is the WORST type of customer service.

 

[doug]

I am driving a Carver One in summertime (a tilting car). They went bankrupt by selling cars (with electronic and hydraulic problems) only for the short term moneymaking as you seemingly do at the moment. They went up producing around 250 of them after wich they could not sell anymore due to all negative resounds on the web

I want the hear more about the Carver! Perhaps in a different thread.

 

[ejo3rd]

So after leaving the car with my dealer for the last 5 days, I finally got it back today and really all they did was update my software from 6.12 to 6.14.2. They didn't address ANY of the other issues on the list I sent them last week. They didn't fix the heat shield. They didn't fix the trunk. They didn't fix the body panels. They didn't fix the leather on the passenger seat. Or the wind noise/rattle from the rear window or the driver's window. They didn't even give me floormats!!! (I've had my car for 4.5 weeks, so you think they'd set some aside knowing that I'm owed floormats). Needless to say, I was EXTREMELY dissatisfied, especially because I called them twice this week to make sure they were making progress on the car, and I just got "yes yes, the car's software was updated on Monday and they're working on the rest now." I also noticed they didn't do any on road driving with the car to make sure it was working right with the new software - the Speedo was only ~0.5-1 mile more than I when I dropped it off. That kind of 'service' is just unacceptable, especially for a car in this price range. Needless to say, Fisker HQ will be hearing about this!!!

Also, side note, as most of you know, I had no dash problems with 6.12 but did have some issues with the Command Center. Now having 6.14.2, I've had 3 different "check oil" light flashes (that comes on, chimes, then disappears). It first happened when I left the dealer and put it into Sport mode, and its happened two other times today. No other issues with the dash thus far.

On the Command Center, the energy flow screen showed "0 mpg" a few times despite me driving 65mph and having gone 20-30 miles. The Bluetooth phone quality is still terrible - really unchanged from 6.12. The NAV seems more stable than before (but now the volume for NAV is much louder than the radio, so much so that even at setting 7, the radio is very faint when NAV lady is speaking). Oh, and the satellite radio, I no longer have access to those 20 or so channels I had before - now I'm stuck with two preview channels !!!

Not happy.

Would your dealer happen to be Fisker of Orange County? They picked up mine Thursday to do cosmetic fixes as well as the latest software update. I'll let you know what happens.

 

[SoCalGuy]

Would your dealer happen to be Fisker of Orange County? They picked up mine Thursday to do cosmetic fixes as well as the latest software update. I'll let you know what happens.

Yep.

 

[Willie de Wortel]

I am driving a Carver One in summertime (a tilting car). They went bankrupt by selling cars (with electronic and hydraulic problems) only for the short term moneymaking as you seemingly do at the moment. They went up producing around 250 of them after wich they could not sell anymore due to all negative resounds on the web

I want the hear more about the Carver! Perhaps in a different thread.

- CT-Fiskerbuzz; I'd rather hear them saying they are working on it than believing it. Would be good for thier sales.
- Doug; for Carver One look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb-MIuXTlEs-

 

[ct-fiskerbuzz]

The [CAN] bus is not so bad. The data rate is 1Mbps, assuming the bus length in the Karma is less than 40m (a small chip shot in golf). The bus arbitration is done by assigned seniority. So seems like a pretty robust bus. Up to 8byte of data per packet. Seems adequate. Just a guess, if the speed is encoded to a hundredth of a mph, 200 mph = 20000, which takes 15-bit to represent (non-signed) or round it up to two-byte. So you would need to drive reaaallly fast to run out of byte Of course, CAN_bus would not be good to stream music video from the Internet

The standard takes care of the transfer layer which is responsible for bit timing and synchronization, message framing, arbitration, acknowledgement, error detection and signalling, and fault confinement.
It seems designer has free hands in the Object layer where message and status handling and message filtering are done. So it seems it is 'all typing' (software) in the Object layer, provided of course the 1 Mbps bus bandwidth is sufficient for all the communication.

Thinking out loud, or not thinking deeply, if Karma is a descendent of a battle hardened military design (according to Nimisys), then would there be redundancy in the CAN-bus? Not saying it is necessary but it could be a '007-Bond' car feature...self healing even shot by bullets I digress.

Right: the bus is fine when used as intended, as in, for regularly reading and writing sensors and actuators.

The first set of big problems come in with shut-down / wake-up, and with malfunctioning high-priority devices (which can squeeze everyone else off the bus). The latter is of course hardware failure so there's not that much to do about it anyway. The former, though ... that's where "health" messages would be nice, but they're apparently not in there.

Finally, as I said, apparently it's being used for practically everything, and that's just not in its design. The data-to-overhead ratio is also not very good, as you get a maximum of 8 data bytes with 8 bytes of overhead (for CAN-B), i.e., data payload tops out at 50%. At 1 mega-BIT per second, you're getting 1/8th of that, or 125 kBytes per second, of raw throughput at 100% utilization ... and then you get only half of that as useful data, or 64 kBytes/s.

A 640 x 480 video frame (VGA resolution) is 307200 pixels. If you did it in pure binary for each pixel, that would be 38400 bytes (less than 2 video frames per second). If you want 8-bit color, though, it's just under one megabyte. At 64 kbytes/s it takes 14 seconds to transmit a single video frame! Obviously this can't go over CAN.

There are multiple CAN busses, so not everything has to interfere with everything else; standard chipsets provide 4 these days (and I think Nimisys mentioned that the Fisker has 4). That helps, but it's still pretty bandwidth-constrained for what people are actually doing with it (including, apparently, audio (?!)).

As for the military thing, that's the drive train itself (the "Q-drive"). Still, I did call this "a James Bond car"

 

[Urojet]

I have to say that having been the one to complain about a very poor delivery process I now have to give kudos to both Fisker of Orlando and to Fisker Customer service for post delivery TLC.
I have been getting the kind of service I expected from the get go.
The dealership has been smart in assigning two of their best to be the Fisker specific sales/go to people. I have been working with Matt Yates who had completely dedicated himself to the Brand. He is fully in tune with the car and completely aware of it's every function and malfunction and always in tune with what is going on at Fisker Buzz. He is also very proactive in promoting the Brand.
I'm 150 miles round trip to the dealership and have been flatbedded to the dealership for updates and minor adjustments. He is always in touch with updates any minutiae of interest to me.
Having said that, I have the Karma at the dealership now while on vacation with a laundry list of issues to address besides 6.14.2 and will report on how these have been addressed.
Also, I have gotten good follow up from Natalie Goudarzian at Fisker though still belong to the 10% of owners who have not received the promised call from Henrik Fisker.

I believe that the change I've experienced was at least in part secondary to the posts on the Buzz. I feel this to be a very important mode of communication.

However, I also feel that Willie's post is reflective of what is going on in the minds of hundreds of potential buyers. If Fisker is to be successful long term, as we all hope, they must begin delivering at least 99.8% perfect product whereas now we are dealing with a lower number ( pick your own ) and that number is not quite acceptable in this price segment.

 

[kabalah70]

The more talk I hear about the CAN bus, the more I worry that my earlier statement that they have simply overtasked the system and it will never be right seems to look more and more like a true statement. ARINC 429 buses are much the same, but different in some ways: there is one broadcaster and many listeners with no care for acknowledgement, for each ARINC 429 bus. It is quite fast, which is why it is used to transmit flight data on our Blackhawk helicopters, but not very robust. Our 1553B bus is used for communications which does not need to be as fast but has fault monitoring, sequencing, a bus controller, etc, but it takes about a second or two to see results. For aviation, the ARINC 664/AFDX (Avionics Full-Duplex Switched Ethernet) looks very promising. It would be nice to see it adopted as a replacement for the CAN bus.

Cool article:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...0ZG8BQ&usg=AFQjCNFVeDpAO9IRjog-2DtAH3f6Zss6eA

Guess the price is the thing that will be keeping AFDX out of cars.

 

[Dutch]

I am driving a Carver One in summertime (a tilting car). They went bankrupt by selling cars (with electronic and hydraulic problems) only for the short term moneymaking as you seemingly do at the moment. They went up producing around 250 of them after wich they could not sell anymore due to all negative resounds on the web

I want the hear more about the Carver! Perhaps in a different thread.

Willie, you asked me a question via PM. But my answer to you came back because your PM-function is disabled. I think you have to activate it in your account settings.

 

[Harleyguy]

Software version 615 is coming out very soon and will address some of these issue's but with all new software it will fix something and then something new may start acting up but with each new software version the car gets a little better .Fisker has a very large team of engineers writing software and the problems that everyone is having is their man job to get sorted out .