Coding Error Sends 2019 Subaru Ascents To the Car Crusher (ieee.org) 183
An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: [A] software remedy can't solve Subaru's issue with 293 of its 2019 Ascent SUVs. All 293 of the SUVs that were built in July will be scrapped because they are missing critical spot welds. According to Subaru's recall notice [PDF] filed with the U.S. National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, the welding robots at the Subaru Indiana Automotive plant in Lafayette, Ind., were improperly coded, which meant the robots omitted the spot welds required on the Ascents' B-pillar. Consumer Reports states that the B-pillar holds the second-row door hinges. As a result, the strength of the affected Ascents' bodies may be reduced, increasing the possibility of passenger injuries in a crash. Subaru indicated in the recall that "there is no physical remedy available; therefore, any vehicles found with missing welds will be destroyed." Luckily, only nine Ascents had been sold, and those customers are going to receive new vehicles. The rest were on dealer lots or in transit.
I guess that's the downside of a robot workforce (Score:3, Insightful)
Human workforce: One welder misses a spot weld on one car, car has to be scrapped.
Robot workforce: Every robot purposefully ignores spot welds, hundreds of cars destroyed.
Extrapolating to Future:
Human burger flipper: Messes up cooking a burger or two, some people get sick.
Robot burger flipper: Every robot across the country cooks meat at too low a temp, hundreds die.
I guess the bright side of the robot firmware-update disaster prone future is that mistakes are more noticeable (would one or two cars missing this spot weld have ever been noticed?), and can be fixed in bulk - until the next flaw...
Re:I guess that's the downside of a robot workforc (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that affects everything everywhere (Score:2, Interesting)
Right, because humans never make a process mistake that applies to more than one unit on the production line?
Yep, it's Slashdot, there's always gotta be that one guy that makes you explain a joke in GREAT DETAIL. Ok then.
Humans making a process mistake do not generally do so in a way that instantly applies to EVERY production line across multiple facilities, in places where the process was working just fine previously. Also P.S. the joke was about workers, not people defining the process. A process mista
Re:Not that affects everything everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Not that affects everything everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not that affects everything everywhere (Score:4, Insightful)
You claim it was a joke, then go on to explain in detail why the claim in your purported joke has merit. I'm confused.
The best jokes have some degree of truth to them.
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Twain discovered that the truth is the best joke.
Re:Not that affects everything everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not that affects everything everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
Are not all mistakes "made" by robots actually human mistakes? Any sense of agency placed onto robots as entities is misplaced. Robots are tools, and they can fail to be instructed properly, or they can be used in circumstances where their efficacy is questionable, but they cannot "make mistakes."
Any automated process, if automated incorrectly, will multiple the defective results the same as automated processes multiple effective results. Production line processes must have some form of quality control that checks to make sure that production is proceeded as expected. When a line is being started up, or changes have been made to the processes used on the line, the quality control checks should be frequent until the line is seen to be in control. Once the initial period has passed, statistical techniques to ensure that the line stays in control should be used. Without any more specific information about what went wrong in this case, it seems like either a new line went into production, or changes were made to an existing line, but the quality control checks on the output were not made soon enough to catch the production process mistake.
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Are not all mistakes "made" by robots actually human mistakes?
Robots can make mistakes due to bad sensors or other faults. The robots used on car production lines tend to follow set movements and actions once the car chassis is known to be in the correct position, but some are able to make adaptations to things like position and orientation of objects, even things like sorting colours.
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I'm pretty sure, that this is not a coding error.
Neither the summary nor the article goes into details, both speak about code.
However robots like that are usually "universal robots", they can do/weld everything that they can reach with their welding point.
That means, an engineer/robot trainer, is training the robot by manually moving the welding tip to the
spots where the robot has to weld.
That is basically only a set of commands like: "move to there", "drop down welding tip", "weld now x seconds", "release
Re: Not that affects everything everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
Joke aside the impact of the robot mistake is much greater but it is worth it for several reasons.
First the probability of mistakes is much lower with the robots than with humans, so for a million cars manufactured, the total number of mistakes by human vs robots will be higher for humans. So thatâ(TM)s the first win.
Second if humans make mistakes this will be much more random and less likely to be detected, even with quality check sampling. Which mean that more end users will receive the faulty product.
On the other hand, with robots since the mistake is consistent it is very likely that it will be noticed on one of the end products so it will be easier correct the issue and to track all of the defective units. Which is what happened here.
Cars manufactured before the advent of robots were much more temperamental and failing in various inconsistent ways from one car to the other even when coming from the same factory, the same week.
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I basically agree, that's why I mentioned the mistakes being more able to be detected because they are in every unit...
I totally agree with your point about consistency. Even if the consistency a flaw.
The robot didn't make the mistake. (Score:2)
The programmer did.
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A process mistake would affect workers and robots the same way so is irrelevant to the joke.
Maybe not... an experienced human line worker might actually notice and flag a bad process. An industrial robot, not so much.
Re:I guess that's the downside of a robot workforc (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, because humans never make a process mistake that applies to more than one unit on the production line?
Yeah... right. Garbage In = Garbage Out, whether your employees are humans or machines.
Every employee, human or machine, only works on the best available data. Missing spot welds = missing data.
If you have one of these cars, hold onto it. Verify that it is one of these cars, then save it someplace warm and dry. Automotive oddities, especially manufacturer recalls, are always important to collectors.
If you have to drive it, remember that it's a modern car with modern safety systems. In the rare case of one specific kind of accident, it will be weaker than it should be.
Thirty years ago, you could have had an open beer while you were waiting in line at the DMV. ("I spilled beer all over me, I could have been killed! / A car crashed into me and all you've got is light beer?" - Biff Tannen, Back To The Future, 1985). There were ashtrays in the lineup when I got my driver's license.
Your Subaru is safe. They made a mistake. 10,000 moving parts, and if it's only 99.99% right, there are how many things still wrong with it?
Save it, understand the fault, and don't make thousands of tons more greenhouse gas to scrap it.
Don't drink and drive. Don't text and drive. Your Subaru is safe.
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yeah.. I'm gonna have to nope right the fuck out on this. I can control how I drive, but I cannot control everyone else on the road - hence, the chances of that accident happening are way too high for my liking.
Re:I guess that's the downside of a robot workforc (Score:5, Interesting)
I kind of doubt this car with its manufacturing defect will ever hold any significant value. It's quite likely that even if you decide you're going to keep it, the VIN will be invalidated in the system meaning that you will not be able to license and insure it, so forget about driving it on public roads.
As recalled vehicles go, a more interesting example would be the late 80's Nissan Van. After Nissan recalled the van several times and failed to correct the tendency of the vans to overheat and self-immolate, Nissan gave up trying to fix them and attempted to buy back every single example at above market value and sent them all to the crusher. However, Nissan couldn't actually force anyone to sell their van. So despite all of this, a handful of owners decided to keep their vans anyway, making surviving examples extremely rare today. However, rare doesn't mean valuable, and it seems that the van is considered more of an oddity or a curiosity rather than something collectable.
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Your Subaru is safe. They made a mistake. 10,000 moving parts, and if it's only 99.99% right, there are how many things still wrong with it? ...
I you had read the linked article
Power steering can fail any moment, and comes back a second or so later. (No idea what that has to do with a missing weld point, though)
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Or, you know, get a mechanic to weld the required places and it will be good. Probably no different than patching a rust hole.
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I guess that's profit protection. I mean if I repair my iPhone, Apple doesn't get money from me. The company that makes the replacement parts gets some money, the person who repairs the phone (if I don't do it myself) gets some money, but not Apple.
And when I get a welder to patch a rust hole in my car, the welder gets some money, the companies that make the welding materials, paint etc gets some money, but the car manufacturer doesn't. Since the welder lives locally and probably spends the money on food et
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Really, you can't understand that "one", and "a few, but nothing close to all" are not the same?
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How is this not a human error?
It says it was coded improperly. I wonder who writes the code? A human did, so the human made the mistake of improper coding.
Re:I guess that's the downside of a robot workforc (Score:5, Insightful)
However in this case they knew that exactly 293 cars were affected and which ones they were. This made it easy to track down and remove the unsafe cars from the roads and the supply chain.
If it was humans who occasionally missed welds because they were hung over or were distracted because they had just been dumped by their husband, many would probably make it through inspection and end up on the road never to be noticed until an accident years later causes serious injury or death to the passenger and, for some reason, investigators actually dig into it and discover missing welds. Then, every car of the model/vintage remaining on the roads needs to be inspected for missing welds - which would probably be more expensive and reputation busting, even if not another single missing weld was found, than junking these 293 cars.
One of the advantages of automation is that it tends to make the same mistake over and over - humans are more random about their mistakes.
(I do wonder if they pull some usable components out of them - drivetrain, wheels, ECUs etc before crushing them. Probably it's not worth it as they would have to pay for removal and storage and introduce them into the supply chain for warranty repairs or similar - the supply chain is probably too inflexible to make that work. although, maybe they could use them in mechanic training...)
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"...remove the unsafe cars..." Maybe we should say remove less safe cars? Somehow I feel like those 293 are still safer than anything made by Fiat Chrysler
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More to the point,
Human workforce: One human screws up writing the procedure, all cars have to be trashed because the human workers followed the procedure.
Human burger flipper: One human screws up writing the procedure, hundreds die because the human fast-food workers followed the procedure.
There's a procedure for everything. Programming human workers is not unlike programming robots. Seriously. An ambiguous assembly procedure leads to inconsistent product because Alice on first shift does it one way an
I always mess up some mundane detail (Score:4, Funny)
Good. (Score:2, Interesting)
The world doesn't need another lumbering bovine of a full-sized SUV anyway. And Subarus have, in general been porking up over the years such that even the Outback and Forester are too damn big now as well. WRX or BRZ, or GTFO.
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Was very surprised and annoyed by the size of the car. How did this grow this big?
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People want bigass SUVs because they're more macho than minivans. So all the SUV makers have to pork up[*] to avoid losing sales. The majority of SUVs are not bought for either the S or the U part. They're bought becase of how they look.
What always gets me is how little space many of them have inside compared to a minivan. I'd pick the latter any day. With the good ones, the seats either come out completely or fold neatly out of the way, giving pretty decent cargo space.
[*]I love that! Thanks GP!
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Not only that. There's...
(1) The obesity crisis in the US.
(2) The fact that Americans are generally 'fraidycats who feel "safe" in a big landbarge
(3) Cheap gas
Hope gas shoots up to $5 per gallon to get some of the mastodons off the roads and restore some rationality to the US auto market.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
Hope gas shoots up to $5 per gallon to get some of the mastodons off the roads and restore some rationality to the US auto market.
That's a fucked up thing to say. It's happened in recent years and the people fucked the most by $5 gas are not limp-dicked asshole Hummer drivers. It's the wage earners -- you know, the working class -- who take the hit.
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The reason for the SUV explosion was the CAFE standards on car fleets which effectively outlawed big station wagons. Trucks like SUV's were not subject so everybody got trucks even though they wanted cars really.
Blame the EPA for the direct results of their actions, not average families who just want a car that doesn't make the kids crazy.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
SUVs are bought because people have actual families to fit in their car. An economy sedan won't work. A minivan would probably be better and even safer, but people want a 'car' to drive.
What pisses me off more is the bloat of the 'pickup truck.' They're hardly a pickup anymore, with four doors, two rows of seats and a tiny little symbolic box.
Re: Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
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A minivan would probably be better and even safer, but people want a 'car' to drive.
Quite. People think they look cool and badass in an SUV or want to race off the lights or something. A minivan has as many seate with more space, more luggage and better economy. And can be converted to hold tons of stuff in about 3 minutes.
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As someone who has 2 compact cars and a giant SUV i can tell you why some people buy them.
False sense of safety. the thing weights a ton, almost takes the full lane.. but the significant other things it is "safer" even thought the cars all have 5 star crash ratings.
Re: Good. (Score:1)
The ratings are given in relation to other cars in the class...a five star compact car may be less safe than a four star suv.
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Bring back station wagons if you want to fix it. (Score:2)
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SUVs are minivans for insecure people.
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You raised a moron for a daughter. Good job. You never buy a car sight unseen.
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Re: Good. (Score:2)
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Outback big? Try wedging a rear facing car seat in it.
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Do what I did when I had a small Datsun Kingcab PU, put the baby seat in the front and cram the wife in the back.
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Depending on your state that may be illegal, and if your vehicle is equipped with an airbag, potentially deadly.
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As the AC said, it was a 1983 and that was the only legal way to do it. My current truck has a switch (actually uses the key) to turn off the passenger air-bag for similar situations.
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Blame the way laws on things like fuel economy and emissions (in the US and probably elsewhere) are written to favor big-ass SUVs over more sensible options like station wagons.
The #1 reason the piece of garbage known as the Chrysler PT Cruiser exists is because it takes advantage of loopholes in the law allowing it to be classified as a "light truck".
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too damn big now as well. WRX or BRZ, or GTFO.
Meanwhile I'm still disappointed that the WRX no longer has a wagon form. I was interested in the BRZ years ago, but now a small RWD coupe wouldn't be as useful. Not to mention I like having AWD and a bit more power. (which I recall the rumors originally said the BRZ was going to be AWD and turbo, while the Toyota version was to be the lightweight naturally aspirated one.
I always wondered if they were just rumors, or if Subaru decided that was too much effort.
That's not a coding error. (Score:2)
That's not a coding error.
Coding error? yeah sure blame the programmer. (Score:2, Insightful)
Who approved the spot welding schedule, who verified the robot did what the spec sheet demanded?
It stopped with 293 cars right? So they noticed something was wrong and fixed it in the 294th car right? How many of these were still unsold at that point?
They determined it is a serious flaw, right? How long did it take? How many cars were sold after that determination?
Yeah, sure blame the code monkey.
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I doubt that robots are directly coded anyway. Coders write the underlying control software, and a UI to train the robot.
Re:Coding error? yeah sure blame the programmer. (Score:4, Insightful)
+1 whoever trained the robots made the mistake. It was human error not robotic error, the robot did exactly what it was trained to do. At this stage of the game training a robot is a very exact meticulous process. Something like welding a car involves a process with no variation. The real fun and games will begin when people begin attempting to train artificially intelligent robots to perform tasks which are less exact and more organic in nature.
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Please try reading TFA. Or even just the summary.
Almost all of these cars were in transit. Only 9 were actually sold.
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And that's how automation creates new jobs (Score:1)
Local junkyard had to hire more to help with crushing the cars
Striped for spares (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Striped for spares or for training (Score:2)
Or use as the classroom vehicle at Subaru training. I'm sure high school automotive shop classes would welcome them.
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Or use as the classroom vehicle at Subaru training. I'm sure high school automotive shop classes would welcome them.
Yes, but if some dimwit takes one for a spin and gets in an accident then Subaru is looking at a lawsuit.
Re:Striped for spares (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely they should go to a breakers where the engines should be dropped out of them and the faulty shell crushed. Seems like a massive waste to just crush the whole of a brand new vehicle.
Liability and tax concerns. While the parts are perfectly good, if they sent them elsewhere there's always the concern that a vehicle somehow get sold rather than stripped and leave Subaru liable; or simply a BS lawsuit because the part came from a defective vehicle. In addition, if they scrap the entire vehicle it's a loss write off, if they sell part of it then they have to account for the sale which is more trouble than it is worth.
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They could use an angle grinder to damage/remove the faulty B pillar in a way that could not be covered up. The reason for fully scrapping (if that's really the plan) must be more complicated.
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They could use an angle grinder to damage/remove the faulty B pillar in a way that could not be covered up. The reason for fully scrapping (if that's really the plan) must be more complicated.
The problem is a good body and fender person could easily "fix" it so it would look like new; leaving Subaru with liability for a known defective vehicle. In addition, there is the cost of storing, grinding and then giving away the vehicles to some school for use as a training tool. It's simply simpler to scrap them and take the write-off for the full cost. I think the reason for scraping is really that simple - it's a known cost and leaves no liability for the bad vehicles.
What do you mean, "can't be fixed"? (Score:4, Interesting)
How is it not possible to run a welding torch over the weak seams? Sure, it's a couple hours to remove the seats and some trim, but that's still got to be a lot cheaper than scrapping the whole car.
Re:What do you mean, "can't be fixed"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it was engineered for spot welds, and certified as such. Your type of repair is neither tested nor certified. It would cost more to *certify* the fix for 290 cars than the cars are worth.
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So use a spot welder rather than a torch, and duplicate the intended welding pattern. Still not rocket science.
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Obviously it is or the people who designed the vehicles would have done what you suggested.
There are times it's cheaper to tear an existing building down and build from scratch than it is to update/rehab what is already there. This is one of those cases. The hassle to tear down, spot weld, test, certify then put everything back is more costly than to simply get rid of the vehicles en masse.
Re:What do you mean, "can't be fixed"? (Score:5, Interesting)
So use a spot welder rather than a torch, and duplicate the intended welding pattern. Still not rocket science.
I suspect there are two things at play:
1) It's probably much more difficult to get to the spot than makes sense. Once 2nd and 3rd assemblies are put together it may simple be too complicated to bother with.
2) The liability. If this car is in an accident and that patchwork weld fails it will cost them a lot more than 293 cars cost.
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3) Most likely the entire body was dip primed/sealed after being welded together. Cleaning the primer/sealer off the inside of the seam to get a good spot weld would require breaking or cutting dozens of other spot welds.
The areas could possibly be drilled through and fill welded with an arc welder, but that's not the tested standard. There's also a follow up problem of unpainted/sealed welds in the seams that will cause them to fail prematurely.
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You assume the welds were missing from somewhere that could be access without cutting metal. I suspect this is not true, otherwise the cars would have been re-worked.
You really think that they scrap $10M (guessing, but in the ballpark) worth of cars without considering the possibility of rework?
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And someone with a state Engineering license has to sign off on the design.
Nope. Industrial exemption. [wa.gov]
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ultimately the Engineer needs to sign off
That's not what the industrial exemption means. It means (in states where it is in effect) that no professional engineering signature is needed for manufactured products.
That's mass production for ya (Score:3)
In general, a downside of mass production is that making new items is more efficient per unit than specialized repair jobs even though the wasted material seems sad.
As a currency nerd, I'm reminded of some things about US paper money.
Replacements for damaged bills are 'star notes', a separate serial number range ending in a star - since 1910 it's been easier to make those ahead of time rather than print new ones with the same serial numbers. Not replacing with something would make the print run a nonstanda
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It was possible to get at both sides of the A and B parts at assembly time to spotweld, but
not after you complete the joining to C, which occludes the places that electrodes had to touch.
There's lots of processes (shrink fitting of steel parts, for example) that only operate forward in time, are not reversible.
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You're assuming nothing else has been welded over the affected area. Which may not be true.
The sdtar of the show. (Score:2)
Yes boss (Score:2)
Somewhere out there (Score:2)
Somewhere in an autonomous driving car lab, a tech makes a mental note:
Note to self: add one other possible destination, shopping mall, supermarket, movieplex, car crusher. The competition heats up in the self-driving car race.
Hope they salvage what they can at least (Score:2)
That subject (Score:1)