LKA useful or a hindrance

[AdeSc]

I can vouch for that. I managed to get to speak with one of the older mechanics at the dealer I use and he is really good. Problem is, you don’t often get to speak with him as he’s in such high demand. Thanks again.

 

[mrmatt]

I had the LKA try to pull me to the left today because I was over one of those shiny black joins in the asphalt. Utterly atrocious. Safety system? Downright dangerous

 

[AdeSc]

I had the LKA try to pull me to the left today because I was over one of those shiny black blind in the asphalt. Utterly atrocious. Safety system? Downright dangerous

I’m with you. Mine pulled me aggressively into the path of a passing ambulance.

 

[Emgie 4]

Is LKA a safety system? Are you sure it isn’t driver assist? I’m asking because my mate is a cop and he says no. Driver assist, not safety. If it is safety, you should not be able to turn it off.

Perhaps, depends who you ask/talk to, including manufacturers and safety bodies, most references to it seem to infer it's a safety aid of sorts, best description I read said 'LKA straddles the fence between a driver's aid and a safety system'
But your point is valid, it wouldn't seem quite right to allow a 'proper' safety system to be switched off - unless of course it's flaky enough that it may randomly pull you into the ditch OR oncoming traffic!

 

[AdeSc]

Perhaps, depends who you ask/talk to, including manufacturers and safety bodies, most references to it seem to infer it's a safety aid of sorts, best description I read said 'LKA straddles the fence between a driver's aid and a safety system'
But your point is valid, it wouldn't seem quite right to allow a 'proper' safety system to be switched off - unless of course it's flaky enough that it may randomly pull you into the ditch OR oncoming traffic!

And my LKA has tried to ambush an ambulance. I waved him past, moved left into a bus lane, LKA was having none of that and aggressively pulled right into said ambo’s path. They must have thought me a complete tawt.

 

[MAJ]

I collected my MG4 Trophy November 22 and after the short drive home I decided LKA was not for me. I went straight to settings and turned off LKA and it stayed off without issue.
Following a windscreen replacement and issues calibrating the camera ( 5 visits to Dealer ), today
I collected my car after successful camera calibration which involved updating various modules.
Guess what LKA now defaults to 'on' I hope a solution is found soon.

 

[tsedge]

I collected my MG4 Trophy November 22 and after the short drive home I decided LKA was not for me. I went straight to settings and turned off LKA and it stayed off without issue.
Following a windscreen replacement and issues calibrating the camera ( 5 visits to Dealer ), today
I collected my car after successful camera calibration which involved updating various modules.
Guess what LKA now defaults to 'on' I hope a solution is found soon.

It will sadly, it was a bug that it didn't reset to 'on' for each drive as per EuroNCAP requirements.

 

[CharlieT]

NCAP only test ELK & LKA on a straight track with defined lane markings. Those markings being a dashed centre line, and solid centre line, both with and without a solid edge marking.

They do not consider how the systems behave on any other type of road.

Ref: https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/29410/euro-ncap-lss-test-protocol-v20.pdf

If this is true, it’s an astonishing and frankly huge failing from NCAP. As evidenced from this entire thread.

 

[tsedge]

If this is true, it’s an astonishing and frankly huge failing from NCAP. As evidenced from this entire thread.

I believe it is true. However, they have detailed plans to improve their testing methodologies to be able to accurately assess the effectiveness of the systems.

I was reading their plans the other night, sounds like they realise the shortcomings of the current approaches.

 

[Emgie 4]

I believe it is true. However, they have detailed plans to improve their testing methodologies to be able to accurately assess the effectiveness of the systems.

I was reading their plans the other night, sounds like they realise the shortcomings of the current approaches.

That would be a welcome move if they do,
As I've previously stated I don't disagree with the principal of LKA but have major shortcomings with the MG setup, I've driven a few other cars that had it, and none felt as bad to drive.
Kinda reminds me of way back at the intro of airbags, and quite a few reports of deployments for minor collisions where it hampered the drivers reactions, and worse some very serious impacts with none deployments, thankfully I've heard of neither in recent times.

 

[AdeSc]

You are in good company thinking like this. Many have said the same.

OTA updates are not possible with the MG4, in future it may become possible to update the infotainment this way, but not the car modules, they will always require a dealer visit. The system isn't designed to support a Tesla-style update system.

Also, dealer updates are fiddly and error-prone, so if they did enable OTA it might brick your car anyway.

This is where we are with MG and a lot of young Chinese makes, they are learning quickly but not there yet on the software front.

OK, so I just collected my MG4 EV from the dealer having chucked all my toys from my pram earlier today, purposely left LKA and sign recognition on plus all the other carp that the driver takes care of and I have to say, it is much, MUCH better. Nowhere as sensitive, didn’t interfere on narrow roads where I was having to weave through parked cars, didn’t drag me back into my lane when I purposely crossed the white line to see what happened. On the Norwich NDR, a faster two lane carriageway, LKA worked as intended when I let the car drift toward the white line. All of the tests I did were done with safety in mind where I did not interfere with any other Road user. I will now monitor for a few days and come back with an update. Apparently, there were a myriad of updates done to the vehicle and I received many email alerts telling me that certain things had been triggered and reset and tested etc.

 

[tsedge]

OK, so I just collected my MG4 EV from the dealer having chucked all my toys from my pram earlier today, purposely left LKA and sign recognition on plus all the other carp that the driver takes care of and I have to say, it is much, MUCH better. Nowhere as sensitive, didn’t interfere on narrow roads where I was having to weave through parked cars, didn’t drag me back into my lane when I purposely crossed the white line to see what happened. On the Norwich NDR, a faster two lane carriageway, LKA worked as intended when I let the car drift toward the white line. All of the tests I did were done with safety in mind where I did not interfere with any other Road user. I will now monitor for a few days and come back with an update. Apparently, there were a myriad of updates done to the vehicle and I received many email alerts telling me that certain things had been triggered and reset and tested etc.

That's good news, there are definitely updates that can make it behave better - but it seems to be hit and miss whether you can get your dealer to apply them.

 

[AdeSc]

That's good news, there are definitely updates that can make it behave better - but it seems to be hit and miss whether you can get your dealer to apply them.

Well, all my toys went out the pram this morning, maybe that’s what it takes. Squeaky wheel and oil come to mind. Make enough noise, they listen? Shouldn’t be like that and I shouldn’t have to behave like an obnoxious tawt, but sometimes, needs must. I did recover all my toys though ?

 

[crl84]

Also, dealer updates are fiddly and error-prone, so if they did enable OTA it might brick your car anyway.

I've seen this mentioned, but I find it extremely hard to believe for the Infotainment system.
At worst, it could brick it, but even then that's highly unlikely.

Updating firmware on almost all devices is the following process:
Download a file with a specific naming convention/format/numbering.
Place it in a folder which is checked at start-up
If a file exists which meets the criteria, install it/replace the existing one.

That's it. I upgrade firmware for devices costing 5k-100k+ regularly as part of my job. It's not a complicated procedure.

For OTA updates, the car just has to query a server, using the 4G sim in the car, establish that a file needs to be downloaded OTA, get details of the file, download it into the startup folder, and then perform a check that the file is correct.

SAIC has over 200,000 employees and billions in profits. They can figure out simple OTA updates of the Infotainment in a week if they were bothered.

There are plenty of reports of people here/elsewhere online, who have sat with their dealers service team as they update the Infotainment beside them in the car, it involves putting a file* on a USB key, putting it into the car's USB slot, going to the Update Infotainment screen and checking for updates, then restarting the Infotainment. It takes 5mins. It's not fiddly or error prone.

*I'm pretty certain that this is the exact same file being used across dealers throughout UK and Ireland, depending on model/trim.

 

[tsedge]

I've seen this mentioned, but I find it extremely hard to believe for the Infotainment system.
At worst, it could brick it, but even then that's highly unlikely.

Updating firmware on almost all devices is the following process:
Download a file with a specific naming convention/format/numbering.
Place it in a folder which is checked at start-up
If a file exists which meets the criteria, install it/replace the existing one.

That's it. I upgrade firmware for devices costing 5k-100k+ regularly as part of my job. It's not a complicated procedure.

For OTA updates, the car just has to query a server, using the 4G sim in the car, establish that a file needs to be downloaded OTA, get details of the file, download it into the startup folder, and then perform a check that the file is correct.

SAIC has over 200,000 employees and billions in profits. They can figure out simple OTA updates of the Infotainment in a week if they were bothered.

There are plenty of reports of people here/elsewhere online, who have sat with their dealers service team as they update the Infotainment beside them in the car, it involves putting a file* on a USB key, putting it into the car's USB slot, going to the Update Infotainment screen and checking for updates, then restarting the Infotainment. It takes 5mins. It's not fiddly or error prone.

*I'm pretty certain that this is the exact same file being used across dealers throughout UK and Ireland, depending on model/trim.

Yes, yes you are right for the infotainment but not the car modules - there are lots of module inter-dependencies and we've been given insight from Miles into how the process works: someone has to babysit a laptop as it talks to the car and the services and figures out the module dependencies to apply and approve each one.

We know from various people's reports that this often fails:

• China servers down
• Module dependency fails to apply
• Car bricks

All of these scenarios need case-by-case help from China and add delays.

Quite a few bugs apparent in the infotainment seem require a car module update to fix.

There also seem to be multiple separate infotainment code bases with different versions, features and bugs. It feels like a mess.

I am not saying it should be like this, nor am I saying it is good, but there's a wealth of evidence that this is exactly how it is with MG right now.

We know OTA updates are possible as other makes do it but MG seem a long way away from this.

 

[AdeSc]

I've seen this mentioned, but I find it extremely hard to believe for the Infotainment system.
At worst, it could brick it, but even then that's highly unlikely.

Updating firmware on almost all devices is the following process:
Download a file with a specific naming convention/format/numbering.
Place it in a folder which is checked at start-up
If a file exists which meets the criteria, install it/replace the existing one.

That's it. I upgrade firmware for devices costing 5k-100k+ regularly as part of my job. It's not a complicated procedure.

For OTA updates, the car just has to query a server, using the 4G sim in the car, establish that a file needs to be downloaded OTA, get details of the file, download it into the startup folder, and then perform a check that the file is correct.

SAIC has over 200,000 employees and billions in profits. They can figure out simple OTA updates of the Infotainment in a week if they were bothered.

There are plenty of reports of people here/elsewhere online, who have sat with their dealers service team as they update the Infotainment beside them in the car, it involves putting a file* on a USB key, putting it into the car's USB slot, going to the Update Infotainment screen and checking for updates, then restarting the Infotainment. It takes 5mins. It's not fiddly or error prone.

*I'm pretty certain that this is the exact same file being used across dealers throughout UK and Ireland, depending on model/trim.

I’m with you on this update thing. I’ve worked in IT for 40 odd years and never, ever heard of any issues regarding firmware updates. You’re working within a very specific framework, it’s not like writing a piece of software to do something where you might get an unexpected result. Firmware updating is very specific.

 

[Emgie 4]

So folks, I started this thread by posing question whether LKA is a help or a hindrance, and even if only from a relatively small sample of drivers the overwhelming replies (not surprisingly) do not consider it a helpful thing - at least in its current configuration on the MG4.
No responses of "it's great" or "it saved me from nearly crashing/colliding with someone"
But quite a few where it tried pulling car into other traffic, into the ditch etc, or just randomly yanking steering wheel sharply.

Sensitivity and accuracy improvements in future SW updates will undoubtedly make it more tolerable and eventually even helpful, but it ain't there yet.
I don't know if dealers (doubtful) or MG (very doubtful) read these forums, but if they do, please take note you have many unhappy customers with this system.
Otherwise only feedback is from direct customer feedback through dealers, so folks don't be shy about telling them/complaining, it's not something we should be accepting.

ps; I note that the discussion (like many similar threads) has strayed onto Software and Updates, not surprising considering the direct connection between LKA and SW, and it just highlights to me that the SW aspect of the MG4 is letting down an otherwise excellent car, perhaps this is to be expected given its fairly recent birth, and at least SW updates can bring improvements, whereas bad mechanical design you just have to live with - silver lining maybe!

 

[AdeSc]

Yes, yes you are right for the infotainment but not the car modules - there are lots of module inter-dependencies and we've been given insight from Miles into how the process works: someone has to babysit a laptop as it talks to the car and the services and figures out the module dependencies to apply and approve each one.

We know from various people's reports that this often fails:

• China servers down
• Module dependency fails to apply
• Car bricks

All of these scenarios need case-by-case help from China and add delays.

Quite a few bugs apparent in the infotainment seem require a car module update to fix.

There also seem to be multiple separate infotainment code bases with different versions, features and bugs. It feels like a mess.

I am not saying it should be like this, nor am I saying it is good, but there's a wealth of evidence that this is exactly how it is with MG right now.

We know OTA updates are possible as other makes do it but MG seem a long way away from this.

I had a quiet chat with an MG tech. Apparently it can take multiple attempts to make a firmware update work, hence back to the dealer for them, no OTA for the foreseeable future.