A SiriusXM Update Sent Some Audi Screens Into a Forced-Reboot Loop For Months

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Drive: This week, a reader wrote to us sharing that the infotainment in their 2020 Audi A4 had been 'rebooting every five minutes all year.' It looks like the problem was caused by a compatibility issue with a SiriusXM app update. Audi tells us the situation's been rectified, but it illustrates a serious pain point in modern cars -- myriad apps interacting with a diverse population of in-car software systems. Our reader was not the only Audi owner affected. 'Randomly restarting' Audi infotainment screens have been discussed on Reddit, the Audiworld forum, and elsewhere, going back many months. Audi's recall notice and related service action only went out this summer.

It looks like this particular problem was caused when the satellite radio app pushed an update that was supposed to work on the latest version of Audi's infotainment software, but not all cars were running that. Then SiriusXM reverted, which, I guess, did not solve the problem for every owner. Audi now states that the problem has been fixed and originated with the SiriusXM app, but really, the automaker bears more than a little blame, too. I dropped our own contacts at Audi a note about how and why this might have happened, and they added this clarification: 'At the beginning of the year, SiriusXM did a programming update which was addressed via a software update to the MMI. However, as not all customers had their cars updated and SiriusXM then reverted back to the previous category numbering. Nonetheless, a MMI update is recommended as the two versions do seem to cause the issue.'

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