There’s more bad news for Lordstown, which is now forced to initiate a recall campaign as a result of a software glitch. The error could cause the most important screen in the Endurance pickup truck to freeze.
In documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Lordstown reports that the instrument cluster in five 2023 Endurances can freeze as the vehicle starts up.
This means the drivers of the all-electric pickup trucks have no access to the speedometer, while it may also hide some key information about the battery’s state of charge, certain indicator lamps, warning messages, and even some acoustic warnings might not be available.
What’s even more frustrating is that the screen can’t be unfrozen with additional key cycles. So once the instrument display is frozen, it’s really in a deep freeze.
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The software error came as a result of an update that NHTSA documents reveal was troublesome from the beginning. In early tests of the update, Lordstown “observed isolated instances of DID [driver information display] screens freezing in test vehicles.” However, it was unable to reproduce the screen freezing in subsequent tests.
The software error was caused by an update that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) documents reveal was problematic from the start. During initial tests of the update, Lordstown “observed isolated instances of DID [driver information display] screens freezing in test vehicles.”. However, it was unable to reproduce the issue in subsequent tests.
It started issuing the update to vehicles at its plant on March 16, 2023. Four days later, on March 20, Lordstown performed systematic testing of vehicles at its plant. As the testing progressed, the automaker became aware that the fault was not limited to the early test vehicle.
Despite that, the automaker rolled out the software update (#2670) to vehicles in the field on March 23. By April 16, it received a report from a customer that the instrument display had frozen. Four days later, it decided to initiate a recall campaign.
The automaker started reaching out to customers on May 1 to update their software to a version that prevents the instrument display from freezing.
