Comment Some Wise Precautions (Score 3, Insightful) 127
If some or all driver controls are unavailable during a software upgrade, it makes sense to ensure the car is not on an incline to prevent it from rolling. Having the parking brake engaged is another requirement. All the precautions for software upgrades mentioned in the article make sense.
This sentence in the article makes it sound like BMW doesn't have a good reason to this. "As it turns out, BMW doesn't have one singular reason why the vehicle can't perform this task on an incline."
It is more accurate to say that BMW has several good reasons for this (i.e. more than just one singular reason). Avoiding dangerous situations and avoiding being sued are good reasons. It would be a big story if they didn't do this and a car did roll.
This is a non-story, but is mildly interesting and it gives some insight on the challenges of good firmware engineering.