It's not as simple as that. NASA can update software on the mars rover or interplanetary probes, but that's one device at a time, and the amount of effort put into it is staggering.
At the same time, consumer electronics are routinely broken by OTA updates.
Cars fall squarely in the middle, high volume and high price. Additionally, failures carry a high risk. Nobody will die if your webshop goes down, but if your car decides to steer into oncoming traffic, well, bummer.
The support beam analogy is flawed in the sense that the beams are simply made bigger to ensure they're strong enough even with considerable material defects, but this doesn't work for software, where a single little bug can lead to a catastrophic failure.
I am not aware of anything other than cars where such a high number of devices carries such a high risk factor. Certainly doing OTA car updates in a commercial environment is possible, but there is not yet a relatively foolproof way to do it.
At the same time, consumer electronics are routinely broken by OTA updates.
Cars fall squarely in the middle, high volume and high price. Additionally, failures carry a high risk. Nobody will die if your webshop goes down, but if your car decides to steer into oncoming traffic, well, bummer.
The support beam analogy is flawed in the sense that the beams are simply made bigger to ensure they're strong enough even with considerable material defects, but this doesn't work for software, where a single little bug can lead to a catastrophic failure.
I am not aware of anything other than cars where such a high number of devices carries such a high risk factor. Certainly doing OTA car updates in a commercial environment is possible, but there is not yet a relatively foolproof way to do it.