6 ms·
Dismantled Tesla Model S found in truck
- teilo 9y agoI would imagine the easiest way to steal a Tesla is to create a make-shift faraday cage in a truck bed and then disconnect the power.
- lawless123 9y agoI was about to say that is a lot of effort.. but for a 100k car it would be worth it. What do they do about software updates though? They would probably have to break the firmware to if they still want any updates.
- Zikes 9y agoI wonder how long until someone "jailbreaks" Teslas.
- greglindahl 9y agoSo far there's been one successful attack that involved surfing to a 'bad' webpage on the car's touchscreen browser, followed by a malicious firmware update. Tesla's been closing the known holes, of course.
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoIf Tesla remains as controlling over the Model 3 as they are over the Model S, you'll see a HECK of a lot more "jailbreaking", reverse engineering, and third party knock-off parts. A big reason Tesla has likely been successful so far controlling so much of the market around the Tesla is the high price: People who have them can afford Tesla's services and will be averse to risking the car with unsupported work, and there aren't all that many of them out there (comparatively) to begin with. With the Model 3 hitting a much wider consumer market, you'll see a lot more interest in ways to get around Tesla. I am actually expecting you may also see more lawsuits regarding things like software activation requirements vs. holding the title to the car and such. Tesla treats these cars like they're still Tesla's property, and if anything I'm shocked it hasn't been tested in court more already.
- elihu 9y agoThere's been a big legal battle between John Deere tractors and farmers who want to fix them. I haven't been paying close attention to that case, but it seems like a very similar situation.
- jacquesm 9y agoBig difference between business operators and private individuals consuming goods. Besides there being many more of the latter they also have special legal aspects in the form of all kinds of consumer protections.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- djrogers 9y ago> I'm shocked it hasn't been tested in court more already. Most Teslas on the road are still under warranty, with Tesla footing the bill for repairs. Once all of those second and third owners of Model Ss start needing out-of-warranty repairs, then I expect we'll start seeing some real heat.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoSay goodbye to ever supercharging.
- fnordfnordfnord 9y agoA trailer with an all metal skin is an off the shelf type item, a Connex box, for example. One could also line the inside of a trailer with foil backed foam. Neither would be a lot of effort, even for a $30k car.
- djrogers 9y ago> foil backed foam Foil backed foam won't necessarily block a cell signal - heck, there are entire buildings insulated with the stuff and it has little effect.
- elihu 9y agoEven if they can't steal a whole car and have it be usable, the parts might still be worth a lot. If you steal a 100k car and sell the parts for 10k, it could still be profitable and worth the risk to some people.
- borne0 9y agoOr a cloth car cover faraday cage. Slip it over the car and voila.
- teilo 9y agoRight. Way easier, and easily portable from truck to truck. Crazy.
- dreamthtwasrome 9y agoI'd bet my life that either they Faraday caged it immediately a-la a Knight Rider-type fully-enclosed, possibly-camouflaged vehicle truck or they knew how to disconnect power to the GPS system quickly. Either way, it was faster than owner or police could do anything about it. The police working with Tesla would be wise to leave some bait-cars around with extra cameras and nearby arrest teams to gather evidence to prosecute the gang(s) doing this.
- teilo 9y agoReally doesn't need camouflage. Generic white box flatbeds are all over the place.
- janwillemb 9y ago> it’s not clear how the vehicle was stolen in the first place. > For owners, it’s important to make sure that your Tesla account is secured with a strong password and to keep your key fobs in a secure location at a safe distance from the vehicle when parked. The insinuation here is that owners had weak passwords and/or kept their keys in an insecure location at an unsafe distance from the vehicle. Another explanation could be that hacker-thieves found a way to access Tesla's without keys and/or passwords.
- eridius 9y agoIf they have ways to access Teslas in general without the specific keys/passwords, then wouldn't you expect there to be a wave of stolen Teslas instead of just 2?
- gnicholas 9y agoWhat is the range of the key fob, and does Tesla warn customers to keep keys far away from the car (not in rooms adjacent to the garage, for example)? I have a friend who bought a late-model BMW and accidentally discovered that her keyless ignition is also fobless — if unlocked, her car will start even if the key fob is miles away. Not an easily discoverable bug, since she typically has her key with her when she approaches her car.
- jacquesm 9y agoThat sounds like a terrible design flaw. Kids could easily start the car then.
- valuearb 9y agoAll keyless gobs have the same problem, a thief with a repeater can extend the signal range and steal your car while you are at dinner, even if blocks away.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 9y agoCould you build a portable faraday cage of sorts to carry in your pocket that effectively reduces the range to zero when the fob resides inside it?
- gambiting 9y agoI know someone who had their Tesla stolen in Belgium, never to be recovered. The car just vanished from the system, no connection to the network and the last known location was in front of their house. I always wondered what thieves do with these vehicles though.
- jay-saint 9y agoSell parts to Chinese for reverse engineering.
- vkou 9y agoYou realize that you can just buy a Tesla in China, right?
- refurb 9y agoNot to build a car, but to create knock-off parts.
- jaggederest 9y agoTheir point is that if you wanted one to reverse engineer, you could just buy one and disassemble it
- jacquesm 9y agoThere are companies specializing in doing this for just about every car and model ever released so for sure someone that wants to make a parts line would start from a legally obtained vehicle. It would make absolutely no sense for an otherwise legitimate business to start their whole development effort with an illegal act saving them at best $100K when the whole effort will likely run into the millions by the time it is all done.
- jonknee 9y agoProbably a chop shop. Tesla parts are hard to get, they probably have decent resale value.
- codedokode 9y agoGPS and GSM signals can be easily jammed, and such devices don't cost much in China.
- marssaxman 9y ago> always-on advanced GPS tracking feature No thank you - oh my god, no thank you very much. It's a real shame that Tesla has wedded their beautiful drivetrain engineering to such a creepy, cell-phone-esque system of automatic software updates and GPS tracking and giant touchscreens; I'd like to like their cars, but I want absolutely none of that.
- politician 9y agoDo you carry your smartphone with you in your car?
- zackya89 9y agogreat question... patiently waiting for the answer
- jamescostian 9y agoWhile I disagree with GP, I also think a smartphone whose location services can be turned off is different than an "always on" car GPS
- redbeard0x0a 9y agoYou can turn off location services, however that still does not prevent your location from being tracked by your carrier. They know where you are, which tower you are connected to, etc. The only way to avoid tracking is to not carry a cell phone, simply turning off location services doesn't keep you from being tracked.
- jamescostian 9y agoWhy wouldn't airplane mode solve this problem? One could argue that cellphones might secretly call home even on airplane mode and we shouldn't trust them, but then again, why couldn't one apply the same conspiracy theory against vehicles not made by Tesla?