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One of the really disappointing things about Tesla is how incredibly proprietary all of their products are. For a company that has such lofty goals as "saving t

by cyphar 9y ago

One of the really disappointing things about Tesla is how incredibly proprietary all of their products are. For a company that has such lofty goals as "saving the world", it feels wrong to me for them to then sell DRM cars and unrepairable black boxes. Maybe I'm just too idealistic, but surely if we have an opportunity to create a new market for solar devices why would we decide to recreate the proprietary world of the 1980s? Creating your own powerwall from recycled batteries is a pretty neat hack, and I'd hope that people are publishing free (as in freedom) hardware designs for said battery banks.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
This opens Tesla up to an immense amount of liability with no benefit. If you want to build your own open source battery storage system, battery management system firmware, and distribute it online (think Backblaze), I'd encourage you to do so. But Tesla has enough to worry about as it is.
extr 9y ago
This isn't unique to Telsa, all vehicles are becoming more difficult to repair as computers and software replace what used to be handled by mechanical systems. I would actually much prefer to drive next to a Tesla knowing that the guy behind the wheel (potentially staring into space as it drives itself) hasn't implemented any "hacks". A similar argument exists for why DIY battery banks are not ideal. It's not inconceivable that some dedicated hobbyist engineer pulls it off in a safe way. But how would you feel if you were over in your neighbors garage and noticed he had haphazardly wired 600 18650 cells together based on a design he found on the internet?
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  About the same as I feel about 95% of software running on the internet being copied from StackOverflow. Rather Meh. I would worry if the engineers at Boeing did it, but a bunch of crappy javascript apps running on the web? No. As for the neighbor, I don't live on a zero lot line, so let him burn his house down all he wants.
  - gruez 9y ago
    >About the same as I feel about 95% of software running on the internet being copied from StackOverflow. Rather Meh. I would worry if the engineers at Boeing did it, but a bunch of crappy javascript apps running on the web? No This is exactly the type of attitude that leads to the proliferation of vulnerabilities on the web. "It's not like we're using it to fly planes, so who cares if we're not checking every SQL statement for injection vulnerability" Then the code gets used on some ecommerce site, the site inevitably gets hacked, and customers' PII gets leaked.
    - EADGBE 9y ago
      I blame deadlines for most of the shortcuts taken, not necessarily "taking someone else's code".
- LambdaComplex 9y ago
  "all vehicles are becoming more difficult to repair as computers and software replace what used to be handled by mechanical systems." Don't forget John Deere tractors!
- jerkstate 9y ago
  This stuff isn't black magic, it's science and engineering. As more hackers participate in this space, the open source components and techniques will get better and better (I'm not familiar with open source battery management systems but I would bet there is already some good stuff out there). I think there are a lot bigger dangers to hand-wring over than nerds needing out over this stuff. I think there are as many or more car hackers than ever - CAN bus opened car hacking from the world of the gear head to the world of the computer geek.
  - zanny 9y ago
    > As more hackers participate in this space, the open source components and techniques will get better and better I so strongly disagree with this assumption. We got a nascent not even close to open source scene on x86 and a few hobbyist tweak boards. They still use proprietary hardware, the firmware is still almost always proprietary, the drivers are often proprietary, and for general users 99% of their OSes are proprietary. And the consequences of that world that doesn't care about right to repair or software freedoms or having control of computers impacts me. I can't get an x86 pc now without a hardware backdoor, I can't use 802.11an wifi without proprietary code, I can't display visuals to a screen without proprietary code. The screen itself is running a ton of proprietary code. My hard drive has a computer in it and thats wholly proprietary. And that was in an ecosystem where moddability was handed to us on a silver platter with ACPI which only existed for IBM and Microsofts sake, not for anyone elses. It was not a charity. That is why we still have no mobile platforms that use a standard hardware abstraction layer that you can run a generic OS on. The Internet of Things never developed an open source ecosystem. SmartTVs never developed an open source ecosystem. Set top boxes and consoles never devleoped an open source ecosystem. Cars almost certainly will never develop an even remotely functional open source ecosystem - companies will use open source code, because someone else did the work for them and they can save money. They won't contribute back, they won't respect their users, and they won't respect the developers that put in thousands of hours of free labor by sponsoring them. That isn't open source winning, that is corporate profits winning. Look at John Deere. That is where we are going. This is not going to be a simple matter of find the ethernet jack, telnet into a shell, and start running code. This is signed payloads, read only rom, and no way to access the firmware. If there is an open source car ecosystem, it will be like the open source phone OS world. A joke, that cannot practically run on anything, that at best is ripping half of the Android equivalent out of itself to even run. And I guarantee Ford et al will never be as philanthropic as Google was in open sourcing Android to release their car OSes middleware like that.
- zanny 9y ago
  Security precludes freedom. The trend from just about anyone being able to build their own home a half century ago to not being able to even make your own battery pack just shows the trend away from the freedom to experiment. The right to repair died once magic computers came into the world. Before that trying to tell anyone their mechanical / electrical systems were undocumented proprietary and warranty breaking if you tried to repair them would have caused a riot. But since computers were sufficiently magical that a critical enough mass of people wrote off trying to understand them, the industry and all resulting industries undermined the right to actually own anything related to them.
hwillis 9y ago
Tesla supported Kevin Mahaffey and Marc Rogers when they were hacking at their friends model S and trying to get root access. The model 3 repair support guide just came out and has diagrams of the battery pack down to the cells. Yes, they dont put the design of the car on github. They are hardly "incredibly proprietary" though.
- captainmuon 9y ago
  Yeah but if you hack your Tesla even to change the color theme of the display, you'll probably loose warranty, loose certification status or whatever it is called (so you can't have any new parts installed unless it is expensively recertified), you'll get a call from Tesla asking what the hell you are doing, and so on. On the other hand, I can replace almost every part in my conventional car without ill effects from the manufacturer.
  - jraby3 9y ago
    Not for long. You can still do this with older cars, but newer ones really restrict you. I just bought a new car and am not even allowed to jump start someone else's battery without risk of voiding my warranty.
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      In large part thanks to the CAN bus and how jump starting is likely to cause enough spiking to fry the boards. Was trying to help a relative with some issue with their car the other day, and the wiring diagram for the part and related controls almost seemed to run in reverse depending on how the switch was set.
    - gambiting 9y ago
      I don't know what car you've got but I have a brand new Mercedes-AMG and I can do a surprising number of things with it without voiding the warranty. It's certainly as easy to work on it as on older cars, I don't need to go to the dealership to replace the brakes, the battery, the bulbs, filters, engine oil, transmission and diff oil. Manual explains how to jump start the car but certainly doesn't prohibit it. I've heard some horror stories with newer cars (especially French and American) but it's not like all new cars are horrible to work on.
Reason077 9y ago
Unrepairable black boxes? This isn't really true of Tesla. Sure, it would be nice if they could make service manuals and service parts more freely available, but the same could be said of all car manufacturers. There are guys on YouTube who have re-built entire Teslas from near-scratch using salvaged parts from multiple vehicles. Guys with no formal training and no previous experience with EVs. Tesla does not do anything to make their cars hard to repair.
- userbinator 9y ago
  Tesla does not do anything to make their cars hard to repair. I'm not in the EV or Tesla communities, but I remember reading something about "activation" being required?
  - Reason077 9y ago
    You're probably thinking of activating for supercharger access. Tesla may not let vehicles connect to their superchargers if they've been reported as written off. It also won't be able to connect to Tesla's servers for OTA software updates, etc. If you can prove that the vehicle has been appropriately repaired (by a qualified body shop, since it's a safety issue in the case of structural damage), it can be re-activated. But Tesla does not remotely disable vehicles or anything like that. Even if it's been written off, theres nothing to prevent it being driven just like any normal car once repaired.
  - foota 9y ago
    This could be because of the packaged services that come with the Tesla?
- fragmede 9y ago
  Going the salvage titled Model S route is, from the accounts I've seen (likely featuring the same videos from YouTube), is thoroughly unsupported by Tesla, to the point that Tesla will refuse to sell parts to people if Tesla knows they are trying to rebuild vehicles that have a salvage title. There's making parts "more freely available" and then there's "you can't have this from us, for any price". Fortunately the ludicrous amount of power in the Model S and people's inability to control the car (or themselves) means there's a good sized underground market of salvaged Model S' bodies and parts, even if there's no office service manual available to amateurs. Meanwhile, Chevrolet will just sell you the engine from a corvette in a crate. (Okay, it's ~$12k, but they're willing to do it.) I say this as someone with a Model 3 reservation, mind you. Tesla wants to build the iPhones of the electric car industry - no user-serviceable components inside, and the battery isn't removable by us mere mortals who don't work at Tesla. (Abandoned battery replacement tech demos from a few years ago aside.)
SwellJoe 9y ago
My annoyance with Tesla is somewhat related. I don't like that I can't simply buy a Powerwall or solar roof tiles. I would have to hire one of their approved installers, which increases the cost remarkably. I don't know the markup, because you can't get flat materials pricing data from Tesla, or couldn't last time I checked, but I know labor for solar installation and electrical work is quite high. I understand why they do it, but it means that for the segment of the population that enjoys that kind of thing, and knows how (I've done my own solar installations, and helped others, on multiple RVs) I have to use much less awesome components. I wanna play with the tech and save a few thousand dollars, but that's not an option for Tesla solar and Powerwall gear. I also want to use it in ways Tesla won't allow (Powerwall can't be installed in RVs or manufactured housing like a tiny house on wheels, for example, even if one were to design the house around safely doing so).
- z3t4 9y ago
  Imagine the bad PR you would get when your product kills your customers.
  - achamayou 9y ago
    The other car manufacturers seem to cope, it's not particularly obvious why Tesla should be unique in that respect and why they need to lock everything down to such an extent.
    - JoBrad 9y ago
      I've heard way too many Volt-on-fire related jokes to agree, unfortunately. Tesla had a very aggressive response to the Tesla accident a few years back, and still suffered as a result of it. Big retailers like Lowes cultivate a reputation of catering to construction workers while also being approachable to weekend warriors, which insulates them from the downside of product safety issues, somewhat.
  - SwellJoe 9y ago
    I can go to Home Depot or Lowe's, right now, and walk out with a breaker box, conduit, a bag of breakers, a couple hundred pounds of copper, and install my own household 220V/150A electric service. Local codes or the electric company may require an electrician to sign off on my work before I grid tie, but the companies who make the stuff aren't going to refuse to sell to me. Nobody seems to think me killing myself by making mistakes with that would be the fault of Home Depot or the manufacturers, and I'm reasonably confident that is more dangerous than installing a battery box (unless Tesla has built an inherently dangerous device, in which case it won't matter who installs it). I can also go to the same store and walk out with a roof-sized pile of roofing tiles. No one will stop me from putting on my own roof. Hell, Tesla sells cars. The single most deadly consumer product, by far, in the world. Admittedly, people have tried to sue them about their autonomous features, but still, cars are really deadly and no one blames manufacturers for those deaths (though, we do, as a nation, impose some safety standards...but, it doesn't stop tens of thousands of deaths every year). Tesla is arguably much better about not killing their customers than some other manufacturers, but they already operate in the most deadly industry (aside from, say, coal or fossil fuels, but the deaths caused by those industries are generally an amorphous statistical blob of health problems rather than distinct deadly events). My point is: Unless Tesla has built a dangerous product, there's no safety-related reason it should be treated differently than other home improvement items that require the same types of skills to safely install them. Electrical and solar power are well-understood by plenty of non-professionals. I do see the appeal of making it turn-key; they're aiming for average home owners, particularly at the time of construction or roof replacement, when there are already contractors involved and a mortgage to pay for everything. A large-scale solar power installation is expensive, and it makes sense for most people to work it into their mortgage. But, it's frustrating for me; when I build a house (and I'm kinda shopping for land now in a casual way), I plan to self-fund it and do a lot of the work myself because I enjoy that sort of thing. There won't be a mortgage, and I won't be paying for contractors to do things I can do myself. Electrical work is well within my comfort zone. So, it's frustrating that when I install solar, it'll have to be the somewhat less attractive panels rather than nice-looking tiles. It's certainly Tesla's right to sell their product however they like. But, I reckon I can complain about it, too.
Matt3o12_ 9y ago
Tesla‘s are literally killer machines. Accessing the high voltage cables is not difficult (they are only covered by a plastic cover which is easily removable). Those power lines can easily kill you. Even if you are very careful, even a small mistake with the wiring can have fatal consequences. There is a reason why you are not allowed to do wiring and a lot of electronics in your house by yourself. I certainly hope that Tesla will provide manuals to highly trained electricians at some point, but if Jone Doe tries to fix his electric vehicle by himself and makes a fatal mistake (or maybe even starts a fire), that will only make national news and scare more people into thinking electric vehicles are inherently more dangerous then traditional cars (which they are not). I can understand why Tesla does not want to take that risk.
- KGIII 9y ago
  They may also want to click this link: https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
- serf 9y ago
  >Tesla‘s are literally killer machines. So are all cars. Under-skilled people routinely (and legally) repair and maintain the systems that make these vehicles drivable (brakes, steering, suspension, etc). Some folks are killed in doing so, much like any activity, but not any number that is out of proportion and typical with any activity where small mistakes can cost lives. >There is a reason why you are not allowed to do wiring and a lot of electronics in your house by yourself. That's not true in many places, much of the United States included. Only inspection is mandatory in most cases, barring specific regional laws. Again : Those that do their own work aren't just dropping like flies. A few accidents occur, but nothing of any proportion to require legislating more strict laws regarding such things. >I can understand why Tesla does not want to take that risk. My understanding of why Tesla acts the way they do has nothing to do with the complexity in their systems and danger in working around such complexity, but rather their interest in more protection for their IP, their desire for keeping customers within their own 'walled garden' of service options, and for controlling public perception of their product, all to the disservice of the customer (much like John Deere's behavior these past decade or two). We aren't strangers to 'killer machines'. This isn't any new phenomenon. It's being framed that way by some to rationalize over-protective and controlling corporate behavior towards the consumer, and Tesla isn't alone in exercising such power.

by cyphar 9y ago

toomuchtodo 9y ago

This opens Tesla up to an immense amount of liability with no benefit. If you want to build your own open source battery storage system, battery management system firmware, and distribute it online (think Backblaze), I'd encourage you to do so. But Tesla has enough to worry about as it is.

extr 9y ago

This isn't unique to Telsa, all vehicles are becoming more difficult to repair as computers and software replace what used to be handled by mechanical systems. I would actually much prefer to drive next to a Tesla knowing that the guy behind the wheel (potentially staring into space as it drives itself) hasn't implemented any "hacks". A similar argument exists for why DIY battery banks are not ideal. It's not inconceivable that some dedicated hobbyist engineer pulls it off in a safe way. But how would you feel if you were over in your neighbors garage and noticed he had haphazardly wired 600 18650 cells together based on a design he found on the internet?

JustSomeNobody 9y ago
About the same as I feel about 95% of software running on the internet being copied from StackOverflow. Rather Meh. I would worry if the engineers at Boeing did it, but a bunch of crappy javascript apps running on the web? No. As for the neighbor, I don't live on a zero lot line, so let him burn his house down all he wants.
- gruez 9y ago
  >About the same as I feel about 95% of software running on the internet being copied from StackOverflow. Rather Meh. I would worry if the engineers at Boeing did it, but a bunch of crappy javascript apps running on the web? No This is exactly the type of attitude that leads to the proliferation of vulnerabilities on the web. "It's not like we're using it to fly planes, so who cares if we're not checking every SQL statement for injection vulnerability" Then the code gets used on some ecommerce site, the site inevitably gets hacked, and customers' PII gets leaked.
  - EADGBE 9y ago
    I blame deadlines for most of the shortcuts taken, not necessarily "taking someone else's code".
LambdaComplex 9y ago
"all vehicles are becoming more difficult to repair as computers and software replace what used to be handled by mechanical systems." Don't forget John Deere tractors!
jerkstate 9y ago
This stuff isn't black magic, it's science and engineering. As more hackers participate in this space, the open source components and techniques will get better and better (I'm not familiar with open source battery management systems but I would bet there is already some good stuff out there). I think there are a lot bigger dangers to hand-wring over than nerds needing out over this stuff. I think there are as many or more car hackers than ever - CAN bus opened car hacking from the world of the gear head to the world of the computer geek.
- zanny 9y ago
  > As more hackers participate in this space, the open source components and techniques will get better and better I so strongly disagree with this assumption. We got a nascent not even close to open source scene on x86 and a few hobbyist tweak boards. They still use proprietary hardware, the firmware is still almost always proprietary, the drivers are often proprietary, and for general users 99% of their OSes are proprietary. And the consequences of that world that doesn't care about right to repair or software freedoms or having control of computers impacts me. I can't get an x86 pc now without a hardware backdoor, I can't use 802.11an wifi without proprietary code, I can't display visuals to a screen without proprietary code. The screen itself is running a ton of proprietary code. My hard drive has a computer in it and thats wholly proprietary. And that was in an ecosystem where moddability was handed to us on a silver platter with ACPI which only existed for IBM and Microsofts sake, not for anyone elses. It was not a charity. That is why we still have no mobile platforms that use a standard hardware abstraction layer that you can run a generic OS on. The Internet of Things never developed an open source ecosystem. SmartTVs never developed an open source ecosystem. Set top boxes and consoles never devleoped an open source ecosystem. Cars almost certainly will never develop an even remotely functional open source ecosystem - companies will use open source code, because someone else did the work for them and they can save money. They won't contribute back, they won't respect their users, and they won't respect the developers that put in thousands of hours of free labor by sponsoring them. That isn't open source winning, that is corporate profits winning. Look at John Deere. That is where we are going. This is not going to be a simple matter of find the ethernet jack, telnet into a shell, and start running code. This is signed payloads, read only rom, and no way to access the firmware. If there is an open source car ecosystem, it will be like the open source phone OS world. A joke, that cannot practically run on anything, that at best is ripping half of the Android equivalent out of itself to even run. And I guarantee Ford et al will never be as philanthropic as Google was in open sourcing Android to release their car OSes middleware like that.
zanny 9y ago
Security precludes freedom. The trend from just about anyone being able to build their own home a half century ago to not being able to even make your own battery pack just shows the trend away from the freedom to experiment. The right to repair died once magic computers came into the world. Before that trying to tell anyone their mechanical / electrical systems were undocumented proprietary and warranty breaking if you tried to repair them would have caused a riot. But since computers were sufficiently magical that a critical enough mass of people wrote off trying to understand them, the industry and all resulting industries undermined the right to actually own anything related to them.

hwillis 9y ago

Tesla supported Kevin Mahaffey and Marc Rogers when they were hacking at their friends model S and trying to get root access. The model 3 repair support guide just came out and has diagrams of the battery pack down to the cells. Yes, they dont put the design of the car on github. They are hardly "incredibly proprietary" though.

captainmuon 9y ago
Yeah but if you hack your Tesla even to change the color theme of the display, you'll probably loose warranty, loose certification status or whatever it is called (so you can't have any new parts installed unless it is expensively recertified), you'll get a call from Tesla asking what the hell you are doing, and so on. On the other hand, I can replace almost every part in my conventional car without ill effects from the manufacturer.
- jraby3 9y ago
  Not for long. You can still do this with older cars, but newer ones really restrict you. I just bought a new car and am not even allowed to jump start someone else's battery without risk of voiding my warranty.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    In large part thanks to the CAN bus and how jump starting is likely to cause enough spiking to fry the boards. Was trying to help a relative with some issue with their car the other day, and the wiring diagram for the part and related controls almost seemed to run in reverse depending on how the switch was set.
  - gambiting 9y ago
    I don't know what car you've got but I have a brand new Mercedes-AMG and I can do a surprising number of things with it without voiding the warranty. It's certainly as easy to work on it as on older cars, I don't need to go to the dealership to replace the brakes, the battery, the bulbs, filters, engine oil, transmission and diff oil. Manual explains how to jump start the car but certainly doesn't prohibit it. I've heard some horror stories with newer cars (especially French and American) but it's not like all new cars are horrible to work on.

Reason077 9y ago

Unrepairable black boxes? This isn't really true of Tesla. Sure, it would be nice if they could make service manuals and service parts more freely available, but the same could be said of all car manufacturers. There are guys on YouTube who have re-built entire Teslas from near-scratch using salvaged parts from multiple vehicles. Guys with no formal training and no previous experience with EVs. Tesla does not do anything to make their cars hard to repair.

userbinator 9y ago
Tesla does not do anything to make their cars hard to repair. I'm not in the EV or Tesla communities, but I remember reading something about "activation" being required?
- Reason077 9y ago
  You're probably thinking of activating for supercharger access. Tesla may not let vehicles connect to their superchargers if they've been reported as written off. It also won't be able to connect to Tesla's servers for OTA software updates, etc. If you can prove that the vehicle has been appropriately repaired (by a qualified body shop, since it's a safety issue in the case of structural damage), it can be re-activated. But Tesla does not remotely disable vehicles or anything like that. Even if it's been written off, theres nothing to prevent it being driven just like any normal car once repaired.
- foota 9y ago
  This could be because of the packaged services that come with the Tesla?
fragmede 9y ago
Going the salvage titled Model S route is, from the accounts I've seen (likely featuring the same videos from YouTube), is thoroughly unsupported by Tesla, to the point that Tesla will refuse to sell parts to people if Tesla knows they are trying to rebuild vehicles that have a salvage title. There's making parts "more freely available" and then there's "you can't have this from us, for any price". Fortunately the ludicrous amount of power in the Model S and people's inability to control the car (or themselves) means there's a good sized underground market of salvaged Model S' bodies and parts, even if there's no office service manual available to amateurs. Meanwhile, Chevrolet will just sell you the engine from a corvette in a crate. (Okay, it's ~$12k, but they're willing to do it.) I say this as someone with a Model 3 reservation, mind you. Tesla wants to build the iPhones of the electric car industry - no user-serviceable components inside, and the battery isn't removable by us mere mortals who don't work at Tesla. (Abandoned battery replacement tech demos from a few years ago aside.)

SwellJoe 9y ago

My annoyance with Tesla is somewhat related. I don't like that I can't simply buy a Powerwall or solar roof tiles. I would have to hire one of their approved installers, which increases the cost remarkably. I don't know the markup, because you can't get flat materials pricing data from Tesla, or couldn't last time I checked, but I know labor for solar installation and electrical work is quite high. I understand why they do it, but it means that for the segment of the population that enjoys that kind of thing, and knows how (I've done my own solar installations, and helped others, on multiple RVs) I have to use much less awesome components. I wanna play with the tech and save a few thousand dollars, but that's not an option for Tesla solar and Powerwall gear. I also want to use it in ways Tesla won't allow (Powerwall can't be installed in RVs or manufactured housing like a tiny house on wheels, for example, even if one were to design the house around safely doing so).

z3t4 9y ago
Imagine the bad PR you would get when your product kills your customers.
- achamayou 9y ago
  The other car manufacturers seem to cope, it's not particularly obvious why Tesla should be unique in that respect and why they need to lock everything down to such an extent.
  - JoBrad 9y ago
    I've heard way too many Volt-on-fire related jokes to agree, unfortunately. Tesla had a very aggressive response to the Tesla accident a few years back, and still suffered as a result of it. Big retailers like Lowes cultivate a reputation of catering to construction workers while also being approachable to weekend warriors, which insulates them from the downside of product safety issues, somewhat.
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  I can go to Home Depot or Lowe's, right now, and walk out with a breaker box, conduit, a bag of breakers, a couple hundred pounds of copper, and install my own household 220V/150A electric service. Local codes or the electric company may require an electrician to sign off on my work before I grid tie, but the companies who make the stuff aren't going to refuse to sell to me. Nobody seems to think me killing myself by making mistakes with that would be the fault of Home Depot or the manufacturers, and I'm reasonably confident that is more dangerous than installing a battery box (unless Tesla has built an inherently dangerous device, in which case it won't matter who installs it). I can also go to the same store and walk out with a roof-sized pile of roofing tiles. No one will stop me from putting on my own roof. Hell, Tesla sells cars. The single most deadly consumer product, by far, in the world. Admittedly, people have tried to sue them about their autonomous features, but still, cars are really deadly and no one blames manufacturers for those deaths (though, we do, as a nation, impose some safety standards...but, it doesn't stop tens of thousands of deaths every year). Tesla is arguably much better about not killing their customers than some other manufacturers, but they already operate in the most deadly industry (aside from, say, coal or fossil fuels, but the deaths caused by those industries are generally an amorphous statistical blob of health problems rather than distinct deadly events). My point is: Unless Tesla has built a dangerous product, there's no safety-related reason it should be treated differently than other home improvement items that require the same types of skills to safely install them. Electrical and solar power are well-understood by plenty of non-professionals. I do see the appeal of making it turn-key; they're aiming for average home owners, particularly at the time of construction or roof replacement, when there are already contractors involved and a mortgage to pay for everything. A large-scale solar power installation is expensive, and it makes sense for most people to work it into their mortgage. But, it's frustrating for me; when I build a house (and I'm kinda shopping for land now in a casual way), I plan to self-fund it and do a lot of the work myself because I enjoy that sort of thing. There won't be a mortgage, and I won't be paying for contractors to do things I can do myself. Electrical work is well within my comfort zone. So, it's frustrating that when I install solar, it'll have to be the somewhat less attractive panels rather than nice-looking tiles. It's certainly Tesla's right to sell their product however they like. But, I reckon I can complain about it, too.

Matt3o12_ 9y ago

Tesla‘s are literally killer machines. Accessing the high voltage cables is not difficult (they are only covered by a plastic cover which is easily removable). Those power lines can easily kill you. Even if you are very careful, even a small mistake with the wiring can have fatal consequences. There is a reason why you are not allowed to do wiring and a lot of electronics in your house by yourself. I certainly hope that Tesla will provide manuals to highly trained electricians at some point, but if Jone Doe tries to fix his electric vehicle by himself and makes a fatal mistake (or maybe even starts a fire), that will only make national news and scare more people into thinking electric vehicles are inherently more dangerous then traditional cars (which they are not). I can understand why Tesla does not want to take that risk.

KGIII 9y ago
They may also want to click this link: https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
serf 9y ago
>Tesla‘s are literally killer machines. So are all cars. Under-skilled people routinely (and legally) repair and maintain the systems that make these vehicles drivable (brakes, steering, suspension, etc). Some folks are killed in doing so, much like any activity, but not any number that is out of proportion and typical with any activity where small mistakes can cost lives. >There is a reason why you are not allowed to do wiring and a lot of electronics in your house by yourself. That's not true in many places, much of the United States included. Only inspection is mandatory in most cases, barring specific regional laws. Again : Those that do their own work aren't just dropping like flies. A few accidents occur, but nothing of any proportion to require legislating more strict laws regarding such things. >I can understand why Tesla does not want to take that risk. My understanding of why Tesla acts the way they do has nothing to do with the complexity in their systems and danger in working around such complexity, but rather their interest in more protection for their IP, their desire for keeping customers within their own 'walled garden' of service options, and for controlling public perception of their product, all to the disservice of the customer (much like John Deere's behavior these past decade or two). We aren't strangers to 'killer machines'. This isn't any new phenomenon. It's being framed that way by some to rationalize over-protective and controlling corporate behavior towards the consumer, and Tesla isn't alone in exercising such power.