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Tesla Autopilot retrofit on a classic P85 (2016)
- muzika 8y agoExcellent write up and project! Wish I had that much patience. I am suprised it actually worked. Probably required some good connections at a Tesla service facility / input from someone who knows these cars in and out.
- ashleyn 8y agoNot something I'd consider roadworthy due to lack of rigorous testing.
- akersten 8y agoSeriously. The thought of this thing being on the road scares the heck out of me. All it takes is for there to be one assumption the autopilot software makes about the hardware that didn't get retrofitted, and you've got an accident on your hands.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- AnthonyMouse 8y agoPeople are always so paranoid about autonomous cars, as if we expect cars and drivers to otherwise be infallible, contrary to all available evidence. People have been modifying their cars since there have been cars. Sometimes the modifications are problematic. Sometimes problems result in accidents. Those cases are rare. Moreover, since the modifications are all bespoke, the odd erroneous one affects only that single vehicle. On the other hand, the modifications let people learn. It's how we get new ideas. That improve safety. For more than just one car.
- lwhi 8y agoIf the modifications a person makes have the potential to kill members of the public, I think you're wrong. This is new technology; laws and regulations need to reach a stage where they're able to protect against the worst from happening. People have to take driving tests. Is there an equivalent safeguard for an autonomous vehicle?
- postmeta 8y agoOr guns? /jk
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago> If the modifications a person makes have the potential to kill members of the public, I think you're wrong. Literally everything has the potential to kill members of the public. A bug in your mobile device app could interact with a bug in the hardware and cause the battery to catch fire in the middle of the night and burn down an apartment building. If you install casters on the office copy machine, it may slide down an incline, through a 10th story window and kill someone in the street. > This is new technology; laws and regulations need to reach a stage where they're able to protect against the worst from happening. There are two classic methods of discouraging harm. The original, which works fine for low volume modifications, is that if you do something reckless you get held liable after the fact. The method you're proposing is to do safety testing ahead of time. But that is only reasonable for products that are mass produced. If you're going to make a million of something, it makes sense to analyze it ahead of time because the high fixed cost of doing that can be amortized over a million units whereas the amount of harm prevented is multiplied by a million units. That method is highly inefficient for one off modifications where the opposite is true.
- lwhi 8y agoI think you're greatly underestimating the danger involved.
- adrianN 8y agoThe complexity of "cars" has gone up exponentially over the years, so modifying them while still being reasonably sure that they're safe is getting harder. Today cars are at least as much software as hardware and it's completely unclear which assumptions are hardcoded into them that you could invalidate by modifications.
- nightski 8y agoWhile I agree with you, I feel the same way about production Tesla's with autopilot also.
- vntok 8y agoHow about production cars from consciencious companies like Waymo?
- slivym 8y agoRight now there are no production cars in existence from Waymo.
- vntok 8y agohttps://www.theverge.com/2018/8/21/17762326/waymo-self-driving-ride-hail-fleet-management https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/21/17762326/waymo-self-drivi... > For over a year, Waymo has been offering trips to the 400-plus members of its Early Rider program who use Waymo’s ride-hailing app to summon the minivans for free trips to school, the mall, the gym, or elsewhere within its suburban Phoenix service area. Soon, Waymo will make that service available to the general public and it will start charging money for it, too.
- tempestn 8y agoPeople drive highly modified cars all the time, and we're not too concerned about it. Certainly I wouldn't trust this autopilot to be foolproof, but that's true of the factory version as well!
- alexanderwept 8y agoYeah but most people modify their cars in a way that demands more attention while driving and reap the rewards of modification when they're paying attention to the car. There are some people who modify their cars so driving demands less attention, but hereunto that was never technology that gave software the authority to control how a car cooperates with other cars. The broomstick on the throttle "cruise control" isn't meaningfully comparable to hacked autopilot at the helm. Sure, if the driver is paying attention there's nothing to worry about. But this system is dangerous because it may lull a driver into a dangerous complacency.
- sschueller 8y agoIt's also illegal in most states and especially in Europe. Don't expect your insurance to pay if your car causes an accident and/or kills someone.
- gambiting 8y agoI think you are getting downvoted because you are just wrong - it's not illegal, but you have to tell your insurer about it, as long as they approve it it's absolutely fine to drive. Some modifications(engine swaps for example) require the car to be re-certified by the official authority, but it's not an impossible process, just takes a few weeks and some money.
- sschueller 8y agoSince when is installing a straight pipe legal? This is an extremely common modification. By doing so you are putting out toxic chemicals because you removed the muffler, this is not legal in states where an emissions test is done.
- ivan1783 8y agoOpening up wire harnesses introduces corrosion - I would not trust an autopilot car with hand soldered wire harnesses. There is a reason Tesla would replace all of the harnesses if they were to do this...Sure its fine now but in a few years those connections will start to fail.
- tempestn 8y agoThe main reason is that they would value the time taken to modify the harnesses much more highly. As long as the modifications were done well, I wouldn't be concerned. Plus, one would hope that the autopilot system was designed so that in the case of a loose connection it fails in a sane manner.
- hvidgaard 8y ago> one would hope that the autopilot system was designed so that in the case of a loose connection it fails in a sane manner. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if that was not the case. Tesla is not exactly known for its rigorous approach to programming.
- Washuu 8y agoDisconnecting or cutting the wiring harnesses does not introduce corrosion. Assuming the connections are made well using the correct methods it will not be an issue. From the pictures it looks like they soldered and heat shrunk the connections which should be a long lasting repair.
- ivan1783 8y agoIt absolutely does. A wire inside of a harness is a closed system. You have water tight sealing on the end of the connector on both ends of the cable. As soon as you open the sheath and expose the bare copper to atmosphere, corrosion starts. You cannot splice an automotive harness and keep the same characteristics as when it came from the factory.
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- ahoka 8y agoThis reads like a very sophisticated method to kill his wife.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jacobush 8y agoSort of agree, sort of not. There are people who can do such modifications safely. The problem is, one might have the belief of belonging to said group, while being mistaken.
- tjoff 8y agoI'd say the problem is that it is pretty much impossible to make such an assumption in the first place without extensive inside information. I would not be surprised if there is not one single person at Tesla that would be confident in knowing each possible pitfall from doing this. And I would certainly not expect anyone from the outside spending a few weeks on this to gain that knowledge either. Very impressive, but in my eyes he have ruined a perfectly fine Tesla.
- jedberg 8y ago"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should." As others have noted, this seems like a terrible idea. One small mistake, and it could kill his wife, himself, or someone else on the road. All the other self driving Teslas have at least gone through testing to make sure they are road safe. I know I'll be avoiding any yellow Teslas from now on!
- jdboyd 8y ago> One small mistake, and it could kill his wife, himself, or someone else on the road. I believe you have just described driving in general.
- vntok 8y agoNO it's way worse than driving in general, because once the car has been modified, its behaviour on the road and that of the guy in the driver seat are completely decorrelated. Ergo, the guy can be much more alert than most people on the road and STILL crash into others without any sort of warning, simply due to a software bug. For various reasons, in regular cars, this should not happen.
- extrapickles 8y agoIf they keep their hands on the wheel and the self driving actuators can’t overpower standard human strength, I would be fine with it on the road near me. It also looks like his workmanship was reasonable so he probably did everything correctly.
- vntok 8y ago> This required transplanting the controls from a salvage steering wheel, which had a blown airbag, into my wife’s steering wheel. Reusing delicate parts from a salvage wheel that had a blown airbag does not seem particularly safe to me. Then again, at least it only endangers his presumably consenting wife and not third party drivers/pedestrians on the road.
- dkhenry 8y agoAmazingly detailed write up. I would love to know the reference material used to figure out the pinout's of the control units. One of the things I miss from older cars is how hackable they were. It feels like new cars are just a bunch of black boxes strapped together with no labels on them, so reading someone able to actually mod one is super impressive.
- sneak 8y ago> First, don’t expect this to open the floodgates for people to start retrofitting autopilot on to older Model S. This was a pretty crazy project to take on, and honestly I’m not going to do it again. It requires the ability to modify the vehicle’s internal configuration and the ability to calibrate and VIN-burn various modules once they’re installed and wired, none of which I am disclosing methods for accomplishing, sorry. :/ The difference between showing off and publishing research, I guess.
- StudentStuff 8y agoYeah, its not great, but unsurprising considering how this person's website has a floating bottom bar asserting that all rights are reserved. Just looking to show off, not help others follow in their footsteps.
- mschuster91 8y agoWell, VIN-burning could be used to launder stolen or un-QA'd parts from salvage-titled vehicles, so it's understandable to refrain from publishing the methods used.
- sneak 8y agoJailbreaking can be used for piracy. Exploit code can be used for illegal access. Lock picks can be used for burglary. Guns can be used for murder. Cars can be used to rob banks. Radios can be used to jam communications. Encryption can be used for child porn. We’d better not discuss methods. Hackers might pick them up.
- mschuster91 8y agoIMHO the decision which methods to publish and which not solely relies upon the person who discovered them. Some people might feel fine with the knowledge that their work might be used for evil, some not.
- michaelt 8y ago
- tr33house 8y agoFriends at Tesla?
- steveharman 8y agoApart from getting home from the pub after a few too many beers, what's wrong with just driving a car? Despite the billions of $ being poured into autonymous vehicles I've yet to find anyone who actually sees the need, or even less so would buy one.
- fit2rule 8y agoAuto-Driving cars have the potential to help the world cut carbon emissions. Cars that can synchronise their travel, and coordinate their movements can use fuel more efficiently. People are not good at driving efficiently. Over-braking, over-idle, under-steer .. all of these things contribute to fuel waste at scale.
- function_seven 8y agoThe thing that's most compelling to me is the ability to accelerate slowly and maintain a slower speed. I can't do that. Well, I can, but I don't. When I'm driving, I like to get up to speed fairly quickly, and I tend to drive at or just above the posted limits in most cases. It's a flaw in my character. But in a self-driving car, not only am I not in charge of those decisions, I'm okay with it. Because I'm not preoccupied with the road and traffic, it's an out-of-sight-out-of-mind situation as I watch my movie or edit my spreadsheet. Just like it doesn't bother me when the train or bus is slow to get up to speed.
- notahacker 8y agoThat sounds likely to be massively cancelled out by people taking car journeys that otherwise wouldn't happen because they don't have to be awake, sober or focused on driving for hours at a time, because the cheapest autoparking is way outside the city centre or because the taxi/courier is really cheap now the driver salary isn't included. And electric vehicles are already relatively efficient in energy use even if driven badly, particularly if charged using renewables.
- fit2rule 8y agoCould also go the other way: people ride-share more frequently, even as a socialising activity, since they can sit and talk with each other while the car does all the work .. And, the next obvious step: private car ownership becomes a distant memory.
- stereo 8y agoIt’s hard to believe that $9000 + 50 hours of labour + time spent planning would be worth less than trading in the car for a new one.
- fgonzag 8y agoI don't think that kind of project arises out of financial motivations. It's rather a "can I build it" kind of thing.
- King-Aaron 8y agoI guess the same comment could be made about modifying any consumer product.
- mikeash 8y agoOr about most of the hobby software projects that show up on the HN front page.
- sathackr 8y agoNot to mention completely destroying any trade value on the vehicle. Still pretty interesting though.
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y agoI mean, if you're buying a 2014 Tesla and it has Autopilot, that would make it worth more in the Used market.
- sathackr 8y agoI wouldn't buy it. It's been modified in a way that makes it very difficult for someone to find a person willing and capable of doing maintenance on it. If something in a system he retrofitted breaks, he will just about be the only person capable of fixing it. When you leave the envelope of normal on a vehicle, it rarely increases the value.
- esaysimyan 8y agoImpressive
- mikeash 8y agoI was not expecting the massively negative responses here. For a site called “Hacker News,” you folks sure seem to stand in complete opposition to any hacking that’s outside your comfort zone.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tom_ 8y agoHN does occasionally have an outbreak of good sense.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoPeople are afraid of stuff they don't know about. Most of us work in offices and don't even own a 3/8 socket set. (Of course they have no problem with some dude who barely reads English, or whatever language the service literature is in, performing service on their vehicle because he's a "professional"). There's also the fact that with physical objects you can't just revert them if you do it wrong like you can with code. People here are used to having that capability. Working with things where you don't have a near-zero cost option to revert is going to make a lot of people here uneasy. There's a vocal minority here who just hates cars to begin with and has no problem saying things that feed those fears. Then there's the fact that lot of people here are afraid of liability so they start going crazy when any entity that isn't a multi-million dollar company they can sue starts modifying anything tangentially involving safety even if the risks involved are on the order of being eaten by a shark on dry land in Kansas. Tl;DR the subject matter and the user-base of HN react in a way that brings out more negativity than each one could normally on its own.
- mikeash 8y agoThis isn’t my story, I’m just an early upvoter hoping to come back to find interesting commentary instead of a bunch of whining. I think your assessment is correct. Adding even more negativity to the mix, a lot of HN users are skeptical of Tesla in general and Autopilot in particular.
- lathiat 8y agoGreat write-up. Elon talked last week about Tesla cars constantly evolving. Sounds like he figured out workable combinations of different parts from the software update metadata. Nifty. Also expecting it to be blacklisted by Tesla next week.
- RankingMember 8y agoThis post is from 2016 and has been well-publicized. If it wasn't blacklisted thus far, why would it be now?
- rtkwe 8y agoSometimes even well publicized articles don't reach just the right person for action to take place. On top of that company culture and their legal stance changes over time, they could have seen it in 2016 and figured it's not a big enough issue to their liability to ban the guy that did this.
- joering2 8y agoOkay so provide us some evidence that this time it reached right person or whos working at their legal department now that didnt before that you assume this time it will get banned.
- rtkwe 8y agoYou misunderstand I'm not saying it has all I was saying was the fact that it was from 2016 and he hasn't been banned doesn't me he won't be. Company's tolerance for things like this wax and wane over time and sometimes news flies under their radar.
- Tempest1981 8y agoAgreed. Seems like it’s mostly free positive publicity for Tesla —- assuming they don’t go to war with the guy. And I doubt there will be more than a handful of copycats, if that.
- post_break 8y agoSo many people here shitting on this guy but it's going to be the future pretty much. Hell I have a GM truck and to add a front camera (for off roading) I'd have to pay like $2,000 for a 480p camera... That said this guy is brave, not for the mod, but for posting pretty much all of the vin, the name of his car, and showing the color. Will not be hard for tesla to find it and blacklist charging, updates, parts, etc. Musk's ban hammer will be swift and harsh.
- jonawesomegreen 8y agoThe ban hammer would be my concern posting this blog. He would probably get away with it if he didn't publicize it, but my understanding is Tesla has no problem banning cars that it deems unauthorized from receiving updates, using supercharging, etc.
- ryanlol 8y agoI’m not 100% sure but AFAIK tesla has done a really terrible job with the mechanisms they use to ban you from those.
- e1ven 8y agoThat's such a weird sentence to read. The idea of buying a car and being afraid to modify it because of how the manufacturer might react feels entirely dystopian to me.
- ethagknight 8y agoBanning it from continuing support and free services, kinda like voiding a warranty?
- e1ven 8y agoAbsolutely - In the US anyway, it's illegal to void a warranty because you modify the product. They don't need to cover any damage done by the modifications, but they can't deny warranty coverage to anything else. I'm not an expert, but I think the relevant law is the Magnuson-Moss Act.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- syntaxing 8y agoSurprising rhetoric in the comments. Serious question, at what point does working on a car become irresponsible? Does changing the brakes or tires count? How about changing the power steering fluid? Both of these examples can kill yourself or others if performed incorrectly. Should only mechanics be allowed to change this then? I wonder what is the threshold for "common sense" modifications and what is "an easy way to kill him and his wife"?
- brixon 8y agoShould people be allowed to build their own computer or upgrade/install software? /s Working on cars is no harder than working on other things especially when they are just swapping components.
- ntsplnkv2 8y agoIf you build a computer and it fails, I doubt most people will care. If you try to fix a car and fail, you could end someone's life. While I'm not against these kind of projects, to equate these things is ridiculous. Where is the line drawn? Vehicles are far more dangerous than your own PC.
- conception 8y agoI'm edging on hyperbole here but wanted to play Devil's Advocate. You can easily misconfigure a computer build and have it be part of a botnet that does substantial harm and potentially causing death. In fact, there are millions of people who have such computers. Vehicles are dangerous to the few people around you, but a PC can be dangerous to millions.
- sp332 8y agoAt least in the case of an unsecured computer, there needs to be a malicious actor added who will take control and direct the botnet. But in the case of a car, the negligence of the owner can lead directly to fatality without anyone involved being malicious.
- frk1206 8y agoThis is amazing! Takes serious guts to open up a car like that! Of course there's lots of questions like how did you recalibrate the radars later on? And also how did you get hold of that new firmware to flash?
- segmondy 8y agoI love it! the last time I tinkered with cars, I was boosting and racing sufficiently powerful 4 bangers. Glad to see that hacking and modding electric cars is going to be a thing and the future generation can keep the tradition going.
- olivermarks 8y ago'Boosting' and racing cars within their designed safety parameters and to defined racing scrutineering approval is one thing, grafting very immature self driving technology into an early version of a mass produced EV and then driving it on public roads is something very different. I say this as a very current car builder and modifier.
- elsonrodriguez 8y agoWhat you're saying holds true if you assume that everyone modding their car is doing so for the benefit of passing inspection at a track day. How many people slap a turbo on their car without touching the wheels or brakes? Nevermind if the upgrades or tune are sound to begin with.
- olivermarks 8y agoI put different, more powerful engines in street cars too, also update drive trains and brakes. My point is there is a world of difference between generally understood car building safety metrics and what the insurers are ok with and grafting immature 'self driving' tech into a vehicle. I'm not knocking it or saying it's wrong, just a very different project with very different safety implications
- samirm 8y agorichiebkidd[1] is that you? 1. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfV0_wbjG8KJADuZT2ct4SA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfV0_wbjG8KJADuZT2ct4SA
- ricardobeat 8y agoCan't see the point on publicizing this. There is so much that can go wrong; auto steering could fail due to a slight misalignment in sensors, noise from the custom wiring, any kind of mismatch in the hardware or software. It is irresponsible to use the feature on public roads. Tesla has _all_ the reasons in the world to find this car and take it out of service. On top of that, he killed the resale value.
- LoSboccacc 8y ago> Tesla Police as well. For sure it's going to be suck getting hit by this and having their insurance refuse to cover the damage