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It feels like $40k is a lot of money to pay Tesla to license a car, at least so long as I can buy a car outright from its competitors for less than that. I'd r

It feels like $40k is a lot of money to pay Tesla to license a car, at least so long as I can buy a car outright from its competitors for less than that. I'd rather have a car I own, all things being equal. All things being unequal too, actually. Tesla cars would need to be much better to compete, given the licensing versus ownership model. I imagine at some point, Tesla will switch to car-as-a-service models. I guess most companies already have those in the form of leases, but I don't lease cars.

zpeti 6y ago
All they are doing is voiding the warranty, so you're not exactly "leasing" the car. Change it all you want, but don't expect Tesla to fix your car once you've messed with it yourself. And don't expect to sue them when autopilot kills you, because it's not their responsibility any more.
- belval 6y ago
  That always seemed like fair game to me. If only we could have the one big warranty split into smaller warranties for each part of the car, so tampering one part of it doesn't void the entire warranty.
  - SifJar 6y ago
    That sounds nice in theory, but I imagine in practice it's a bit trickier - presumably there are plenty of cases in which modifying one part of the car could cause damage to another, unmodified part. How do you figure out if any seemingly unrelated modifications are responsible for the malfunction etc.?
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      Except for a few edge cases at the margins those cascading failures are pretty obvious when they happen. Every other OEM has already had to confront this reality and every other OEM publishes upfitter guides for their vehicles so that the aftermarket knows what to do and what not to do. Every other OEM also lets the dealer network exercise most of the judgement regarding warranty and they mostly do a good enough job.
    - CogitoCogito 6y ago
      > How do you figure out if any seemingly unrelated modifications are responsible for the malfunction etc.? A judgement call is made? If Tesla could provide evidence that you are the one that caused the damage, then of course the warranty shouldn't apply.
      - gameswithgo 6y ago
        In real life the way you figure it out is the dealer just does what they want and you deal with it, unless you have time to take them to court over it.
      - gambiting 6y ago
        That's a solved problem - you get an independent expert to investigate and give their opinion.
    - linuxftw 6y ago
      Burden of proof is on the manufacturer, not the owner. Get a second opinion, take them to a small claims court. Most likely, they will not have any technical data to back up their bogus claim, you win.
  - jpgvm 6y ago
    The car is certified as a whole and warranty is then offered on it as a whole. Individual components when modified will affect the system as a whole. For instance modifying the battery pack to supply a higher peak current will increase the max performance of the motor but did you void the warranty of the battery, the motor or both?
    - gambiting 6y ago
      I mean, your logic is sound, but that's not how car warranties work in EU or the US for that matter. Car manufacturers can only void warranty on parts directly affected by your modification, and they actually have to prove that the part broke because of the modification, it just being present is not enough to void the warranty. I know of a case where the engine on a new Audi RS6 died, and Audi refused the warranty claim because a custom exhaust has been fitted, claiming that it affected the operation of the engine and destroyed it. The case went to court and Audi was unable to prove how a custom exhaust could cause the crankshaft to snap in the middle - and the court ordered them to pay for repair. There's loads of nonsense around this, with dealership frequently telling customers that if they fit their own parts they lose the entire warranty - nope, that's just not the case at all. Using your own oil, filters, brake pads and other consumable items does not void your warranty as long as they are "equivalent" items. I even heard a dealership tell a customer once that fitting tyres without manufacturer approval(MO in this case) would void the warranty - I told them that if that's the case, why is their own parts department selling entire sets of them as "original Mercedes accessories" then. The truth is it's bullshit, that's just not how warranties work.
      - jpgvm 6y ago
        That makes more sense in a traditional car, less sense in something like a Tesla which has much fewer components and a higher level of integration. There just aren't many user serviceable components in a Tesla. It's basically a computer, a battery and an eletric motor with a body sat on top.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    (Assuming you're in the US,) You're already in luck. Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act has been ruled to preserve the warranty for unrelated failures on modified vehicles. https://www.sema.org/sema-enews/2011/01/ftc-validates-right-to-install-aftermarket-parts#:~:text=%E2%80%9CUnder%20the%20Magnuson%2DMoss%20Warranty,are%20provided%20free%20of%20charge.%E2%80%9D&text=The%20warranty%20remains%20in%20effect%20for%20all%20other%20covered%20parts https://www.sema.org/sema-enews/2011/01/ftc-validates-right-.... It's not perfect because anything that increases the power of the car could be argued fairly convincingly to have contributed to the failure of another driveline component, but if you increase the power on the car, your windshield washers and trunk opener (as examples) are still covered as before.
- CogitoCogito 6y ago
  Tesla should not be able to void the warranty for things unrelated to the changes that are made.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    In the US they can't (see some sibling/nearby comments) and the burden is on them to show the mod/aftermarket item caused the failure (but not beyond reasonable doubt). However, as they are the primary supplier of parts and service, they can probably make your ownership experience fairly miserable. They might also be able to revoke access to new updates, to the supercharger network, or other Tesla-provided features that aren't protected by the Magnuson-Moss Act. (Even if they just did it for a while until the case was heard, it could be annoying.) Look at how dismally they treat 3rd-party rebuilders of crashed/flood Teslas. If you want to heavily modify a car, there are many other more platforms that I'd think are more suitable than a Tesla in terms of long-term supportability. (Not a Tesla hater by any means[0], but I think of them as close to the Apple of cars. You're paying a premium to play in their walled garden area and if you want to break out of their garden, they don't make it easy/attractive to do so.) [0] Mild disclaimer: I'm short $TSLA since very recently, but that's purely price-action-related, nothing inherently against the company.
- BunsanSpace 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty... Tesla will have to prove that your modification of the car caused the issue/defect. At least in the USA.
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    Yes car enthusiasts love to point out that law all the time, but I've never heard of anyone having say, an alternator go bad, have an aftermarket part blamed for it, then taking the dealer to court over it and winning. Maybe if you are an lawyer you can manage to do that and come out ahead. In real life people just generally eat it.
    - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
      They can eat it, but there are examples where they don't eat it. https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/sweeter_lemon_laws https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/sweeter_lemon_la...
    - linuxftw 6y ago
      In real life, we would just remove the aftermarket equipment and let the dealer sort it out.
    - kop316 6y ago
      I mean, I have an aftermarket stero in my car and I went to the dealer to get the blindspot sensors replaced. They honored the warrenty and replaced the sensors at no cost to me. In your scenario, that's also exactly what small claims court is for, or also contacting the manufacturer directly. In another scenario, a ground wire went faulty and a (shadier) dealer tried to get me to pay for the cost of the diagnostic. I said I can chat with GM about that cost and they very quickly said they would waive the fee.
    - kllrnohj 6y ago
      > but I've never heard of anyone having say, an alternator go bad, have an aftermarket part blamed for it, then taking the dealer to court over it and winning. Have you ever heard of someone having an alternator go bad and then the dealer blaming an aftermarket part on it in the first place? I've never had dealers seek out aftermarket modifications when I get service done at all. They just want to get cars in & out quickly, and they bill the manufacturer for warranty work anyway so why would they care if you had related aftermarket modifications? They only push back if they think they won't get reimbursed by the manufacturer for the warranty work. Which would tend to require "obvious" data showing modifications as a likely suspect. Tesla changes this by having the service centers also be owned by the same company footing the bill. So this is likely to be way more common of a battle going forward, though.
- murgindrag 6y ago
  > All they are doing is voiding the warranty, so you're not exactly "leasing" the car. That's all that's described in this article. This is not an isolated article. You can see articles about: * Tesla stripping features from cars when people resell them * Articles from small repair shops, unable to work on Tesla vehicles because of locked-down software * Articles about Tesla's surveillance on car owners * Deactivating vehicles it doesn't think should be driven (e.g. ones from serious accidents) * Forcing updates And so on. With Tesla, you clearly don't fully own your car.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    You think it's bad when Tesla do it just wait until the states get API access and deactivate your car over an unpaid ticket that doesn't actually exist because all these databases are filled with crap.
    - falcolas 6y ago
      Reminds me of the story about the "NULL" license plate. The story where they got all the tickets assigned to cars where the plate reading failed.
    - gruez 6y ago
      They can already do that, considering that most (normal) cars have anti-theft systems (aka remote kill switches). The only thing missing is the API access, like you mentioned.
  - jmpman 6y ago
    I can understand that Tesla can strip features when you sell the car back to Tesla, but are they doing it as part of private party transfers?
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      Yes. I recall reading about a man who sold his car with Autopilot activated, and when Tesla got wind of the sale, they deactivated Autopilot on the new owner.
- beervirus 6y ago
  https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-autopilot-disabled-remotely-used-car-update https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-aut... If they have the ability and the inclination to remotely disable features, you don't own the car.
  - derefr 6y ago
    Sure you do. You can locally disable their ability to remotely disable the car. Perfectly legal.
    - gentleman11 6y ago
      Not if it involves breaking any digital locks or decryption, iirc.
    - sbierwagen 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention#United_Stat... >Section 103 (17 U.S.C Sec. 1201(a)(1)) of the DMCA states: >No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
      - fastball 6y ago
        Is your Tesla covered by DMCA? IANAL but I don't think so. This clause is talking about DRM, which I am fairly certain is about the duplication/distribution of copyrighted content, which is not what you're doing if you bypass protections on your Tesla.
        kevingadd 6y ago
        The DMCA has been held to apply to physical hardware in the past. Until 2015 it was ambiguous whether you even had a right to hack your own motor vehicle if encryption was used to secure its firmware, since that would normally be a violation. We didn't get the right to have third parties (i.e. repair shops, professionals) do it until 2018. https://hackaday.com/2018/10/26/dmca-review-big-win-for-right-to-repair-zero-for-right-to-tinker/ https://hackaday.com/2018/10/26/dmca-review-big-win-for-righ... Tesla could probably try to argue that the DMCA applies to parts of their firmware, since as far as I'm aware it still holds for some parts of other vehicles.
- Alupis 6y ago
  > Change it all you want, but don't expect Tesla to fix your car once you've messed with it yourself. My understanding is nobody else can fix it either, since Tesla doesn't allow 3rd party repairs and presumably doesn't sell parts to 3rd party repair shops. So now you have a broken $40k driveway ornament. Who do you get to fix it if you want it fixed?
- stale2002 6y ago
  > Change it all you want, but don't expect Tesla to fix your car once you've messed with it yourself. There are laws regarding car warranties that would make Tesla's behavior illegal, if they voided your warrenty. Cars have been around for a long time, as has the laws regarding them. People have a right to repair their car, this is reflected in the law, and unless the specific modification to the car is directly related to the "failure" that you are making a warranty claim on, it would be illegal for Tesla to void the warranty. Just because a company is a tech company does not mean that they can get around laws that have existed for a long time, regarding this stuff.
- adrr 6y ago
  That’s not how warranties work. There is no such thing as voiding a warranty if you installed 3rd party parts on your car. Manufacture must prove the parts caused the issue. That is codified in law. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson–Moss_Warranty_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson–Moss_Warranty_Act
- rasz 6y ago
  Illegal https://www.autocare.org/government-affairs/issues/magnuson-moss-warranty-act/ https://www.autocare.org/government-affairs/issues/magnuson-... 'prevent manufacturers from using disclaimers on warranties in an unfair or misleading manner. Prohibits tying arrangements that condition coverage under a written warranty on the consumer's use of an article or service identified by brand, trade, or corporate name unless that article or service is provided without charge to the consumer.'
cma 6y ago
When they were running out of money they briefly raised the cost of charging to beyond (high) gasoline prices as well. They have things set up with super chargers to the point where it is as if when you bought a Mercedes you could only fuel it with Mercedes brand Roadtrip Gas when you needed to refuel on a roadtrip.
- Zanni 6y ago
  Teslas can already charge at any standard electrical outlet or Level 2 charging station with adapters that come with the car and at any Level 3 charging station in the US with an optional CHAdeMO adapter, so it's more like they've set things up so you can fuel your Mercedes at any gas station, but they built a series of Mercedes-branded gas stations throughout the country that are cheaper, faster, more convenient and exclusive in addition to the standard network.
- natch 6y ago
  >They have things set up with super chargers to the point where it is as if when you bought a Mercedes you could only fuel it with Mercedes brand Roadtrip Gas when you needed to refuel on a roadtrip. This is utterly mistaken. You can charge anywhere, using a wide variety of chargers, ranging from very fast ones to electrical outlets (hopefully at least 220v because regular outlets are very slow), or even off the grid from solar if you're set up for that.
seebetter 6y ago
Even buying a car is like car as a service model. Car companies make 80-110% of their profits from car parts and services.
- anon73044 6y ago
  I think specifically in this case Tesla wants to prove that "dealer options as a service" model is viable.
mwexler 6y ago
To be fair, you may not have much of a choice in the future. We see things that used to just be built in to purchase pricing (say, Apple Carplay) becoming subscription unlocked in brands like BMW. BMW backed down this year (2020) but once the first shot is fired... Since oncall and other services showed consumers are willing to incur ongoing fees, I think we'll see each part of the car beyond safety features tied to a sub model with no option to just purchase unless mandated by law.
- segmondy 6y ago
  It's not Apple CarPay that was the first shot fired but Apple App Store.
- KozmoNau7 6y ago
  You have the choice of not buying a car with that type of subscription features for quite some time yet, factoring in base models, non-premium brands, the used market and so on. Like with a lot of features, this will be introduced on so-called premium brands first. Unless you insist on having one of those (which you would probably lease anyway), you can easily avoid dodgy subscription features.
  - sam_lowry_ 6y ago
    Luckily there is still some competition in the automotive industry. Software-wise, we already lost to monopolies of FAANG. The privileged few use Open Source and distributed sharing platforms, but the general public has little choice but pay recurrent and ever increasing fees.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      What fees do faang companies charge on an ongoing basis that can be avoided only using OSS, in a legal manner?
      - ginko 6y ago
        Your data.
ghaff 6y ago
If we eventually get to more automated features that put more liability on the manufacturer, it's hard to imagine not having a system where the manufacturer owns the car and enforces a mandatory maintenance schedule. It's not even unreasonable if you assume the manufacturer is on the hook for an accident caused by an unpatched piece of software.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
The issue is again the legal differences between hardware and software. You own a tangible good but you only have a license to intellectual property. When cars were all hardware it was simple. But now they are more and more software and you only get licenses to use that software even if you do own the hardware it runs on. Cars are becoming like smartphones and computers. This actually all started with things like books: You own the book but not its contents.
cronix 6y ago
Do you feel the same about the phone you "own," assuming you outright purchased it? One brand is like you described above and another is a lot more open.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  Yes, that's why I recently switched. Actually really unfortunate because now my texts take quite a bit longer and I lost $50 I'd spent on apps, but definitely the right choice.
- amelius 6y ago
  One is a vending machine, the other is a billboard which looks back at you.
dheera 6y ago
I'm okay with car-as-a-service model as long as I don't have to buy the actual car, and pay only for the right to use a car, and any available car in the Tesla system, and in which Tesla deals with all breakdowns, charging, and maintainence, quite possibly by having the cars automatically take themselves offline from the rideshare system and self-drive themselves to a repair center when they are close to needing maintainence, while sending me an alternate car in its place. This would actually be a really nice transportation system to use IMO, and it's the maintainence-free aspect of it that I would value in a car-as-a-service model. I'm strongly against a hybrid model in which I purchase and own the car, am responsible for maintaining it, but I can't tweak it on my own to do whatever the hardware is safely capable of. I actually wish there are laws protecting the right of the owner of any hardware to tweak anything they own. I mean, it's my property after I bought it.
omarforgotpwd 6y ago
The cars are that much better, and you do own them.

zpeti 6y ago

All they are doing is voiding the warranty, so you're not exactly "leasing" the car. Change it all you want, but don't expect Tesla to fix your car once you've messed with it yourself. And don't expect to sue them when autopilot kills you, because it's not their responsibility any more.

belval 6y ago
That always seemed like fair game to me. If only we could have the one big warranty split into smaller warranties for each part of the car, so tampering one part of it doesn't void the entire warranty.
- SifJar 6y ago
  That sounds nice in theory, but I imagine in practice it's a bit trickier - presumably there are plenty of cases in which modifying one part of the car could cause damage to another, unmodified part. How do you figure out if any seemingly unrelated modifications are responsible for the malfunction etc.?
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    Except for a few edge cases at the margins those cascading failures are pretty obvious when they happen. Every other OEM has already had to confront this reality and every other OEM publishes upfitter guides for their vehicles so that the aftermarket knows what to do and what not to do. Every other OEM also lets the dealer network exercise most of the judgement regarding warranty and they mostly do a good enough job.
  - CogitoCogito 6y ago
    > How do you figure out if any seemingly unrelated modifications are responsible for the malfunction etc.? A judgement call is made? If Tesla could provide evidence that you are the one that caused the damage, then of course the warranty shouldn't apply.
    - gameswithgo 6y ago
      In real life the way you figure it out is the dealer just does what they want and you deal with it, unless you have time to take them to court over it.
    - gambiting 6y ago
      That's a solved problem - you get an independent expert to investigate and give their opinion.
  - linuxftw 6y ago
    Burden of proof is on the manufacturer, not the owner. Get a second opinion, take them to a small claims court. Most likely, they will not have any technical data to back up their bogus claim, you win.
- jpgvm 6y ago
  The car is certified as a whole and warranty is then offered on it as a whole. Individual components when modified will affect the system as a whole. For instance modifying the battery pack to supply a higher peak current will increase the max performance of the motor but did you void the warranty of the battery, the motor or both?
  - gambiting 6y ago
    I mean, your logic is sound, but that's not how car warranties work in EU or the US for that matter. Car manufacturers can only void warranty on parts directly affected by your modification, and they actually have to prove that the part broke because of the modification, it just being present is not enough to void the warranty. I know of a case where the engine on a new Audi RS6 died, and Audi refused the warranty claim because a custom exhaust has been fitted, claiming that it affected the operation of the engine and destroyed it. The case went to court and Audi was unable to prove how a custom exhaust could cause the crankshaft to snap in the middle - and the court ordered them to pay for repair. There's loads of nonsense around this, with dealership frequently telling customers that if they fit their own parts they lose the entire warranty - nope, that's just not the case at all. Using your own oil, filters, brake pads and other consumable items does not void your warranty as long as they are "equivalent" items. I even heard a dealership tell a customer once that fitting tyres without manufacturer approval(MO in this case) would void the warranty - I told them that if that's the case, why is their own parts department selling entire sets of them as "original Mercedes accessories" then. The truth is it's bullshit, that's just not how warranties work.
    - jpgvm 6y ago
      That makes more sense in a traditional car, less sense in something like a Tesla which has much fewer components and a higher level of integration. There just aren't many user serviceable components in a Tesla. It's basically a computer, a battery and an eletric motor with a body sat on top.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  (Assuming you're in the US,) You're already in luck. Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act has been ruled to preserve the warranty for unrelated failures on modified vehicles. https://www.sema.org/sema-enews/2011/01/ftc-validates-right-to-install-aftermarket-parts#:~:text=%E2%80%9CUnder%20the%20Magnuson%2DMoss%20Warranty,are%20provided%20free%20of%20charge.%E2%80%9D&text=The%20warranty%20remains%20in%20effect%20for%20all%20other%20covered%20parts https://www.sema.org/sema-enews/2011/01/ftc-validates-right-.... It's not perfect because anything that increases the power of the car could be argued fairly convincingly to have contributed to the failure of another driveline component, but if you increase the power on the car, your windshield washers and trunk opener (as examples) are still covered as before.
CogitoCogito 6y ago
Tesla should not be able to void the warranty for things unrelated to the changes that are made.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  In the US they can't (see some sibling/nearby comments) and the burden is on them to show the mod/aftermarket item caused the failure (but not beyond reasonable doubt). However, as they are the primary supplier of parts and service, they can probably make your ownership experience fairly miserable. They might also be able to revoke access to new updates, to the supercharger network, or other Tesla-provided features that aren't protected by the Magnuson-Moss Act. (Even if they just did it for a while until the case was heard, it could be annoying.) Look at how dismally they treat 3rd-party rebuilders of crashed/flood Teslas. If you want to heavily modify a car, there are many other more platforms that I'd think are more suitable than a Tesla in terms of long-term supportability. (Not a Tesla hater by any means[0], but I think of them as close to the Apple of cars. You're paying a premium to play in their walled garden area and if you want to break out of their garden, they don't make it easy/attractive to do so.) [0] Mild disclaimer: I'm short $TSLA since very recently, but that's purely price-action-related, nothing inherently against the company.
BunsanSpace 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty... Tesla will have to prove that your modification of the car caused the issue/defect. At least in the USA.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  Yes car enthusiasts love to point out that law all the time, but I've never heard of anyone having say, an alternator go bad, have an aftermarket part blamed for it, then taking the dealer to court over it and winning. Maybe if you are an lawyer you can manage to do that and come out ahead. In real life people just generally eat it.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
    They can eat it, but there are examples where they don't eat it. https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/sweeter_lemon_laws https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/sweeter_lemon_la...
  - linuxftw 6y ago
    In real life, we would just remove the aftermarket equipment and let the dealer sort it out.
  - kop316 6y ago
    I mean, I have an aftermarket stero in my car and I went to the dealer to get the blindspot sensors replaced. They honored the warrenty and replaced the sensors at no cost to me. In your scenario, that's also exactly what small claims court is for, or also contacting the manufacturer directly. In another scenario, a ground wire went faulty and a (shadier) dealer tried to get me to pay for the cost of the diagnostic. I said I can chat with GM about that cost and they very quickly said they would waive the fee.
  - kllrnohj 6y ago
    > but I've never heard of anyone having say, an alternator go bad, have an aftermarket part blamed for it, then taking the dealer to court over it and winning. Have you ever heard of someone having an alternator go bad and then the dealer blaming an aftermarket part on it in the first place? I've never had dealers seek out aftermarket modifications when I get service done at all. They just want to get cars in & out quickly, and they bill the manufacturer for warranty work anyway so why would they care if you had related aftermarket modifications? They only push back if they think they won't get reimbursed by the manufacturer for the warranty work. Which would tend to require "obvious" data showing modifications as a likely suspect. Tesla changes this by having the service centers also be owned by the same company footing the bill. So this is likely to be way more common of a battle going forward, though.
murgindrag 6y ago
> All they are doing is voiding the warranty, so you're not exactly "leasing" the car. That's all that's described in this article. This is not an isolated article. You can see articles about: * Tesla stripping features from cars when people resell them * Articles from small repair shops, unable to work on Tesla vehicles because of locked-down software * Articles about Tesla's surveillance on car owners * Deactivating vehicles it doesn't think should be driven (e.g. ones from serious accidents) * Forcing updates And so on. With Tesla, you clearly don't fully own your car.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  You think it's bad when Tesla do it just wait until the states get API access and deactivate your car over an unpaid ticket that doesn't actually exist because all these databases are filled with crap.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    Reminds me of the story about the "NULL" license plate. The story where they got all the tickets assigned to cars where the plate reading failed.
  - gruez 6y ago
    They can already do that, considering that most (normal) cars have anti-theft systems (aka remote kill switches). The only thing missing is the API access, like you mentioned.
- jmpman 6y ago
  I can understand that Tesla can strip features when you sell the car back to Tesla, but are they doing it as part of private party transfers?
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Yes. I recall reading about a man who sold his car with Autopilot activated, and when Tesla got wind of the sale, they deactivated Autopilot on the new owner.
beervirus 6y ago
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-autopilot-disabled-remotely-used-car-update https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-aut... If they have the ability and the inclination to remotely disable features, you don't own the car.
- derefr 6y ago
  Sure you do. You can locally disable their ability to remotely disable the car. Perfectly legal.
  - gentleman11 6y ago
    Not if it involves breaking any digital locks or decryption, iirc.
  - sbierwagen 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention#United_Stat... >Section 103 (17 U.S.C Sec. 1201(a)(1)) of the DMCA states: >No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
    - fastball 6y ago
      Is your Tesla covered by DMCA? IANAL but I don't think so. This clause is talking about DRM, which I am fairly certain is about the duplication/distribution of copyrighted content, which is not what you're doing if you bypass protections on your Tesla.
      - kevingadd 6y ago
        The DMCA has been held to apply to physical hardware in the past. Until 2015 it was ambiguous whether you even had a right to hack your own motor vehicle if encryption was used to secure its firmware, since that would normally be a violation. We didn't get the right to have third parties (i.e. repair shops, professionals) do it until 2018. https://hackaday.com/2018/10/26/dmca-review-big-win-for-right-to-repair-zero-for-right-to-tinker/ https://hackaday.com/2018/10/26/dmca-review-big-win-for-righ... Tesla could probably try to argue that the DMCA applies to parts of their firmware, since as far as I'm aware it still holds for some parts of other vehicles.
Alupis 6y ago
> Change it all you want, but don't expect Tesla to fix your car once you've messed with it yourself. My understanding is nobody else can fix it either, since Tesla doesn't allow 3rd party repairs and presumably doesn't sell parts to 3rd party repair shops. So now you have a broken $40k driveway ornament. Who do you get to fix it if you want it fixed?
stale2002 6y ago
> Change it all you want, but don't expect Tesla to fix your car once you've messed with it yourself. There are laws regarding car warranties that would make Tesla's behavior illegal, if they voided your warrenty. Cars have been around for a long time, as has the laws regarding them. People have a right to repair their car, this is reflected in the law, and unless the specific modification to the car is directly related to the "failure" that you are making a warranty claim on, it would be illegal for Tesla to void the warranty. Just because a company is a tech company does not mean that they can get around laws that have existed for a long time, regarding this stuff.
adrr 6y ago
That’s not how warranties work. There is no such thing as voiding a warranty if you installed 3rd party parts on your car. Manufacture must prove the parts caused the issue. That is codified in law. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson–Moss_Warranty_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson–Moss_Warranty_Act
rasz 6y ago
Illegal https://www.autocare.org/government-affairs/issues/magnuson-moss-warranty-act/ https://www.autocare.org/government-affairs/issues/magnuson-... 'prevent manufacturers from using disclaimers on warranties in an unfair or misleading manner. Prohibits tying arrangements that condition coverage under a written warranty on the consumer's use of an article or service identified by brand, trade, or corporate name unless that article or service is provided without charge to the consumer.'

cma 6y ago

When they were running out of money they briefly raised the cost of charging to beyond (high) gasoline prices as well. They have things set up with super chargers to the point where it is as if when you bought a Mercedes you could only fuel it with Mercedes brand Roadtrip Gas when you needed to refuel on a roadtrip.

Zanni 6y ago
Teslas can already charge at any standard electrical outlet or Level 2 charging station with adapters that come with the car and at any Level 3 charging station in the US with an optional CHAdeMO adapter, so it's more like they've set things up so you can fuel your Mercedes at any gas station, but they built a series of Mercedes-branded gas stations throughout the country that are cheaper, faster, more convenient and exclusive in addition to the standard network.
natch 6y ago
>They have things set up with super chargers to the point where it is as if when you bought a Mercedes you could only fuel it with Mercedes brand Roadtrip Gas when you needed to refuel on a roadtrip. This is utterly mistaken. You can charge anywhere, using a wide variety of chargers, ranging from very fast ones to electrical outlets (hopefully at least 220v because regular outlets are very slow), or even off the grid from solar if you're set up for that.

seebetter 6y ago

Even buying a car is like car as a service model. Car companies make 80-110% of their profits from car parts and services.

anon73044 6y ago
I think specifically in this case Tesla wants to prove that "dealer options as a service" model is viable.

mwexler 6y ago

To be fair, you may not have much of a choice in the future. We see things that used to just be built in to purchase pricing (say, Apple Carplay) becoming subscription unlocked in brands like BMW. BMW backed down this year (2020) but once the first shot is fired... Since oncall and other services showed consumers are willing to incur ongoing fees, I think we'll see each part of the car beyond safety features tied to a sub model with no option to just purchase unless mandated by law.

segmondy 6y ago
It's not Apple CarPay that was the first shot fired but Apple App Store.
KozmoNau7 6y ago
You have the choice of not buying a car with that type of subscription features for quite some time yet, factoring in base models, non-premium brands, the used market and so on. Like with a lot of features, this will be introduced on so-called premium brands first. Unless you insist on having one of those (which you would probably lease anyway), you can easily avoid dodgy subscription features.
- sam_lowry_ 6y ago
  Luckily there is still some competition in the automotive industry. Software-wise, we already lost to monopolies of FAANG. The privileged few use Open Source and distributed sharing platforms, but the general public has little choice but pay recurrent and ever increasing fees.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    What fees do faang companies charge on an ongoing basis that can be avoided only using OSS, in a legal manner?
    - ginko 6y ago
      Your data.

ghaff 6y ago

If we eventually get to more automated features that put more liability on the manufacturer, it's hard to imagine not having a system where the manufacturer owns the car and enforces a mandatory maintenance schedule. It's not even unreasonable if you assume the manufacturer is on the hook for an accident caused by an unpatched piece of software.

mytailorisrich 6y ago

The issue is again the legal differences between hardware and software. You own a tangible good but you only have a license to intellectual property. When cars were all hardware it was simple. But now they are more and more software and you only get licenses to use that software even if you do own the hardware it runs on. Cars are becoming like smartphones and computers. This actually all started with things like books: You own the book but not its contents.

cronix 6y ago

Do you feel the same about the phone you "own," assuming you outright purchased it? One brand is like you described above and another is a lot more open.

colinmhayes 6y ago
Yes, that's why I recently switched. Actually really unfortunate because now my texts take quite a bit longer and I lost $50 I'd spent on apps, but definitely the right choice.
amelius 6y ago
One is a vending machine, the other is a billboard which looks back at you.

dheera 6y ago

I'm okay with car-as-a-service model as long as I don't have to buy the actual car, and pay only for the right to use a car, and any available car in the Tesla system, and in which Tesla deals with all breakdowns, charging, and maintainence, quite possibly by having the cars automatically take themselves offline from the rideshare system and self-drive themselves to a repair center when they are close to needing maintainence, while sending me an alternate car in its place. This would actually be a really nice transportation system to use IMO, and it's the maintainence-free aspect of it that I would value in a car-as-a-service model. I'm strongly against a hybrid model in which I purchase and own the car, am responsible for maintaining it, but I can't tweak it on my own to do whatever the hardware is safely capable of. I actually wish there are laws protecting the right of the owner of any hardware to tweak anything they own. I mean, it's my property after I bought it.

omarforgotpwd 6y ago

The cars are that much better, and you do own them.