5 ms·

> 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 ar

> 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.
- murgindrag 6y ago
  I've seen lots of articles about different cases, but this one is dominating the Google rankings right now: https://jalopnik.com/tesla-remotely-removes-autopilot-features-from-customer-1841472617 https://jalopnik.com/tesla-remotely-removes-autopilot-featur... The car was bought from Tesla, but the features was disabled AFTER the sale, and indeed, after a resale had been agreed to. So it's not quite with no involvement from Tesla here, but I've seen ones in completely private resales too; just can't find them right now.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
    I would returned the car to their dealer... through the window. Edit: Autopilot didn't engage, that's weird...
  - judge2020 6y ago
    Tesla's reasoning for disabling FSD on some of their buyback cars is so they can sell it for a lower price and give the user the option to one-click purchase FSD in the future without needing a service appointment. For the private sell situation, this is close to what you might be thinking of[0]. Supposedly the story is: Tesla bought a car back, however then sold it to an auction house and enabled FSD as a "demo". The auction house mistakenly listed the features as being enabled, and when the car sold Tesla never disabled the FSD demo. When the user then privately sold the car to a new owner, the new owner performed the ownership transfer, however either a human or some automated system saw that the FSD demo was enabled and disabled it. 0: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-disables-autopilot-on-model-s-without-alerting-owner-2020-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-disables-autopilot-on-...
- labcomputer 6y ago
  I think you'll find that nobody can provide a source for that scenario... because it never happened. The closest thing you'll find is that Tesla sold a used trade-in that originally had Autopilot. The car was not advertised to have Autopilot in the used listing, which is kind of a key point that people "forget" when citing the case. Tesla apparently semi-frequently disable features in trade-ins and resell the trade-in as a lower-spec car (for less money). Tesla made the mistake of not disabling autopilot before delivering the car to the second owner, who believed they hit the lottery and got free autopilot. Recall that the car was sold used as a non-autopilot car. Tesla later corrected the mistake, and it generated a shit-storm. I agree it's creepy that they can turn off features of a car that has left the factory, but they don't routinely do it for features that people has paid for.
  - murgindrag 6y ago
    The story is a little bit different, since it involved a third-party sale. A CAR DEALERSHIP sold a Tesla car with autopilot advertised to the end buyer. It was disabled by Tesla who had sold it to the dealership apparently without that advertising (the dealership presumably checked the car over, and sold it in the state it was in; not an unreasonable thing to do). But that's besides the point. No one is arguing your Tesla overlords are unkind right now. The difference between a license/lease and ownership is who has that power. Yahoo was an awesome company for the first few years. Companies change. Amazon and Google are not exactly in an upwards trajectory right now either, although for many years, they could do no wrong. I 100% believe Tesla will treat its owners well while it's in the exponential growth startup phase, and doing well. It's counting on word-of-mouth for continued growth. If I buy a car which I have licensed from Tesla, I'm hedging on that continuing. Once growth stops, companies enter the phase where they start to milk existing customers. If a company runs into financial problems, it enters a phase where it needs to exploit existing customers. That's for one person. If we all buy a car from Tesla, we're all giving up power as consumers for the long haul.
  - d3nj4l 6y ago
    https://www.autoblog.com/2020/03/23/tesla-removing-content-from-used-cars/ https://www.autoblog.com/2020/03/23/tesla-removing-content-f... - This article lists two cases.
craftinator 6y ago
I'd really like to be able to disconnect my car from the internet.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > I'd really like to be able to disconnect my car from the internet. Someone needs to create a database of 1) what cars contain LTE modems and 2) how to modify the car to disable/compromise them (e.g. how to unplug or block the antenna).
  - EForEndeavour 6y ago
    But your over-the-air updates!
  - blackaspen 6y ago
    I would love to see this.
- iso8859-1 6y ago
  If you get one with an old unpatched firmware, you could root it and you patch it to take it offline... Where is my Tesla-homebrew?
- athms 6y ago
  Connected cars using a data communication module (DCM) are going to be required in every market eventually. The EU has already mandated this. In Japan, Toyota rolled out its Connected Cars initiative to all its vehicles in 2018. In the USA, Toyota put a DCM in select cars for telemetry almost ten years ago and this year they stated all their remaining vehicles will get them. All the luxury brands such as BMW and Porsche have a DCM for telemetry, safety, and service support. States that use fuel taxes to fund road improvements will need to find other ways to tax electric vehicles and data derived from DCM will help them. Plus, autonomous transport will need to communicate.
  - Mirioron 6y ago
    Great, the EU has picked up its surveillance effort of citizens again.
dmitriid 6y ago
Soon there will be no cars that you can own. BMW is thinking of a software subscription system for cars: https://www.businessinsider.com/bmw-subscription-model-for-features-2020-7?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/bmw-subscription-model-for-f...
- donmcronald 6y ago
  Yeah. This is how I feel too. I think eventually there will be enough lobbying that you'll be forced to take your car to a dealer for regular maintenance, but it'll mostly be a scam to generate recurring revenue. They'll sell it as a safety issue, but it'll be closer to charging you an exorbitant amount of money to rotate the tires and check the fluid levels. Between that and DLC style options, they'll price anchor everything so the only option that makes any economic sense is to lease. Watch for 2nd and 3rd owner leasing options in the next 20 years IMO.
  - d3nj4l 6y ago
    You mean what the Simpsons had a gag on in Season 10?
- neuralRiot 6y ago
  Customs is the answer, there are custom EVs already.
foxyv 6y ago
Also they like to disable supercharging.

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.
murgindrag 6y ago
I've seen lots of articles about different cases, but this one is dominating the Google rankings right now: https://jalopnik.com/tesla-remotely-removes-autopilot-features-from-customer-1841472617 https://jalopnik.com/tesla-remotely-removes-autopilot-featur... The car was bought from Tesla, but the features was disabled AFTER the sale, and indeed, after a resale had been agreed to. So it's not quite with no involvement from Tesla here, but I've seen ones in completely private resales too; just can't find them right now.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  I would returned the car to their dealer... through the window. Edit: Autopilot didn't engage, that's weird...
- judge2020 6y ago
  Tesla's reasoning for disabling FSD on some of their buyback cars is so they can sell it for a lower price and give the user the option to one-click purchase FSD in the future without needing a service appointment. For the private sell situation, this is close to what you might be thinking of[0]. Supposedly the story is: Tesla bought a car back, however then sold it to an auction house and enabled FSD as a "demo". The auction house mistakenly listed the features as being enabled, and when the car sold Tesla never disabled the FSD demo. When the user then privately sold the car to a new owner, the new owner performed the ownership transfer, however either a human or some automated system saw that the FSD demo was enabled and disabled it. 0: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-disables-autopilot-on-model-s-without-alerting-owner-2020-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-disables-autopilot-on-...
labcomputer 6y ago
I think you'll find that nobody can provide a source for that scenario... because it never happened. The closest thing you'll find is that Tesla sold a used trade-in that originally had Autopilot. The car was not advertised to have Autopilot in the used listing, which is kind of a key point that people "forget" when citing the case. Tesla apparently semi-frequently disable features in trade-ins and resell the trade-in as a lower-spec car (for less money). Tesla made the mistake of not disabling autopilot before delivering the car to the second owner, who believed they hit the lottery and got free autopilot. Recall that the car was sold used as a non-autopilot car. Tesla later corrected the mistake, and it generated a shit-storm. I agree it's creepy that they can turn off features of a car that has left the factory, but they don't routinely do it for features that people has paid for.
- murgindrag 6y ago
  The story is a little bit different, since it involved a third-party sale. A CAR DEALERSHIP sold a Tesla car with autopilot advertised to the end buyer. It was disabled by Tesla who had sold it to the dealership apparently without that advertising (the dealership presumably checked the car over, and sold it in the state it was in; not an unreasonable thing to do). But that's besides the point. No one is arguing your Tesla overlords are unkind right now. The difference between a license/lease and ownership is who has that power. Yahoo was an awesome company for the first few years. Companies change. Amazon and Google are not exactly in an upwards trajectory right now either, although for many years, they could do no wrong. I 100% believe Tesla will treat its owners well while it's in the exponential growth startup phase, and doing well. It's counting on word-of-mouth for continued growth. If I buy a car which I have licensed from Tesla, I'm hedging on that continuing. Once growth stops, companies enter the phase where they start to milk existing customers. If a company runs into financial problems, it enters a phase where it needs to exploit existing customers. That's for one person. If we all buy a car from Tesla, we're all giving up power as consumers for the long haul.
- d3nj4l 6y ago
  https://www.autoblog.com/2020/03/23/tesla-removing-content-from-used-cars/ https://www.autoblog.com/2020/03/23/tesla-removing-content-f... - This article lists two cases.

craftinator 6y ago

I'd really like to be able to disconnect my car from the internet.

ardy42 6y ago
> I'd really like to be able to disconnect my car from the internet. Someone needs to create a database of 1) what cars contain LTE modems and 2) how to modify the car to disable/compromise them (e.g. how to unplug or block the antenna).
- EForEndeavour 6y ago
  But your over-the-air updates!
- blackaspen 6y ago
  I would love to see this.
iso8859-1 6y ago
If you get one with an old unpatched firmware, you could root it and you patch it to take it offline... Where is my Tesla-homebrew?
athms 6y ago
Connected cars using a data communication module (DCM) are going to be required in every market eventually. The EU has already mandated this. In Japan, Toyota rolled out its Connected Cars initiative to all its vehicles in 2018. In the USA, Toyota put a DCM in select cars for telemetry almost ten years ago and this year they stated all their remaining vehicles will get them. All the luxury brands such as BMW and Porsche have a DCM for telemetry, safety, and service support. States that use fuel taxes to fund road improvements will need to find other ways to tax electric vehicles and data derived from DCM will help them. Plus, autonomous transport will need to communicate.
- Mirioron 6y ago
  Great, the EU has picked up its surveillance effort of citizens again.

dmitriid 6y ago

Soon there will be no cars that you can own. BMW is thinking of a software subscription system for cars: https://www.businessinsider.com/bmw-subscription-model-for-features-2020-7?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/bmw-subscription-model-for-f...

donmcronald 6y ago
Yeah. This is how I feel too. I think eventually there will be enough lobbying that you'll be forced to take your car to a dealer for regular maintenance, but it'll mostly be a scam to generate recurring revenue. They'll sell it as a safety issue, but it'll be closer to charging you an exorbitant amount of money to rotate the tires and check the fluid levels. Between that and DLC style options, they'll price anchor everything so the only option that makes any economic sense is to lease. Watch for 2nd and 3rd owner leasing options in the next 20 years IMO.
- d3nj4l 6y ago
  You mean what the Simpsons had a gag on in Season 10?
neuralRiot 6y ago
Customs is the answer, there are custom EVs already.

foxyv 6y ago

Also they like to disable supercharging.