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Indeed they are... It's been interesting watching the excuses and defenses of Tesla pivot in the wind like a weathervane in a tornado. Whatever Tesla does is

by Syonyk 6y ago

Indeed they are... It's been interesting watching the excuses and defenses of Tesla pivot in the wind like a weathervane in a tornado. Whatever Tesla does is good, right, perfect, and everyone else sucks, no matter how nonsensical this ends up sounding to literally everyone else. The excuses for why, see, really it's GOOD that you can't fix your own car, can't access the diagnostic screens the car has built in, etc, are particularly tortured. Someone might fix it wrong, see, and then that would look bad for Tesla if it blew up. Yes, there's a particularly strong media focus on Tesla, but if you go talking to the world endlessly about how amazing your self driving system is, and how capable it is, it's reasonable to expect people to take notice when it drives at highway speeds into stationary solid objects. The latest tortured explanations are more about Bitcoin, though - the scourge of the planet, wasting energy, horrible carbon footprint per transaction, that... oh, uh... isn't /that/ bad... and, uh... see, Mars needs a currency, and... (etc). It would probably be less annoying if the community of Tesla supporters occasionally remembered that a $100k car isn't pocket change for everyone. I've talked, far too often, to people who defend Tesla's practices by stating, "Well, I don't want to work on my car, and I don't think the Service Centers are overpriced, so I don't see why anyone else cares. Besides, they're no more expensive than a BMW, Mercedes, or Porsche dealership, so what's the problem?" I'll stick to stuff I can work on. Even if I choose not to work on it, at least if I can access it fully, it means some other independent shop can do the same thing.

twirlock 6y ago
You forgot to say snake oil salesman and something about failed or delayed rocket launches.
londons_explore 6y ago
Are Tesla's actually more locked down than any other modern brand of car? None give source code for the ECU... Tesla's seem to have a rooting and hacking community, which at least gives you more power than a closed source blob that nobody has gotten root on like every other manufacturer.
- yladiz 6y ago
  But, why do you need to “root” a car? It’s not a phone and I don’t really want to mess with a system that could potentially control my fate.
  - MaxikCZ 6y ago
    Because its my car? I bought it? 30 years ago you could dig into basically any car, (and their safety was worse than of modern cars), yet how often you saw someone modify their car to the point of health incident? But when it broke, at least we could open the hood and make it run again. Now instead we got cars that will refuse to move if it happen to update firmware in underground garage, and you cant get it out without teslatruck. (I think this was fixed, but the point still stands) > Its not a phone Why is it okay for phones? How come we somehow collectively aggreed that its OK for manufacturers to lock our own phones away from us? I really hate this attitude of "I dont trust myself to tinker with it so I think noone else should be allowed to". Thats the attitude which, if it gets enough traction, takes our freedoms away.
    - yladiz 6y ago
      > Why is it okay for phones? Because phones are not enormous metal machines that could easily get into an accident and kill its passengers.
      - finnthehuman 6y ago
        >enormous metal machines that could easily get into an accident Changing brake pads is a easy job that I did in the backyard a number of times. Then I moved to the city and got an office job. A 40 year old engineer that works on safety critical software gave me a snide remark about how stopping a car is too important and he'd be afraid to take that into his own hands. I quickly learned not to talk about DIY on anything that wasn't toys unless I wanted to listen to people generalize from their own lack of experience and consider me reckless.
        6y ago
erikbye 6y ago
100k?
nicbou 6y ago
Not necessarily stuff you can work on, but stuff that doesn't come with vendor lock. If the manufacturer is the only one who can fix the product, you've got yourself a subscription.
- Syonyk 6y ago
  > If the manufacturer is the only one who can fix the product, you've got yourself a subscription. reply Indeed. I would have zero complaints at all about Tesla's maintenance programs and service center only requirements if they didn't sell the cars, but only leased them. Great, your car, your rules. Selling the car, and telling me I can't work on it, though... not OK with that.

by Syonyk 6y ago

twirlock 6y ago

You forgot to say snake oil salesman and something about failed or delayed rocket launches.

londons_explore 6y ago

Are Tesla's actually more locked down than any other modern brand of car? None give source code for the ECU... Tesla's seem to have a rooting and hacking community, which at least gives you more power than a closed source blob that nobody has gotten root on like every other manufacturer.

yladiz 6y ago
But, why do you need to “root” a car? It’s not a phone and I don’t really want to mess with a system that could potentially control my fate.
- MaxikCZ 6y ago
  Because its my car? I bought it? 30 years ago you could dig into basically any car, (and their safety was worse than of modern cars), yet how often you saw someone modify their car to the point of health incident? But when it broke, at least we could open the hood and make it run again. Now instead we got cars that will refuse to move if it happen to update firmware in underground garage, and you cant get it out without teslatruck. (I think this was fixed, but the point still stands) > Its not a phone Why is it okay for phones? How come we somehow collectively aggreed that its OK for manufacturers to lock our own phones away from us? I really hate this attitude of "I dont trust myself to tinker with it so I think noone else should be allowed to". Thats the attitude which, if it gets enough traction, takes our freedoms away.
  - yladiz 6y ago
    > Why is it okay for phones? Because phones are not enormous metal machines that could easily get into an accident and kill its passengers.
    - finnthehuman 6y ago
      >enormous metal machines that could easily get into an accident Changing brake pads is a easy job that I did in the backyard a number of times. Then I moved to the city and got an office job. A 40 year old engineer that works on safety critical software gave me a snide remark about how stopping a car is too important and he'd be afraid to take that into his own hands. I quickly learned not to talk about DIY on anything that wasn't toys unless I wanted to listen to people generalize from their own lack of experience and consider me reckless.
      - 6y ago

erikbye 6y ago

100k?

nicbou 6y ago

Not necessarily stuff you can work on, but stuff that doesn't come with vendor lock. If the manufacturer is the only one who can fix the product, you've got yourself a subscription.

Syonyk 6y ago
> If the manufacturer is the only one who can fix the product, you've got yourself a subscription. reply Indeed. I would have zero complaints at all about Tesla's maintenance programs and service center only requirements if they didn't sell the cars, but only leased them. Great, your car, your rules. Selling the car, and telling me I can't work on it, though... not OK with that.