10 ms·

Tesla Fleet Telemetry

214 points by shekhar101 3y ago

drewda 3y ago
> Tesla strongly encourages providers to only collect data they need, limited to frequency that they need. If only...
- bheadmaster 3y ago
  The problem with data is that they can often reveal information you need, but didn't even know you need. The way I understand Tesla's meaning of "data they need" is the data that you know exists, know is useful, and has a predefined purpose. However, blind data mining can often bring insight that may give you an edge over competition, so the unethical data collectors have an advantage. On the other hand, collecting all available data makes you biased by the particular nature of data collected - not everthing that is measurable is important, and not everything that's important is measurable. Even 100% accurate data can lead you astray if it gives you an incomplete picture. That's how we got algorithms that optimize outrage, because outrage and stress create massive engagement.
  - WWLink 3y ago
    Then you get the weird software engineers that are very defensive of spying on their users lol.
    - judge2020 3y ago
      I mean, it's all logging how users use your product. For things that aren't cloud-dependent, there are toggles in the car the user can click to turn them off, and it doesn't harm almost any functionality (of course disabling app camera access in the car will prevent you from seeing your live sentry cam in the app; it'll still record locally to the USB though).
  - sodality2 3y ago
    > That's how we got algorithms that optimize outrage, because outrage and stress create massive engagement. I mean, in this case, it's not a "problem", it's a predetermined goal. It's not some sort of accident that they optimize for engagement, it's explicitly what they want to optimize for. The fact that it causes harmful interaction isn't an unwanted side effect, at least for the social media company, but a means to an end.
    - hatthew 3y ago
      It is absolutely an accident. Engagement recommender systems do not optimize for outrage, they optimize for engagement. It just turns out that outrage causes engagement. The difference is that at no point is there a human who says "Let's cause outrage!" It's the algorithms that figure out the connection, which is the point being made by the person you replied to.
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
        The second it became clear that outrage causes more engagement than anything else, using an engagement optimizing system became equivalent to pushing for outrage. You cannot do otherwise without EXTREME intervention.
    - bheadmaster 3y ago
      The assumption is that engagement = good for business. I personally believe it isn't, as I've personally quit all social networks (notwithstanding HN and a few private communities) because they made me addicted and unhappy. Unhappy users stay because they're addicted, and a part of them quits. Happy users stay because they want to. Not making people unhappy is good for business. Or at least I hope it is...
leoh 3y ago
>At Tesla we believe that security and privacy are core tenets of any modern technology. Customers should be able to decide what data they share with third parties, how they share it, and when it can be shared. We've developed a decentralized framework: "Fleet Telemetry" that allows customers to create a secure and direct bridge from their Tesla devices to any provider they authorize. Complete non-sequitur. “We care about your privacy” “Here’s a way to share private information with others” Also, un-stated “there ain’t nothing you can do about sharing your private data with us” Cool that they give you a way to access some of your data at all though, I guess
- darknavi 3y ago
  > “there ain’t nothing you can do about sharing your private data with us” FWIW there are settings in the car to disable certain things. Not sure how much it _actually_ disables though.
  - moffkalast 3y ago
    Disable and delete seem to just mean "hide from the end user" these days.
    - jackmott 3y ago
      [dead]
    - the_sleaze9 3y ago
      "Soft delete", and it's a requirement in almost everything
      - moffkalast 3y ago
        So is 'the right to be forgotten' under GDPR. As such, Tesla, OpenAI, etc. cannot legally train their models on EU customer data because we can at any point request a hard delete, and they wouldn't be able to comply without removing it all from the dataset and retraining. In reality though, I assume they still do it and merely pretend they comply with it.
wilg 3y ago
Seems like the idea here is to provide a public API for third party integrations, which currently use a private API.
- axus 3y ago
  Like that other Elon Musk company!
  - munk-a 3y ago
    If you're referring to Twitter it actually has had a legendarily awful track record with API access. Reddit is trying its best to dethrone it though.
amluto 3y ago
> Fleet Telemetry is a server reference implementation. The service handles device connectivity, receives, and stores transmitted data. Once configured, devices establish a websocket connection to push configurable telemetry records. Fleet Telemetry provides clients with ack, error, or rate limit responses. I assume this means that Tesla devices can be configured to speak the client end of this protocol, and that fleet operators might enable it. If so, that’s kind of neat. Of course, it would be nice if Tesla telemetry non-fleet vehicles worked the same way and could be turned off.
modeless 3y ago
This is cool, I've been thinking about building an application that polls the reverse engineered Tesla API, but an officially supported solution sounds much better. Is there any documentation about how users authorize applications? Seems like this allows vehicles to connect directly to your own server instead of having a Tesla server act as intermediary. Will it be free to use then? I guess Tesla is still footing the bill for cellular bandwidth used, so it probably won't be free.
- denysvitali 3y ago
  https://github.com/adriankumpf/teslamate https://github.com/adriankumpf/teslamate ?
  - jnsaff2 3y ago
    Teslamate is awesome. I've been running it for almost a year and it just keeps on trucking without any issues. Completely open source written in Elixir uses Phoenix LiveView, data in Postgres and provides prebuilt Grafana dashboards as well. Also authentication tokens are done locally and refreshed nicely so no fear of leaking tokens/passwords.
    - denysvitali 3y ago
      Same positive experience here. I love that tool!
  - modeless 3y ago
    Yes, that is an example of an application that polls the reverse engineered Tesla API. Not the application I wanted to build and not something using this officially supported method (understandably because this is new).
bonestamp2 3y ago
I wonder if they started building this API to comply with the newer Massachusetts right to repair law, then just made it public when the feds told automakers to ignore the Massachusetts law.
- VectorLock 3y ago
  That was the first thing I thought of when I saw this post and read the code a bit. Also fuck the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for telling auto makers to ignore a very well intentioned state law.
  - bonestamp2 3y ago
    Agreed. It was well intentioned, but I think it went too far by trying to prescribe the solution. Their 2012 law was much better written and it was easy for automakers to implement (I did the technical implementation for one automaker).
bouke 3y ago
Every time Tesla refers to the cars they sold to customers as their ‘fleet’, I get the feeling they don’t really recognise they are no longer the owner of those vehicles. Fleet as defined in Oxford Dictionary: “A number of vehicles or aircraft working together, or under the same ownership.” (edit: use actual Oxford definition)
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  Dropped my Model Y off for a warranty repair a few weeks ago. Asked the service desk if they needed the key, they said no. Apparently they can access the car whenever they like.
  - placeholderTest 3y ago
    All car manufacturers have had master keys for the past 100 years, it’s not a new concept.
    - thebruce87m 3y ago
      Well it’s the first time I’ve ever had to not give keys when handing a car over, so clearly something is different.
- 015a 3y ago
  "Operated as a unit" is not an inaccurate description of Tesla's footprint. Every one of their cars, assuming factory-ish conditions, is sending live, realtime data back to Tesla-owned servers. That data is analyzed, and the output of that analysis impacts the driving behavior of the vehicles in the future (training their AI models). Commands are sent from Tesla's servers to change the operational state of the car every single day (most of the time, I hope, at the behest of the owner, e.g. "turn on the AC"). That's a fleet. You may not like it, but that's what Tesla owners knowingly opt-in to.
- ChrisClark 3y ago
  This is referencing your own fleet of Tesla vehicles though, like company cars or rental fleet. Not a reference to the Tesla company's fleet.
seanieb 3y ago
That’s great and all, but I’d settle for my Model 3 Autopilot staying in its lane and not trying to slam me into the median.
- simondotau 3y ago
  I've used many brands of adaptive cruise control with lane centering and none of them are absolutely trustworthy. I don't see why anyone would expect Tesla's adaptive cruise control with lane centering to be any different. Especially considering they called it "autopilot", a term which can refer to the performing of rote tasks without self-awareness.[0] [0] https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/on-autopilot https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/on-a...
  - VectorLock 3y ago
    Which brands did you try and how much did you try them?
awinter-py 3y ago
congratulations your motor vehicle is now dependent on kubernetes pov you are headed for a collision and something is wrong. you issue a describe command ... Type Reason Age ---- ------ ---- Normal Sync 100s (x3 over 100s) Is that an expected status for this component? The distance narrows ...
- cryptonector 3y ago
  F-16s have kubernetes on them now[0]. [0] https://thenewstack.io/how-the-u-s-air-force-deployed-kubernetes-and-istio-on-an-f-16-in-45-days/ https://thenewstack.io/how-the-u-s-air-force-deployed-kubern...
  - awinter-py 3y ago
    it sounds from the article like this is on either 1 or 3 planes and hopefully that number has decreased since 2019 hoping 'deployed in 45 days' doesn't mean what I think it means
  - rkagerer 3y ago
    Good grief
- chroma 3y ago
  The Kubernetes implementation is on the server side, not the car. The only way to control the car is through Tesla's API,[1] and that doesn't let you do dangerous stuff like turn the wheel while someone is driving. Even if you could overwrite the software on the car, you'd still have to contend with the physical controls available to the driver. The steering wheel is physically connected to a typical rack and pinion setup. The brake pedal is physically connected to hydraulic lines just like every other car on the road. And like most cars, the brakes are more powerful than the motor. 1. There's no official documentation but a big chunk of it has been reverse engineered: https://tesla-api.timdorr.com/vehicle/commands https://tesla-api.timdorr.com/vehicle/commands
  - judge2020 3y ago
siliconc0w 3y ago
I may be missing something but how do you get your specific client_config deployed to your car? The quickstart says, "Share with Tesla" - do you like send them an email asking nicely?
- tamu_nerd 3y ago
  I had the same question. There doesn't seem to be any information regarding next steps once the server is running.
bytesmith 3y ago
Based on the message spec[0], it doesn't look like this can be used to track Full Self Driving disengagements which is a shame. However, for its intended purpose which is presumably to help 3rd parties (eg Hertz) manage fleets it seems like a boon. [0] https://github.com/teslamotors/fleet-telemetry/blob/main/protos/vehicle_data.proto https://github.com/teslamotors/fleet-telemetry/blob/main/pro...
abledon 3y ago
I'm a kubernetes noob, in https://github.com/teslamotors/helm-charts/blob/main/charts/fleet-telemetry/README.md https://github.com/teslamotors/helm-charts/blob/main/charts/... why do they do `helm repo add teslamotors https://teslamotors.github.io/helm-charts/ https://teslamotors.github.io/helm-charts/` instead of `helm repo add teslamotors https://github.com/teslamotors/helm-charts/ https://github.com/teslamotors/helm-charts/` ? isn't the first one a webpage rather than a repo?
- AgentK20 3y ago
  The github.io site that they include the link to is the actual repository that can be read by Helm, in particular by it polling the known "index.yaml" file at https://teslamotors.github.io/helm-charts/index.yaml https://teslamotors.github.io/helm-charts/index.yaml. Something _could_ be done using Github's "/raw" endpoint, but generally speaking Github pages works better for this sort of purpose and also is built to be a CDN, meaning it has additional caching layers in front of it that make it more performant.
revel 3y ago
Is there an accompanying architecture diagram that goes with this? I'm not sure which bits and pieces are included without poking through the code
x3874 3y ago
"What Tesla really means by Fleet Telemetry" https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sensitive-images-recorded-by-customer-cars-2023-04-06/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...
waffletower 3y ago
Wow this is a surprising roll-out. The k8s recommended deployment seems a bit overkill, perhaps thrown over the fence, but it shouldn't be hard to knock out a much more manageable docker compose configuration instead.

214 points by shekhar101 3y ago

drewda 3y ago

> Tesla strongly encourages providers to only collect data they need, limited to frequency that they need. If only...

bheadmaster 3y ago
The problem with data is that they can often reveal information you need, but didn't even know you need. The way I understand Tesla's meaning of "data they need" is the data that you know exists, know is useful, and has a predefined purpose. However, blind data mining can often bring insight that may give you an edge over competition, so the unethical data collectors have an advantage. On the other hand, collecting all available data makes you biased by the particular nature of data collected - not everthing that is measurable is important, and not everything that's important is measurable. Even 100% accurate data can lead you astray if it gives you an incomplete picture. That's how we got algorithms that optimize outrage, because outrage and stress create massive engagement.
- WWLink 3y ago
  Then you get the weird software engineers that are very defensive of spying on their users lol.
  - judge2020 3y ago
    I mean, it's all logging how users use your product. For things that aren't cloud-dependent, there are toggles in the car the user can click to turn them off, and it doesn't harm almost any functionality (of course disabling app camera access in the car will prevent you from seeing your live sentry cam in the app; it'll still record locally to the USB though).
- sodality2 3y ago
  > That's how we got algorithms that optimize outrage, because outrage and stress create massive engagement. I mean, in this case, it's not a "problem", it's a predetermined goal. It's not some sort of accident that they optimize for engagement, it's explicitly what they want to optimize for. The fact that it causes harmful interaction isn't an unwanted side effect, at least for the social media company, but a means to an end.
  - hatthew 3y ago
    It is absolutely an accident. Engagement recommender systems do not optimize for outrage, they optimize for engagement. It just turns out that outrage causes engagement. The difference is that at no point is there a human who says "Let's cause outrage!" It's the algorithms that figure out the connection, which is the point being made by the person you replied to.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      The second it became clear that outrage causes more engagement than anything else, using an engagement optimizing system became equivalent to pushing for outrage. You cannot do otherwise without EXTREME intervention.
  - bheadmaster 3y ago
    The assumption is that engagement = good for business. I personally believe it isn't, as I've personally quit all social networks (notwithstanding HN and a few private communities) because they made me addicted and unhappy. Unhappy users stay because they're addicted, and a part of them quits. Happy users stay because they want to. Not making people unhappy is good for business. Or at least I hope it is...

leoh 3y ago

>At Tesla we believe that security and privacy are core tenets of any modern technology. Customers should be able to decide what data they share with third parties, how they share it, and when it can be shared. We've developed a decentralized framework: "Fleet Telemetry" that allows customers to create a secure and direct bridge from their Tesla devices to any provider they authorize. Complete non-sequitur. “We care about your privacy” “Here’s a way to share private information with others” Also, un-stated “there ain’t nothing you can do about sharing your private data with us” Cool that they give you a way to access some of your data at all though, I guess

darknavi 3y ago
> “there ain’t nothing you can do about sharing your private data with us” FWIW there are settings in the car to disable certain things. Not sure how much it _actually_ disables though.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Disable and delete seem to just mean "hide from the end user" these days.
  - jackmott 3y ago
    [dead]
  - the_sleaze9 3y ago
    "Soft delete", and it's a requirement in almost everything
    - moffkalast 3y ago
      So is 'the right to be forgotten' under GDPR. As such, Tesla, OpenAI, etc. cannot legally train their models on EU customer data because we can at any point request a hard delete, and they wouldn't be able to comply without removing it all from the dataset and retraining. In reality though, I assume they still do it and merely pretend they comply with it.

wilg 3y ago

Seems like the idea here is to provide a public API for third party integrations, which currently use a private API.

axus 3y ago
Like that other Elon Musk company!
- munk-a 3y ago
  If you're referring to Twitter it actually has had a legendarily awful track record with API access. Reddit is trying its best to dethrone it though.

amluto 3y ago

> Fleet Telemetry is a server reference implementation. The service handles device connectivity, receives, and stores transmitted data. Once configured, devices establish a websocket connection to push configurable telemetry records. Fleet Telemetry provides clients with ack, error, or rate limit responses. I assume this means that Tesla devices can be configured to speak the client end of this protocol, and that fleet operators might enable it. If so, that’s kind of neat. Of course, it would be nice if Tesla telemetry non-fleet vehicles worked the same way and could be turned off.

modeless 3y ago

This is cool, I've been thinking about building an application that polls the reverse engineered Tesla API, but an officially supported solution sounds much better. Is there any documentation about how users authorize applications? Seems like this allows vehicles to connect directly to your own server instead of having a Tesla server act as intermediary. Will it be free to use then? I guess Tesla is still footing the bill for cellular bandwidth used, so it probably won't be free.

denysvitali 3y ago
https://github.com/adriankumpf/teslamate https://github.com/adriankumpf/teslamate ?
- jnsaff2 3y ago
  Teslamate is awesome. I've been running it for almost a year and it just keeps on trucking without any issues. Completely open source written in Elixir uses Phoenix LiveView, data in Postgres and provides prebuilt Grafana dashboards as well. Also authentication tokens are done locally and refreshed nicely so no fear of leaking tokens/passwords.
  - denysvitali 3y ago
    Same positive experience here. I love that tool!
- modeless 3y ago
  Yes, that is an example of an application that polls the reverse engineered Tesla API. Not the application I wanted to build and not something using this officially supported method (understandably because this is new).

bonestamp2 3y ago

I wonder if they started building this API to comply with the newer Massachusetts right to repair law, then just made it public when the feds told automakers to ignore the Massachusetts law.

VectorLock 3y ago
That was the first thing I thought of when I saw this post and read the code a bit. Also fuck the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for telling auto makers to ignore a very well intentioned state law.
- bonestamp2 3y ago
  Agreed. It was well intentioned, but I think it went too far by trying to prescribe the solution. Their 2012 law was much better written and it was easy for automakers to implement (I did the technical implementation for one automaker).

bouke 3y ago

Every time Tesla refers to the cars they sold to customers as their ‘fleet’, I get the feeling they don’t really recognise they are no longer the owner of those vehicles. Fleet as defined in Oxford Dictionary: “A number of vehicles or aircraft working together, or under the same ownership.” (edit: use actual Oxford definition)

thebruce87m 3y ago
Dropped my Model Y off for a warranty repair a few weeks ago. Asked the service desk if they needed the key, they said no. Apparently they can access the car whenever they like.
- placeholderTest 3y ago
  All car manufacturers have had master keys for the past 100 years, it’s not a new concept.
  - thebruce87m 3y ago
    Well it’s the first time I’ve ever had to not give keys when handing a car over, so clearly something is different.
015a 3y ago
"Operated as a unit" is not an inaccurate description of Tesla's footprint. Every one of their cars, assuming factory-ish conditions, is sending live, realtime data back to Tesla-owned servers. That data is analyzed, and the output of that analysis impacts the driving behavior of the vehicles in the future (training their AI models). Commands are sent from Tesla's servers to change the operational state of the car every single day (most of the time, I hope, at the behest of the owner, e.g. "turn on the AC"). That's a fleet. You may not like it, but that's what Tesla owners knowingly opt-in to.
ChrisClark 3y ago
This is referencing your own fleet of Tesla vehicles though, like company cars or rental fleet. Not a reference to the Tesla company's fleet.

seanieb 3y ago

That’s great and all, but I’d settle for my Model 3 Autopilot staying in its lane and not trying to slam me into the median.

simondotau 3y ago
I've used many brands of adaptive cruise control with lane centering and none of them are absolutely trustworthy. I don't see why anyone would expect Tesla's adaptive cruise control with lane centering to be any different. Especially considering they called it "autopilot", a term which can refer to the performing of rote tasks without self-awareness.[0] [0] https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/on-autopilot https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/on-a...
- VectorLock 3y ago
  Which brands did you try and how much did you try them?

awinter-py 3y ago

congratulations your motor vehicle is now dependent on kubernetes pov you are headed for a collision and something is wrong. you issue a describe command ... Type Reason Age ---- ------ ---- Normal Sync 100s (x3 over 100s) Is that an expected status for this component? The distance narrows ...

cryptonector 3y ago
F-16s have kubernetes on them now[0]. [0] https://thenewstack.io/how-the-u-s-air-force-deployed-kubernetes-and-istio-on-an-f-16-in-45-days/ https://thenewstack.io/how-the-u-s-air-force-deployed-kubern...
- awinter-py 3y ago
  it sounds from the article like this is on either 1 or 3 planes and hopefully that number has decreased since 2019 hoping 'deployed in 45 days' doesn't mean what I think it means
- rkagerer 3y ago
  Good grief
chroma 3y ago
The Kubernetes implementation is on the server side, not the car. The only way to control the car is through Tesla's API,[1] and that doesn't let you do dangerous stuff like turn the wheel while someone is driving. Even if you could overwrite the software on the car, you'd still have to contend with the physical controls available to the driver. The steering wheel is physically connected to a typical rack and pinion setup. The brake pedal is physically connected to hydraulic lines just like every other car on the road. And like most cars, the brakes are more powerful than the motor. 1. There's no official documentation but a big chunk of it has been reverse engineered: https://tesla-api.timdorr.com/vehicle/commands https://tesla-api.timdorr.com/vehicle/commands
- judge2020 3y ago

siliconc0w 3y ago

I may be missing something but how do you get your specific client_config deployed to your car? The quickstart says, "Share with Tesla" - do you like send them an email asking nicely?

tamu_nerd 3y ago
I had the same question. There doesn't seem to be any information regarding next steps once the server is running.

bytesmith 3y ago

Based on the message spec[0], it doesn't look like this can be used to track Full Self Driving disengagements which is a shame. However, for its intended purpose which is presumably to help 3rd parties (eg Hertz) manage fleets it seems like a boon. [0] https://github.com/teslamotors/fleet-telemetry/blob/main/protos/vehicle_data.proto https://github.com/teslamotors/fleet-telemetry/blob/main/pro...

abledon 3y ago

I'm a kubernetes noob, in https://github.com/teslamotors/helm-charts/blob/main/charts/fleet-telemetry/README.md https://github.com/teslamotors/helm-charts/blob/main/charts/... why do they do `helm repo add teslamotors https://teslamotors.github.io/helm-charts/ https://teslamotors.github.io/helm-charts/` instead of `helm repo add teslamotors https://github.com/teslamotors/helm-charts/ https://github.com/teslamotors/helm-charts/` ? isn't the first one a webpage rather than a repo?

AgentK20 3y ago
The github.io site that they include the link to is the actual repository that can be read by Helm, in particular by it polling the known "index.yaml" file at https://teslamotors.github.io/helm-charts/index.yaml https://teslamotors.github.io/helm-charts/index.yaml. Something _could_ be done using Github's "/raw" endpoint, but generally speaking Github pages works better for this sort of purpose and also is built to be a CDN, meaning it has additional caching layers in front of it that make it more performant.

revel 3y ago

Is there an accompanying architecture diagram that goes with this? I'm not sure which bits and pieces are included without poking through the code

x3874 3y ago

"What Tesla really means by Fleet Telemetry" https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sensitive-images-recorded-by-customer-cars-2023-04-06/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...

waffletower 3y ago

Wow this is a surprising roll-out. The k8s recommended deployment seems a bit overkill, perhaps thrown over the fence, but it shouldn't be hard to knock out a much more manageable docker compose configuration instead.