5 ms·

Tesla Network Traffic [video]

55 points by faebi 3y ago

oittaa 3y ago
The bit about autonomous charging in the end is interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla were working with the company mentioned to "standardize" some kind of automatic charging, and trying to avoid another Chademo/CCS/NACS mess.
- natch 3y ago
  It seems likely you already have things straight yourself, but for others who happen to be reading, NACS is not a mess; the mess is the fact that manufacturers other than Tesla neglected to adopt it for many years and stuck with a horrific industry mix of CHAdeMO and CCS.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    NACS was only made openly available to other manufacturers a year ago[1] so not sure how anyone could have adopted it any sooner than that. [1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-standard https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-s...
    - natch 3y ago
      Not exactly. It was offered to everyone from the beginning and they all decided to spurn it until they didn’t. They could have come on board earlier if they wanted to. Now Tesla has put in place the systems to collect payment from people without Teslas. Elon made it happen even without needing the other companies to play along. All you need is an adapter and a Tesla account. Meantime some auto makers have decided they will finally get smart and put NACS ports directly into their cars in the future. Could have happened much earlier though. The offer to let any car company use the network if they would do proportionate cost sharing for the buildout was very public and is very well known. Now it will be individual auto owners who are kicking in payment to help build out the network. Presumably if you drive a non-Tesla your charging rates will be higher to make up for the fact that your car manufacturer is essentially freeloading off the efforts of Tesla and the investments of Tesla’s customers.
      - mwint 3y ago
        Why is this downvoted?
        oittaa 3y ago
        Because this website is full of bitter losers who will downvote if someone is calling out their lies. Doubly so if it's related to Tesla.
        taneq 3y ago
        Downvote = disagree, for some of the readership here.
    - natch 3y ago
      According to Elon they were already adopting it in 2020, which is more than a year ago. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1340978686212800513 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1340978686212800513 And it was openly offered in 2014. But of course adoption takes some time.
  - semiquaver 3y ago
    Your hacker news comment history is almost entirely shilling for Tesla, much of it misleading or misinformed.
    - natch 3y ago
      I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but there is actually a lot of activist spreading of misinformation against Tesla out there, for various reasons, some well meaning and some nefarious. Sometimes this misinformation gets picked up and innocently regurgitated on Hacker News. The reason I try to offer a counter to that misinformation is that I feel it’s a pity we are wasting efforts on unproductive paths and neglecting chances to have better things. And I feel we have a better future if gas car companies die sooner. So that covers the “shilling” part as you put it. As for mistakes or what you see as misinformation from me, please free to clue me in to anything I got wrong. I’m always interested in learning.
      - semiquaver 3y ago
        > misinformation Take your comment in this thread as an example. You criticized other auto manufacturers for their role in a “horrific” mess of charging standards for not adopting what was until recently a Tesla proprietary charging system that they had no option to use.
        natch 3y ago
        But they did have an option. It was offered in 2014: https://techcrunch.com/2014/06/09/tesla-wants-to-open-its-supercharger-standard-to-other-electric-car-makers/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/06/09/tesla-wants-to-open-its-su... The offer was backed up with a patent sharing offer: https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you Tesla also made it clear that patent sharing while on the table was not necessarily a requirement, although there were other requirements for cost sharing: https://www.engadget.com/2014-06-09-tesla-to-share-supercharger-patents.html https://www.engadget.com/2014-06-09-tesla-to-share-superchar... This is in 2014. Nobody took Tesla up on the offer. Of course, things are complex, and they had their reasons. One I suppose was Tesla started out with a pretty inflexible payment model that basically sold cars with charging for life (back then) with the cost bundled into the car price. This might have been a hangup for the bean counters at other companies. Letting bean counters run the show to the exclusion of giving a good charging experience is worthy of criticism, imho, but those other car companies are free to run their businesses as they see fit. More recently, Tesla has made the payment options more flexible, and is moving NACS to be an actual standard, so the platform is getting easier to adopt, and here we are. Edit: And thank you, I did learn a few things researching and writing this post.
  - dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
    > NACS is not a mess No one is claiming that, but it is obviously a party to said mess. Tesla created a proprietary connector instead of adapting a standard. 10 years later they offered it as an open standard. If you wanted to create unnecessary proliferation of standards, that's how you'd go about it.
  - oittaa 3y ago
    Yes, NACS is a very nice charger implementation. Just like Tesla's modified Type 2 was in Europe since it enabled DC charging with a Type 2 connector. Unfortunately they had to start using CCS 2, but it's not all bad since nowadays Tesla's charging infrastructure in Europe is really good and basically everyone benefits from it.
miduil 3y ago
I know there is always the balance between fault tolerance, which is a highly valued good for a car, and complying with specs and how things "should be". Certainly, requesting DHCP and re-authenticating with a Wi-Fi router is nothing you should do - in particular if your unencrypted HTTP request to Akamai is 404'ing. I wonder what is supposed to be returned there. Overall it seems to me that this whole system was rushed and the never touch again since it is kinda working.
- api 3y ago
  > Overall it seems to me that this whole system was rushed and the never touch again since it is kinda working. That’s most software.
  - dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
    Possibly, but it's a bit distressing when it's in your car. Makes you wonder how deep the rot goes.
pests 3y ago
Crazy that he happens upon the SSID string which turned out to be randomly generated. Very interesting about the auto charging. I can imagine the probe request is to connect to the charger to allow it to be completely automated.
- tcmb 3y ago
  Yeah, sounds like that company's wifi on their chargers has this SSID. I hope they're not relying on a 'secret' SSID as the sole security mechanism, assuming it to be safe because nobody can enter it manually since it's not ASCII characters.
  - pests 3y ago
    > sole security mechanism I doubt it. Just a well-known name to get on the same network to auth some more. Rememebr payment will have to be handled during this at somepoint so trust me, they won't forget to figure out who to bill. I'd imagine these would be supporting more than just Tesla vehicles so you already have a possible adversarial relationship with its users.
bastard_op 3y ago
As expected of a Musk-ism, it's a bunch of sloppy applications spewing garbage constantly to the network, be it your wifi home network or cellular on the road. About what I'd expect of an app-enabled Chinese sex toy, not a $100k car.
- electrondood 3y ago
  Sir, this is HN, not Reddit.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - SilverBirch 3y ago
    Actually, having watched the video I think the comment is justified. Really? Spamming DHCP, doing DNS lookups of random websites, random NTP requests. Yeah I think it's fair to say this is just an Elon Musk mess.
    - valianteffort 3y ago
      Yes I'm sure Elon personally wrote this code.
      - SilverBirch 3y ago
        It's the same organisational structure that results in producing cars with massive panel gaps. A basic set of incentives in the organisation to do things quickly instead of properly which is worrying in a safety critical application.

55 points by faebi 3y ago

The bit about autonomous charging in the end is interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla were working with the company mentioned to "standardize" some kind of automatic charging, and trying to avoid another Chademo/CCS/NACS mess.

natch 3y ago
It seems likely you already have things straight yourself, but for others who happen to be reading, NACS is not a mess; the mess is the fact that manufacturers other than Tesla neglected to adopt it for many years and stuck with a horrific industry mix of CHAdeMO and CCS.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  NACS was only made openly available to other manufacturers a year ago[1] so not sure how anyone could have adopted it any sooner than that. [1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-standard https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-s...
  - natch 3y ago
    Not exactly. It was offered to everyone from the beginning and they all decided to spurn it until they didn’t. They could have come on board earlier if they wanted to. Now Tesla has put in place the systems to collect payment from people without Teslas. Elon made it happen even without needing the other companies to play along. All you need is an adapter and a Tesla account. Meantime some auto makers have decided they will finally get smart and put NACS ports directly into their cars in the future. Could have happened much earlier though. The offer to let any car company use the network if they would do proportionate cost sharing for the buildout was very public and is very well known. Now it will be individual auto owners who are kicking in payment to help build out the network. Presumably if you drive a non-Tesla your charging rates will be higher to make up for the fact that your car manufacturer is essentially freeloading off the efforts of Tesla and the investments of Tesla’s customers.
    - mwint 3y ago
      Why is this downvoted?
      - oittaa 3y ago
        Because this website is full of bitter losers who will downvote if someone is calling out their lies. Doubly so if it's related to Tesla.
      - taneq 3y ago
        Downvote = disagree, for some of the readership here.
  - natch 3y ago
    According to Elon they were already adopting it in 2020, which is more than a year ago. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1340978686212800513 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1340978686212800513 And it was openly offered in 2014. But of course adoption takes some time.
- semiquaver 3y ago
  Your hacker news comment history is almost entirely shilling for Tesla, much of it misleading or misinformed.
  - natch 3y ago
    I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but there is actually a lot of activist spreading of misinformation against Tesla out there, for various reasons, some well meaning and some nefarious. Sometimes this misinformation gets picked up and innocently regurgitated on Hacker News. The reason I try to offer a counter to that misinformation is that I feel it’s a pity we are wasting efforts on unproductive paths and neglecting chances to have better things. And I feel we have a better future if gas car companies die sooner. So that covers the “shilling” part as you put it. As for mistakes or what you see as misinformation from me, please free to clue me in to anything I got wrong. I’m always interested in learning.
    - semiquaver 3y ago
      > misinformation Take your comment in this thread as an example. You criticized other auto manufacturers for their role in a “horrific” mess of charging standards for not adopting what was until recently a Tesla proprietary charging system that they had no option to use.
      - natch 3y ago
        But they did have an option. It was offered in 2014: https://techcrunch.com/2014/06/09/tesla-wants-to-open-its-supercharger-standard-to-other-electric-car-makers/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/06/09/tesla-wants-to-open-its-su... The offer was backed up with a patent sharing offer: https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you Tesla also made it clear that patent sharing while on the table was not necessarily a requirement, although there were other requirements for cost sharing: https://www.engadget.com/2014-06-09-tesla-to-share-supercharger-patents.html https://www.engadget.com/2014-06-09-tesla-to-share-superchar... This is in 2014. Nobody took Tesla up on the offer. Of course, things are complex, and they had their reasons. One I suppose was Tesla started out with a pretty inflexible payment model that basically sold cars with charging for life (back then) with the cost bundled into the car price. This might have been a hangup for the bean counters at other companies. Letting bean counters run the show to the exclusion of giving a good charging experience is worthy of criticism, imho, but those other car companies are free to run their businesses as they see fit. More recently, Tesla has made the payment options more flexible, and is moving NACS to be an actual standard, so the platform is getting easier to adopt, and here we are. Edit: And thank you, I did learn a few things researching and writing this post.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
  > NACS is not a mess No one is claiming that, but it is obviously a party to said mess. Tesla created a proprietary connector instead of adapting a standard. 10 years later they offered it as an open standard. If you wanted to create unnecessary proliferation of standards, that's how you'd go about it.
- oittaa 3y ago
  Yes, NACS is a very nice charger implementation. Just like Tesla's modified Type 2 was in Europe since it enabled DC charging with a Type 2 connector. Unfortunately they had to start using CCS 2, but it's not all bad since nowadays Tesla's charging infrastructure in Europe is really good and basically everyone benefits from it.

miduil 3y ago

I know there is always the balance between fault tolerance, which is a highly valued good for a car, and complying with specs and how things "should be". Certainly, requesting DHCP and re-authenticating with a Wi-Fi router is nothing you should do - in particular if your unencrypted HTTP request to Akamai is 404'ing. I wonder what is supposed to be returned there. Overall it seems to me that this whole system was rushed and the never touch again since it is kinda working.

api 3y ago
> Overall it seems to me that this whole system was rushed and the never touch again since it is kinda working. That’s most software.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
  Possibly, but it's a bit distressing when it's in your car. Makes you wonder how deep the rot goes.

pests 3y ago

Crazy that he happens upon the SSID string which turned out to be randomly generated. Very interesting about the auto charging. I can imagine the probe request is to connect to the charger to allow it to be completely automated.

tcmb 3y ago
Yeah, sounds like that company's wifi on their chargers has this SSID. I hope they're not relying on a 'secret' SSID as the sole security mechanism, assuming it to be safe because nobody can enter it manually since it's not ASCII characters.
- pests 3y ago
  > sole security mechanism I doubt it. Just a well-known name to get on the same network to auth some more. Rememebr payment will have to be handled during this at somepoint so trust me, they won't forget to figure out who to bill. I'd imagine these would be supporting more than just Tesla vehicles so you already have a possible adversarial relationship with its users.

bastard_op 3y ago

As expected of a Musk-ism, it's a bunch of sloppy applications spewing garbage constantly to the network, be it your wifi home network or cellular on the road. About what I'd expect of an app-enabled Chinese sex toy, not a $100k car.

electrondood 3y ago
Sir, this is HN, not Reddit.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- SilverBirch 3y ago
  Actually, having watched the video I think the comment is justified. Really? Spamming DHCP, doing DNS lookups of random websites, random NTP requests. Yeah I think it's fair to say this is just an Elon Musk mess.
  - valianteffort 3y ago
    Yes I'm sure Elon personally wrote this code.
    - SilverBirch 3y ago
      It's the same organisational structure that results in producing cars with massive panel gaps. A basic set of incentives in the organisation to do things quickly instead of properly which is worrying in a safety critical application.