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Renault ships a brickable car with battery DRM that you're not allowed to own
- Ricapar 13y agoWho comes up with these ideas? I can't even picture a somewhat educated group of people, sitting around a board room table, thinking that this is a remotely good idea.
- mkohlmyr 13y agoWho says they are trying to come up with good ideas? They are trying to make money.
- egil 13y agoIt makes it much easier to reposess the battery (and car if applicable) if the payments stop. Although I would not buy such a car myself, I reckon many potential customers wouldn't care. At the same time, those who care will probably either be anti-drm (a minority) or have a higher risk of missing a payment (not the target audience).
- rtpg 13y agoThe DRM stuff aside, the obligatory battery rental is probably because the battery itself is expensive, and it allows them to hide the price of that.
- JulianMorrison 13y ago"Give 'em the razor; sell 'em the blades"
- rtpg 13y agomaybe if Gillette razors were made of diamonds this would make sense. I honestly don't think they'll be making much off of this scheme.
- nraynaud 13y agoI think it's mostly a scheme to suck some money from the State. There are various things involved, but I guess the biggest are the research tax credit, and the special grants for electric cars. I suppose it helps sheltering the profits from normal cars to avoid normal corporate tax. It also helps green washing the brand in the news.
- conradfr 13y agoPeople who watch what is going on in the software world ?
- sailfast 13y agoIf this makes the total cost of ownership up front significantly cheaper while keeping overall costs to operate equivalent over the time I plan on keeping the car, this is a completely rational idea. I'm not sure what everyone is so upset about. Sometimes there is a solid economic / utility argument to be made for a certain subset of consumers that will help increase sales. If you don't want it, don't buy it.
- wil421 13y agoCaaS. Car as a service. What will the corporations think of next?
- DoubleMalt 13y agoIt's called leasing. It's there for some time now ;)
- TeMPOraL 13y agoWith self-driving cars this could actually make some sense.
- tonyedgecombe 13y agoThat's called a taxi.
- gngeal 13y agoIt seems to be called a "pod", actually: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/milton-keynes-introducing-driverless-public-transport-pods-by-2017-8925119.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new... (I wonder if the Internet connection makes it an iPod. ;-))
- dublinben 13y agoAutonomous taxis would largely revolutionize car ownership. Why own your own car, when you can pay a fraction of the price to have one available whenever you need it, and never when you don't?
- alextingle 13y agoYou wouldn't download a car!
- vermontdevil 13y agoI hope no one buys this. Hit back at Renault where it hurts the most.
- kubiiii 13y agoI think no one buys it anyway. I saw two of them here in Bordeaux and one of them was the store demo model.
- rtpg 13y agoThey seem to be killing this car intentionally. You can't use wall plugs to charge, and the battery rental stuff is also a mess. Apparently they were trying to sell 40k in 6 months, and only ended up selling 10k.
- mjolk 13y agoThe fact that they were able to hock 10k makes me sad for the state of the global society.
- tomrod 13y agoCrew and fleet cars, like rentals or corporate cars I would think.
- rtpg 13y agocan you explain why? DRM might be important for some people, but weighed against their primary mode of transportation, I feel like it's a values concession I'd be slightly willing to make (making it clear I'd be willing to go for an alternative).
- mjolk 13y agoI more or less cover it in this reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6732192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6732192 The world needs to stop giving in to corporate control schemes.
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- pepsi 13y agoIt's worth noting that while Renault is not in the US market and we won't get the Zoe EV, Renault and Nissan are partners and this tech could wind up in the Nissan Leaf. (edit: depending on future battery lease models)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- frank_boyd 13y agoThis has EVIL written all over it, in so many ways I don't even...
- gdilla 13y agoThis article seems a little harsh. Does leasing/renting the battery out make the car more affordable? Because aren't batteries still a huge cost driver for these vehicles? What is the difference in sticker price? And can drivers be incentivized to share their driving data - maybe lower insurance or insurance per mile, a lower battery leasing fee, etc? Just saying that this 'brickable car' may be worth it for some. No need to write it off just like that. And would you really want to own an expensive battery that has to be replaced eventually at great cost?
- mjolk 13y agoI don't think it's harsh enough. Renault wants to 'sell' a product to a consumer that he will never truly own. >And can drivers be incentivized to share their driving data - maybe lower insurance or insurance per mile, a lower battery leasing fee, etc? This reminds me of the fictional television set that used its built-in camera to take a photograph of its users' living rooms and lowered or raised the price of streaming movies based on how many people were in the room (as insurance that you're technically not broadcasting it to a group that they've determined as needing a paid license). Sure, it's intrusive and you're potentially paying more for a stream than ownership of the media, but maybe there's a bright side. And really, do you want to buy a blu ray that's possibly, eventually going to have to be replaced by a more expensive format?
- seren 13y agoI don't know if it is really legit, but it seems there is a patent application from Microsoft, presumably using the Kinect, to count the number of people watching. http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220120278904%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20120278904&RS=DN/20120278904 http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...
- mjolk 13y agoIt wouldn't surprise me. Microsoft wanted to ship their new game console with audio/video sensors that constantly record. I wouldn't be shocked if they decide to ignore the consumer backlash and send back "some" data via an encrypted channel. edit: Thanks for the interesting link to that patent.
- 001sky 13y agoThis is actually sounding like some sort of accounting gimmick, that combines a lease (power) with a purchase (shell). It may have the effect of some cost benefit to the end user. They are trying to sub the "rental" for the "gas payment" ($8/gallon==lots) to not make the stupidly uncompetitive on price. The main risk of this strategy, then would be if people "carjacked" the battery and a black market of non-traceble inter-operable parts emerged. Also, a grey market or secondary market that limited the "ticket sale" to only the commodity shell. This has the also obvious abuse potential (forced maintenence $$, engineered obsolecense, etc). Also, the value of the residual car? Going to take a huge hit. Athough this last point would be mitigated somewhat if the rental was not much worse than petrol costs (op-ex, otherwise incurred).
- mnml_ 13y agoThere are no cars in the future.
- vjvj 13y agoThat would be the opposite of progress.
- caruana 13y agoIt's time for someone to root the battery!
- cma 13y agoIf you bought the 40,000Whr tesla model S, they give you a 60,000Whr battery and use similar "DRM" to limit it to 40,000.
- gnu8 13y agoIs this a fact? It seems like the cells are so valuable that they are selling multiple tiers of battery so they will have a lower cost model. There's real money to be saved in not putting 20,000Whr in the car.
- 83457 13y agoThey weighed the cost of having variations during manufacturing and installing larger batteries after the car has already been delivered or resold and decided that it would be cheaper and give the car a higher resale value if the battery capacity could be upgraded remotely at any time.
- tomp 13y agoSource?
- chris_wot 13y agoSo don't buy the car. Lots of alternatives out there!
- tomrod 13y agoWell, I'm not buying that.
- Fuxy 13y agoYay another car that i will never buy.
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoSilly; they claim if you lose your job and can't make battery payments, you can't even drive your car. If you lose your job and can't make gas payments, same effect. This is just another model trying to make an electric car affordable. Why all the vitriol?
- gambiting 13y agoIf you lose a job and can't afford to pay for the car(but still might have some savings to pay for gas) it usually takes a few months between you missing a payment and you losing the car to the bank or a debt collector. With this technology your car can be disabled as soon as a single payment is missed.
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoSo you have gas money but not battery money? Huh?
- tedunangst 13y agoYou have $10 a month to charge the battery money, but not $200 a month pay for the car money.
- rayiner 13y agoWhat's the rental fee? Is it more or less than the $100-200/month most people spend on gas?
- tedunangst 13y agoCould be the same, but people scrape together gas money with greater urgency than they mail checks to pay bills, which I believe drives the change. Now people will be equally motivated to make their monthly payment.
- jlgreco 13y agoIn a bind, you can get that $100-200/mo much lower. Perhaps they can offer a system where partial battery payments will get you reduced usage.
- codex 13y agoIt looks like this is a lease, but instead of using an expensive repo. man to haul away the car when you can't pay your bill, the car stops charging instead. When your account becomes current, the battery unlocks. Progress marches on! The Boing Boing and EFF "articles" here are only so much outrage porn. Note that you really do not want to buy an electric car at this point; leasing is really the only option. Technology is changing so fast that if you should buy an EV you risk holding the bag should it become radically obsolete in the next three to five years. There's also a chance the battery will degrade faster than anticipated.
- cantrevealname 13y agoYou're saying that leasing is better than buying because cost of obsolescence is borne by the lessor. This is an economic fallacy so common that it deserves a memorable name. If a product became obsolete so quickly that everyone chose to lease it, then the lease price would rise to the level where leasing and buying were equally good. For example, if the cost of a product went to $0 after 3 years, then--all factors being equal--the cost to lease it for 3 years then return it to the lessor versus the cost to buy it and throw it in the garbage after 3 years would be equal.
- codex 13y agoI'm saying something a little bit different, but I was not being very clear. Yes, the cost of leasing is born by you, the lessee. However, the risk of fluctuations in value of the car itself is born by the lessor, for which you pay a volatility premium. The lessor places a bet on the future value of the car ahead of time when they lease it, just as you would implicitly place your own bet should you buy it. Electric cars are so new that they may be one of the few cases where leasing makes sense; some people may not want the downside risk of buying, and are willing to pay a bit more for that. Battery technology is ever-improving.
- edj 13y agoElectric cars are so new Hate to be pedantic, but electric cars have been around for over 100 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#1890s_to_1910s:_Early_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#1890s_to_1910s:_E...
- mratzloff 13y agoHow long until someone finds themselves in a life-threatening situation because their car refuses to start because it has been remotely deactivated?
- tedunangst 13y agoHow often has someone found themselves in a life threatening situation five minutes after the repo man towed their car away? I suspect the incidence rates will be similar.
- mikeash 13y agoAbout a hundred years after the first time someone found themselves in a life-threatening situation because their car refused to start because they couldn't pay for gas.
- Karunamon 13y agoThere's a real and fundamental gap between "physically unable to run" and "physically able to run, but blocked from doing so by someone else's actions".
- mikeash 13y agoIf gasoline is available, but the owner of the gasoline refuses to dispense it because you can't pay, then you are in the second category.
- tantalor 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_dilemma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_dilemma
- Karunamon 13y ago(Car analogies: the bane of hackers everywhere.. especially when talking about cars ^^) The gas is available and you already paid for it (via the power bill) - DRM reaching out to kill the system is a third party action.
- orenmazor 13y agoSo? Dont treat the automotive market the way you treat the tech market. single companies have a much, much lower affect on the market when it comes to cars.
- sillysaurus2 13y agoI'm surprised everyone is ignoring the obvious elephant in the room: The car receives a signal to lock itself down. Therefore someone can impersonate the car dealer and lock your car down (as long as their encryption is set up in a broken way, which it almost always is).
- mjolk 13y agoNo one is ignoring the "obvious elephant;" it's just not the most important discussion point.
- rosser 13y agoAssume the Bad Guys have figured out how to send the brick-yourself code to an arbitrary Zoe. Which do you think is going to happen more often: bricked because you couldn't afford your monthly payment, or bricked until you transfer 100 BTC to the haxx0r?
- mjolk 13y agoI feel like you're trolling by mentioning "haxx0r" and bitcoin, but here goes anyway. The fact that Renault is trying to sell a tangible, vendor-locked, remote-privileged/DRM-reliant device is more interesting than the "what if some jerk hacks the protocol?" >Which do you think is going to happen more often: bricked because you couldn't afford your monthly payment, or bricked until you transfer 100 BTC to the haxx0r? The former and by large a large margin.
- travisp 13y agoIs that substantially different than GM's OnStar? It's already been used to slow down/shut off stolen vehicles.
- sillysaurus2 13y agoThis is mandatory, whereas OnStar is optional.
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- wes-exp 13y agoHow dare they ship a proprietary car! The blueprints should be open source and it should be assembled by volunteers. /sarcasm
- stcredzero 13y agoRenault ships a brickable car... Nothing new yet. ...with battery DRM that you're not allowed to own Ah, news! On the upside, this car is somewhat theft-proof. (Nothing can be totally theft proof.) Next, it should have a 360-degree dash cam that's monitored 24-7 by an organization funded by a consortium of insurance companies and 3 letter government agencies. All the above sounds scary while bringing benefits. (The scary that brings benefits with it is the truly scary stuff, as it has a good chance of sticking around.)
- jotm 13y agoHack the shit out of it, say "Re NO"!
- droopybuns 13y agoSecurity Researchers in the SDR community are going to have a field day with these kinds of features. Companies like Renault need to bring in better consultants. This is not going to work.
- pasbesoin 13y agoThis will be a rather flippant remark, but very occasionally we, the public, need one to sum things up in a useful soundbite. DRM --> Don't Renault Me Maybe it will catch on. Renault Marketing and PR would hate that -- which is precisely the point.
- hi_t_ch 13y agoDisclaimer : I'm as concerned as you about data privacy, money etc. I'm not technically a Renault employee, but it just happen that I'm working for them as a consultant (in a non related field). So I'm not representing Renault [insert legal terms here], I'm only trying to transcript the response when I expressed off record some of the concerns to one of Zoe's engineer. Here is more or less what he said about: - Data privacy: Renault worked with the CNIL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNIL) to legally comply with French/European data privacy laws. All data sent to Renault remains anonymous, Renault does not associate the "ID" of the car with owner's personal information. - Battery: He used the same gas pump analogy. When I asked him why a renting system for a part of the product, he replied "simply to make it cheaper": Renault could have added the price of the battery (around 8000 euros) to the price of Zoe, but this is not a smart marketing move. Meanwhile, I'll forward the conversation and your concerns to Renault's communication team. Let's hope they make a public statement about all this. Cheers.
- alandarev 13y agoCan't wait until some russian releases a crack to disable the DRM on this battery.