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I bet it's primarily the fear of being sued. If your cousin's friend changes the code for the ABS to "work better on gravel roads" and then you wreck, who's go
by chiph 12y ago
I bet it's primarily the fear of being sued.
If your cousin's friend changes the code for the ABS to "work better on gravel roads" and then you wreck, who's going to get sued? Not your cousin's friend - he's living in a van down by the river. The automaker is, because they're the ones with the money.
- w4 12y agoThis was my immediate reaction as well. I'm quite sure that their primary motivation (service fees aside) is avoiding the litigation minefield created by permitting people to hack their cars and potentially make them unsafe.
- aluhut 12y agoWhich you can do already without electronics. The whole justice system is broken if we have to take the stupidity of ridiculous cases in account to tame down technological progress.
- pyre 12y ago> Which you can do already without electronics. As is stated elsewhere, it's easier to determine that a physical part failed, and that it was not automaker-issued than to do the same with (e.g.) modified firmware. It's not like people are above attempting to hide the fact that they modified the firmware in order to win a lawsuit.
- aluhut 12y agoBut aren't they innocent until proven otherwise?
- JimboOmega 12y agoBut how is this different than if I put in aftermarket braking pads and then I wreck? What if my cousin's friend installed them wrong? Is the litigation risk any different with software rather than hardware?
- viggity 12y agoit is much easier to look at an after market part and determine if it was cause of the failure because it is a physical object. Software and the state and sequence of events are much harder to look at and conclusively say "yes, this was the culprit". It's hard for me to pick a side here. I want that freedom, but the auto makers have a compelling reason for wanting to stop it (getting sued, warranty issues, etc). I'm 60/40 on the automaker's side.
- sliverstorm 12y agoThere's also a major safety argument that just isn't in play with things like cell phones or toasters. The stakes are lower. If you really want to play with engine management, there's always megasquirt.info and wb02.com, which are more hackable anyway.
- jonah 12y agoOn my car, and many others, the stock Bosch Motronic ECU is flashable through the OBDII port. You use community developed software and community information to build a ROM image, do the checksums, and flash it right on.
- zeroflow 12y agoThats not true for all Motronic ECUs. The OEM has to decide which kind of tuning protection they want to have activated. Some OEMs opt for the low settings where tuning gets detected and logged while still allowing you to run new or modified code while others only allow the flashing of signed code. Also, as far as i know from motronic mods, they mostly only change calibration data and not the code itself, but i may be wrong.
- snowwrestler 12y agoI agree, but how is it any different than when your cousin's friend does your brake job for you, and then the brakes fail? To answer my own question: because there are fewer court cases about home mods of automotive software, then there are about home mods of automotive mechanical systems. I think it's the lack of precedent that scares corporate lawyers when it comes to this stuff.
- mikeash 12y agoIf it was really a fear of being sued, wouldn't they push for laws that explicitly eliminate liability when such modifications are made, rather than making modifications illegal in the first place?
- mnglkhn2 12y agoIt would be the reasonable thing to do. The problem I see is when the "altered" car crashes into a stock one onthe road. The un-altered car's owner might sue on the grounds that there no proper controls on the modified car's systems to safeguard from such errors.
- lucaspiller 12y agoThere is technology readily available in high end cars that will make them automatically brake if they detect they are going to hit something. If someone rear-ends me in a new car, it is unreasonable for me to sue the manufacturer because they didn't include this technology. Is this situation really any different?
- nsajko 12y agoI somehow can't imagine the automaker being in any danger of losing the suit, the firmware modification would probably be revealed in court.
- chiph 12y agoI don't know if a reflash event would be recorded in the car's event data recorders. If not, the owner could flash the ECU back to the factory code, and the evidence goes away. For this to work, the cops arriving at the scene of the accident would have to immediately download the contents of the ECU and enter it into evidence.
- voxic11 12y agoHow is this different from if you used a after market break pad, couldn't you do the same thing and just swap it out for a official one...
- sliverstorm 12y agoPlus vehicle damage. What happens when Johnny Hacker changes his fuel maps, causes massive detonation slagging the engine, flashes the fuel maps back to stock and comes in for service? Maybe that should still be in Johnny's right to do, and it's up to the service center to detect what happened, but I can see why the automakers would really rather he couldn't do that.
- GoodIntentions 12y agoI worked as a service writer for a couple years. I _never_ saw a warranty claim refused based on owner abuse. Not once. There were times it should have happened, but I could _not_ code a work order as "owner abuse". That was a call for the service manager to make and afaik, it never ever occurred. Refusing to cover a repair pisses off the customer and you never see him/her again. If you just fix whatever the idiot broke under warranty, you get paid and keep the customer. wrong call in my books, but don't be surprised if it happens everyplace.
- izacus 12y agoWhy would it be a wrong call?
- GoodIntentions 12y agoHonesty. Some guy comes in with half a cornfield stuck to the undercarriage of their vehicle, who should pay for the suspension work? I deeply feel we should each be responsible for our own stupidity. If it is submitted as warranty, it becomes a cost to the manufacturer and I feel that is inherently dishonest. Additionally, increased costs _do_ get passed onto customers. I get _why_ it happens, but it shouldn't.
- task_queue 12y agoMore than likely you'll be absolutely shocked at the code that your car depends on to function (read the Toyota unintended acceleration court documents). Opening that interface or code turns that black box of deniability into potential evidence of shitty practices leading to failure in what should be safe, correct and easily tested modules. Think global variables, 4k line functions, goto/jumps, completely ignoring industry standard practices like MISRA, etc. It's horrifying.
- nitrogen 12y agoThink global variables, 4k line functions, goto/jumps, completely ignoring industry standard practices like MISRA, etc. A note about embedded programming on a microcontroller: global variables and goto can be used effectively and safely. Their presence or absence does not alone indicate code quality. Even a 4kloc function might be reasonable if the compiler couldn't be relied upon to inline functions into a time critical global update loop.
- noselasd 12y agoUnlikely. More likely this is another attempt in the long history of car makers trying to gain full control over the entire supply chain. They want to have your car serviced only at approved auto shops that they control or own, using only original parts that they produce/sell.
- ddingus 12y agoIt's totally about this.