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Doug_G

Lead Moderator
Global Moderator
Apr 2, 2010
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Ottawa, Canada
One of the nice things about the Tesla Roadster is the ability to download logs of the car's activity. Various people have conspired to partially reverse-engineer the logs and have written software to extract all kinds of useful information on recent trips, charging activity, temperatures, etc. It's quite handy and very cool.

Perhaps Tesla isn't so keen about all this. Model S logs can only be downloaded over the internet or using a proprietary connector connected to a computer.

I wonder if it's somehow possible to extract some logging information from the Model S. :confused:
 
That sounds interesting.

I'm assuming that once the tethering feature is enabled you could easily run a packet capture on your phone and dump all the information sent by the car, which would help locate those logs and reverse engineer their format. Unless they're encrypted of course, in which case things get complicated without access to a firmware dump to disassemble or the actual source code (if it's GPL, which seems unlikely).
 
Doesn't the car have an OBD II port? I thought that was legally required? I suppose even if it did, Tesla might not support this type of messaging over it.

Yes, however, Telsa likely uses many kinds of buses. Assuming it is similar to Toyota (just as an illustration) there is the ODBII bus which has the basic items required by law. Then there is the CAN bus which has most of the interesting bits, and the BEAN bus that has the ABS, TC, VSC, etc.

They can all be accessed through the ODBII port but you have to be able to send the correct code and read what comes back. Finding out what the correct codes are isn't all that easy because Toyota doesn't publish them. It took several years to find out a few of the more interesting ones in the 2004-2009 Prius.