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What I meant was they haven't told anyone how do it. At least in three cases they've publicly released information they've gleamed or proof of their exploit.
At least in one case the individual can't publish anything because Tesla has a bug bounty, and through the bug bounty they encourage people to find exploits. Of course to cash in bug bounty they aren't allowed to say anything.
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In the end the question is whether it's worth the trade off?
Losing the right to repair is a HUGE compromise to make. It means that for the entire life of the vehicle your forced to go through the manufacture for everything. You can't change out the infotainment system to something else. You can't upgrade any of the electric motors to anything else. You can't use someone else's battery pack. You can't buy some part off craigslist to fix your car because that part might have a different firmware version on it. Keep in mind these are just examples of what someone might run into.
The biggest problem right now when it comes to security on internet connected cars isn't from enthusiast. It's from manufactures that have piss poor security. Like was demonstrated with the Jeep exploit when the researchers ran it off the road.
I'm not at all worried about enthusiast. The internet connected part of the car is supposed to be well segmented off from any critical safety feature. In the Tesla as far as I can tell it is.
But, not as big of one if Sony made your car. Can you imagine not being able to use your car on christmas morning because of a bunch of hackers were mad at Sony. I can't even imagine how bad the Tesla would be if it had Sony playstation level security.
I don't know how "right to repair" came into the discussion that is occurring in this thread.
The OP wants to be able to refuse, indefinitely if he wishes, any firmware updates that Tesla pushes to the fleet. He also wants to be able to hack his car and make whatever code modifications to the firmware he wants to.
My position is that modern firmware-driven internet-connected cars like Tesla have become far too complex for owners to be allowed access to. Public safety overrides the owners desire to make any modifications he wants to.
The OP obviously does not agree with my position. That is his prerogative. I hope Tesla never provides anyone outside of Tesla the information and documentation that would allow anyone to access and modify the cars firmware, at any level. Cars are not smartphones. Larger issues are involved. We have moved past the time when car "enthusiasts" could readily make modifications to drivetrains, suspensions, and other parts of their vehicles. To anyone who claims that they have the expertise to make fundamental modifications to a Tesla without compromising the safety and controls of the vehicle, I say that you are either the one in a million customer with the skills to actually do that safely, or you are fooling yourself, and I don't want you anywhere near the roads I use.
The right to repair goes hand in hand with any discussion regarding whether someone can own their own property.
My position as it seems to be the case with everything related to Tesla is people are making it out to be a much bigger deal than it really is. It's really not that different than other modern cars. It's not even the only one that gets updated OTA. Although it does seem to be the only one that can do it without getting bricked.
I know the ultimate goal for Tesla is to remove car ownership. With fully autonomous cars there really won't be much point in owning a car, and so the entire issue becomes rather mute. Plus with autonomous cars your position becomes way more valid. We don't really want rogue cars on the road way that won't abide by car-car communication protocols that become established.
We're just not there yet, and we don't need to be so protective.
All that is going on now is history is repeating itself. It's funny you mentioned cell phones since Apple did the same fear mongering as a justification for their walled garden. What did the walled garden really allow for? For them to make billions on stuff other people made. Heck they might make a few billion on Pokemon alone.
Apple's argument would be that they built the highway, you pay to drive on it.
Similar to this - Simon Property Group, the ones who own most major US malls, will charge resident businesses a portion of their profits. That's right, they will put a reasonable number to your monthly profits, and if your business exceeds that, they take a percentage. Your books are open. This probably varies by location, but it was eye-opening to me. Their argument is that they built the house, they drive the traffic, and your business benefits from their infrastructure. While you pay rent already, that's only good to your "reasonable profit" number. The rest.. well, that's all because of Simon.
So anyway, it's not a unique proposition.
My wife confirmed that Simon Property Group's business practice is not unique or recent. Her family owned a small business in a small strip mall and had a similar rental proposition. Option 1, pay (reasonable) rent and percentage of profits. Option 2, pay exorbitant rent. This is in the 80s.
It's certainly not unique a unique proposition, but in terms of a profit generating machine it seemed so much more efficient than any other example I was aware of. Not a whole lot of overhead on that one.
But, anyways I mentioned it because of the parallels when it came to overblown fears. It's also something that we as consumers have to be a bit weary of. Is it really sustainable to have a car that can't be repaired by anyone, but Tesla? Do we really want to support a cell phone style throw away mentality with a car?
This entire issue extends well beyond Tesla so it should be interesting to see how it all plays out on all fronts. From automobiles to tractors.
p-f-g
Member
Well, good try but apparently people can't read. Maybe you should let this moral thread going on and try to start a new one with just the technical facts...
Courage!
There is a technical thread already. It's the hack the Model S thread started by WK057. It's probably the best thread on these forums.
CuriousG
Active Member
The only reason I can think of for rooting would be to unlock better performance for refreshed 60D,70D, 75D and nose cone 70D. Tesla handicaps those models in performance through software.
Tesla is legally obliged to provide said information, since Tesla is using GPL-licensed software in their cars. Alternatively, they can pay the fines for criminal copyright infringment. They are quite likely to take the secont option at this point, given that the infringment is wilful, for-profit, and has been ongoing for three years now. The Linux copyright holders would be well within their rights to refer the case to the FBI by now, though as far as I know they haven't done so (out of politeness, I presume).
davidc18
Active Member
I'm not sure you can unlock any of the Software limited features with only root access. Tesla has known for quite awhile that some people have managed to get root access. I don't think they've bothered fixing it because of the limit of what you can do, and that it requires physical access to get to.
It is of particular interest to the OP because having root access would allow him to turn off the road-type/speed-limit based restriction that was added to 7.1. He predicted during the release that it would function poorly, and he was correct. The other thing it would allow him to do is to turn off nags.
For me personally I don't have much interest. I'm supportive of the right to hack, and the right to repair but I'm not particularly interested in bothering with it. I'll cheer them on and then go back to implementing object detection neural networks. Hey, everyone should have some kind of hobby. I'm not a multimillionaire so I can't exactly take a chance on bricking my car with any hacking efforts.
If I had root access I'd use it to turn on/off the LCD and LCD backlight when I wanted to. Sure I can use a dark website, but I want the center console screen off sometimes. Where I can just touch it to turn it back on.
Wow, a lot of effort, time, and risk for such trivial returns... Some people have a LOT of time on their hands. I've seen more ambitious project threads like this started than finished. Will be interesting to see f it goes anywhere.
PS turn off LCD already exists. Is access to setting that inconvenient????
it's his time and it isn't your call on how he expends his efforts, time and risk.
This is NOT a widely-held interpretation of GPL.
You can write user space applications with no requirement to release the source code, because you are not extending Linux, you are writing code that runs on the operating system. Just like running Firefix on Windows doesn't make it part of Windows. It is no different whether you are running a desktop application or an embedded application.
For an explanation of these issues see Using GPL software in embedded applications | ZDNet
I disagree. Stated that way it sounds like Tesla intend to at some point stop selling cars to individuals and for Tesla to always own all the vehicles they produce. I don't believe that is even close to accurate. For the foreseeable future (meaning this century) individuals will want to own cars for their personal use only. What Elon said in SMP Part Deux is that when fully autonomous driving is a reality and legally allowed on public roads, car owners will have the option of hiring out their cars for others to use when the owner is not using them.
Doug, thank you for posting that point of view. I am not an expert in that field, but your position makes sense to me. After 4 years of Model S production it seems clear that no one has challenged how Tesla is using Linux in their cars, and no one is likely to. Someone might, but I think they will lose that case.
