It feels like $40k is a lot of money to pay Tesla to license a car, at least so long as I can buy a car outright from its competitors for less than that.<p>I'd rather have a car I own, all things being equal. All things being unequal too, actually. Tesla cars would need to be much better to compete, given the licensing versus ownership model.<p>I imagine at some point, Tesla will switch to car-as-a-service models. I guess most companies already have those in the form of leases, but I don't lease cars.
If I'd ever buy a car, I'd rather not have antifeatures in it. I'd rather have the Lada/Zhiguli [0] of the future:<p>- safe<p>- simple<p>- electric<p>- cheap<p>- mass produced<p>- open hardware<p>- public road certified<p>The Dacia Spring Electric [1] might get close.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAZ-2107" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAZ-2107</a><p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacia_Spring" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacia_Spring</a>
> your connected car knows when you've hacked it, and it might be logging that data to use against you in a future warranty claim. [..] Nobody except Tesla really knows the answer to this right now, but knowing that my car could potentially tattle on me to its mommy is a bit unnerving.<p>It's almost like the car is a hostile entity, loyal to its manufacturer instead of its owner..
The fact that they sell the hack for $1500 is pretty ridiculous.<p>Seems like there's a market for a reverse-engineered version of the hack, priced at slightly above the cost of materials (which I suspect to be around $50 at most).
This can also be useful in some cases right?<p>- What if some external accessory or change was made without the owner's knowledge?. As cars become more software dependent, steps like these might become necessary.<p>- Manufacturers obviously want to take their hands-off during warranty claims if the car has been tuned or modified.<p>- The owner in the issue mentioned above hasn't had any issues while driving except a notification that wouldn't go away. As long as i can modify my car and drive it without a hassle, i would like my car to tell me what changes have been made to it.
Nothing unusual and also applicable for other manufacturers and petrol cars. You loose warranty of course, but some people still opt for "chip" tuning right after buying. Others might wait the 4 years.
Maybe slightly off-topic but in general, do people buy random electronics over the internet and connect it to their car? Feels like a overly easy way of hacking a massive amount of cars, by simply having them buy a thing you connect to your already IoT-ified car, and allow anyone to read and control your car.<p>Seems like the detection feature from Tesla is meant to provide this, rather than preventing 3rd party mods. As I would never connect anything to my cars IT systems, I would happily receive a warning if the car did detect something like that.
These aftermarket hacks should definitely be legal, but don't expect Tesla to provide any more online services such as automatic firmware upgrades. These would have to be done manually by the owner now.
The pioneers in any field always get attacked when they add safeguards.<p>And then later when they catch up, the laggards add similar safeguards.<p>Usually there are valid reasons beyond just the usual “protect profits” this gets portrayed as. Even if that’s part of it, it’s often more about protecting the brand and product safety.<p>Autos are different from some products in that there are real safety issues if stuff is not done right.