The worst part isn't even listed in the article - Tesla is remotely disabling fast charging on all salvage cars across all networks, regardless of what the actual damage is. If it was just limited to the supercharger network I would somewhat understand, it's their network and I don't think it's a huge deal to disallow salvage cars on it. But they are removing the ability to charge even at third party chargers, basically removing any ability to go on a reasonable road trip with your car, with no warning. Completely insane, especially since many salvage cars just had body damage.
This is why I don't want a car connected to the internet. The behavior of my 50k vehicle should not change unexpectedly because some guy in silicon valley pushed an update.
What if one were to unplug the cellular antenna and prevent an update from happening? Or does the car detect that condition and yell at you?
Reminds me of DJI drones which every now and then ask you if you want to update the software, but updating the software only would cause you to have more restrictions on your flight, not less.
You don't need to leave the antenna unplugged as that could trigger detection or burn up the antenna signal amplifier. You can put a dummy load on the antenna connector instead,
nothing whatsoever will be able to detect it, and the radio hardware will never send or receive any signals.
Any car in the EU that is changed after certification needs to be recertified or have the update tested. The day Tesla updates something that causes someone to get hurt Tesla will be sued into the ground as all software updated cars that haven't had their update tested are illegal. It is also illegal to change a car to make more HP (there's a limit, AFAICR it is at 5%) without getting it recertified. While Tesla don't give a f... about legality some (like me) have been through the process of recertification on way less changes than Tesla does. It is both time-consuming and expensive and the testing was insane. It baffels the mind that none of Tesla's competitors has cried foul yet.
They benefit from being a first mover with more information than the regulatory bodies, who are also badly fragmented and less then effective in this administration. Cars are regulated by a confusing patchwork of state and federal regulation.
My guess is they know when they have bad accidents where they have an issue and quickly pay out and secure NDAs. (They prove this when they aggressively contest claims made by customers in public)
Eventually, an autopiloted Tesla will cause an accident affecting something like a 10 passenger limo or interstate bus that will trigger an NYSB investigation. That’s likely to crack the facade on all manner of bullshit the company does.
Same except s/connected to the internet/connected to the internet via tivoised software/. I think a car one connected by https://github.com/commaai/openpilot might be cool.
This thing is definitely not internet connected. The basic trim does not even feature a radio at all, only standard space to fit a 1-DIN radio yourself. It has manual (roll down) rear windows.
I don't know about the US, but I would be surprised if you can't buy an F150 that has no internet connection?
Yeah, the majority of Dacia models doesn't even come with an air conditioning by default. It's extra, but you know what, I like the idea that it can be left out :)
Surely the people salvaging these cars would be happy to enter into a contract with Tesla to accept all liability (including superchargers/stations) for damages caused by the car they fixed up, then, right?
Edit to add from a below comment I made: I mean more in the scenario of a cell going bad, causing a fire, then maybe blowing up the car and causing collateral damage. As I understand it, this would be covered by the car's insurance, right? If so, Tesla shouldn't be locking the chargers (Maybe Tesla would need to verify insurance before allowing supercharging then). But if it doesn't, or if the car is uninsured, then I can accept Tesla not wanting to be held liable for the damage to their station or other owners' cars for batteries that might have undetectable damage.
If use of an object requires an ongoing contractual relationship with a specific entity, you don't own it.
I know that people here won't be super surprised by this concept, but I still think it's worth getting the wording right.
Just as with music and videos and games, I think one should be disallowed from calling something "selling", "buying" or "owning" if what's really being done is "licensing". Yeah, I'm from the "words matter" police. :)
I once read that the test of whether or not you own something is, "Can you sell it?" In this vein, movies and TV shows you "buy" from Apple, Amazon, etc. are not yours.
I don't think that's the right test. The question is do you control it? Can it be modified? Can it be defended? Transferred or loaned to someone else? Copied?
The movies and TV on streaming services are not yours because you don't control them and they can be removed at any time. Market salability is another question entirely. There are items you can own you might be prohibited from selling on an open market, such as a landmark property or a particularly destructive weapon.
Of course “when applicable”. You can’t copy a physical object physically, and technically can’t even copy a physical object by recreating it without violating some trademark or the maker’s copyright.
I think HOAs are a scam. We recently bought a house, and simply didn’t consider anything with an HOA fee (we made exceptions and considered arrangements where the HOA was limited to private road maintenance).
I doubt we’re the only ones; the HOA depresses the price of the house.
In my mind, a house + HOA = condo, regardless of whether it shares a wall with someone else, and we’d pay accordingly (50-66% as much, tops).
I don't own a home but if I did I sure as hell am not paying any fees to some scammers and sure as hell am not listening to some idiots who think they have any say about how I landscape my yard.
Yes, but so are non-compete agreements and discrimination, and laws can make those contracts invalid.
I would like to see laws make HOAs invalid and null and void. If you own something you should have full control of it, to the extent that it doesn't adversely influence the safety of the community. So yeah I'm okay with laws saying you aren't allowed to store a pile of hazardous chemicals that could be a safety hazard to neighbors but I'm most certainly NOT okay with laws telling you how you're allowed to landscape your garden or what color you can paint your house or what your fence or driveway looks like or whether you park your car in your driveway or garage. To me, owning means I make the rules, to hell with contracts, it's not a rental.
Unless it's in some historical district where we're trying to preserve the historic look, that I'd be willing to make an exception for. But definitely not in random suburbs.
> If you own something you should have full control of it, to the extent that it doesn't adversely influence the safety of the community.
Well, but that's just an issue of definition. By your peculiar definition, it just means that you don't own the home that comes with HOA encumbrance.
I don't think your peculiar definition is the same as the law normally uses. By itself, it's as fine a definition as long as everyone is careful in their use of words, and doesn't try to draw build moral arguments from issues of definition.
I'm not a lawyer. But I suspect that your first paragraph mentioning issues of discrimination might be able to have some legal firepower. I doubt you'd get much mileage out of anti-trust concerns, unless a particular HOA was dominating a housing market?
As for your second paragraph: those sounds like excellent reasons for an individual such as you or me NOT to buy a home that's part of a HOA. But they furnish no reason to outlaw HOAs, ie to forbid other people from forming them or joining them.
As others have explained, once car and charger have done their handshake, charging is about as complicated as a toaster oven and there isn't really anything the car could do to damage the charger.
And as you have correctly discovered, cars catching on fire is a very regular event that is covered by insurance. Does your supermarket make you sign a liability waiver every time you drive onto their parking lot? No, we have mandatory insurance and other higher-level concepts to do away with all of this overhead that we would otherwise incur doing the most trivial of "transactions".
Can't this be said of literally any car? A badly repaired car could cause a 12 car pile up and kill 17 people because the breaks or power steering failed at the wrong time. This actually seems tremendously more likely than the scenario you name. It seems like Tesla's actions are a pretty transparent effort to control the market to maximize profit.
>Can't this be said of literally any car? A badly repaired car could cause a 12 car pile up and kill 17 people because the breaks or power steering failed at the wrong time.
Yeah you can say it if your goal is to create some political fear-mongering radio advert for some inspection program ballot initiative, doesn't make it true though.
There have been many studies about the efficacy of vehicle inspection programs. The TL;DR of them is that while throwing up a bunch of red tape can keep junk off the road and this can affect the accident rate but the effect is negligible or near the noise threshold. People in well maintained cars making bad decisions is the source of the overwhelming majority of accidents. The brakes going out on some shitbox are basically a rounding error. Salvage cars breaking for reasons having to do with whatever accident they were in is even rarer than that.
Salvage vehicles are a rounding error compared to old junk shitboxes. So take everything that studies have shown about inspection programs and move the decimal a couple places.
A defect that is the fault of the manufacturer is certainly a way to sue Tesla for 'cars they don't own'. Happens all the time. Daily.
And after you jailbreak your Tesla and cause an injury accident, who's to know? Just say you didn't, and it was Tesla's defect. Of course Tesla is concerned.
Let's apply this scenario to a non-Tesla car. And instead of a jailbreak, you decide to do your own brake job on your car.
"And after you do your own brake job on your Honda and cause an injury accident, who's to know? Just say you didn't, and it was Honda's defect."
This applies to any kind of thing you do to your own car. There's always some chance that something can go wrong and cause a huge wreck. There's always a part that can go bad, and there's always going to be someone who lies to cover up or blames the manufacturer.
You could drive your wheel into a curb, damage your suspension, and then have it fall off a week later and crash into oncoming traffic. And still blame the manufacturer for it.
The point is, you don't need to modify a car, or jailbreak it, or anything for these lawsuits to happen.
The Tesla belongs to the user. It no longer belongs to Tesla. That is all that matters.
> Of course Tesla is concerned.
Their concern is of no importance to me regarding things that they no longer own. I simply do not care what their concern is on anything that is no longer owned by them.
Good for you. But society has rules and laws, and Tesla is indeed responsible for failures in design or manufacturing. As evidenced by hundreds of lawsuits of other manufacturers, for a century.
Yes, and those rules and laws say that the car belongs to the consumer, and the consumer can basically do whatever they want to that car, regardless if Tesla doesn't want that.
Tesla has no legal right to prevent someone from salvaging a car that belongs to the person.
A consumer has the legal right to salvage that car, no matter what Tesla thinks on the matter.
Right to repair laws are on the consumers side, not Tesla's.
This is well established law, that has been in existence for literally decades, and Tesla does not get to ignore these well established laws.
The fact that "Of course Tesla is concerned." is not my problem. It is not the problem of consumers, who have legals rights. And I don't care what Tesla is "concerned" about, because consumers have the legal right to salvages cars, and Tesla does not get to ignore these laws.
> Tesla is indeed responsible
Sucks to be Tesla then! They can shut down their business and stop making cars, if they don't like the laws that allow consumers to salvage cars.
That doesn't mean that a handful of people with jail-broken cars are going to be able to get together and prove a manufacturing defect.
If there were 2000 cars that were jailbroken, and they all crashed in the same way due to the jailbreak.. don't you think they'd figure out that the jailbreak was the problem? It's not that hard to tell if the software has been changed from stock.
If they all failed differently, and had different accidents in different scenarios, you're going to have a hard time proving a manufacturer defect.
These are wrecked cars, however. Who is to say that the batteries don't have hidden damage that could cause them to blow on a fast charge and cause a fire? We already know Teslas have fire issues.
I will be blunt, I really wish "salvage" cars had no right to exist. There is insufficient consistency between states as to what can be titled as such and still driven on our roads. You can get on the road most of the time just fixing cosmetic items and inspection in some states more concerned with emissions than much else; some states don't even check for working ABS or airbags.
I think companies like Tesla are correct in blocking access to their own charging network and I have no issue with another company blocking access to theirs. However I do not agree with the idea Tesla can block you from using another fast charging system.
Salvage just means the insurance company paid out the policy rather than repairing the car.
A 20 year old car might have a market value of $500. If somebody keys it up and down both sides, it's totaled and gets a salvage title, because that's more than $500 worth of paint damage.
In some cases a car gets stolen, the insurance pays out because they can't find it, then later they do find it and there is nothing wrong with it but the policy is already paid out so now it has a salvage title.
The article claims that many cars are declared "salvage" merely due to Tesla's expensive repairs, which they claim is caused by their (unique?) restrictions on parts availability. As such, Tesla would arguably be responsible for the fact that the cars are "salvage" in the first place.
I'm strongly in favor of greater re-use of these enormous machines that require intense capital investment, and valuable and limited resources to create.
> I'm strongly in favor of greater re-use of these enormous machines that require intense capital investment, and valuable and limited resources to create.
Yes, though as long as Tesla is up-front about their restrictions, people can take those considerations into account when they make their capital investment.
In some sense I agree that the certification process is way too loose for cars, but 1) it's more than salvage cars that are the issue 2) it's not really clear that remote disabling a feature is doing anything to help.
How long until Tesla (or any manufacturer) remotely disables the ignition on all used cars until the new owner pays them to turn it back on.
Its only fair. After all, the new owner just bought a hunk of metal from the previous owner. They still need to purchase a license for features like starting the car.
I remember when Tesla issued that paid software update to make your car accelerate 0-100 a 0.1 seconds faster. If the hardware is there unchanged, why should the software update be a paid upgrade? It means the software was not good to begin with. Seems to me Tesla is trying to model a software development business, but they forget they're in the hardware business
On one hand they shouldn’t on another hand “performance modes” are often priced based on the wear and tear they induce and it’s impact on the manufacturer warranty in terms of servicing costs.
Even before Tesla you already had car manufacturers that basically locked out performance behind a pay wall even tho the car itself was identical to the “sport model”.
Many of the German manufacturers had this practice for a decade if not more, the extra price difference is basically their estimated cost to the changes in MTF between when you push your car to 80-90% of its capability to 100%.
And even before Tesla you already had aftermarket products and services that were designed to unlock that extra performance and yes they did often at least in principal voided the warranty.
Sounds like once the car is out of warranty and the cost of maintenance falls on the owner, the incentives change and the manufacturer should pay you to run your car in "performance mode".
When the main warranty of the car is gone you still get warranty on the parts and service you pay for out of pocket, from BMW's perspective the cost of the "performance mode" is amortized beyond the initial warranty period too.
We also see this in other things too you have differential pricing in say electronics and electronic components too, sure some of it is binning but not only quite often the "enterprise" tax is just the fact that these parts will be run longer and under more stress so their MTF is different.
An HDD in a home computer will be under very different loads than one in a NAS. And quite often there aren't many physical differences between the drives in some of the lower end models there are no differences at all and in some cases non-NAS drives might actually be "better" than their lower-end NAS counterparts.
What you are paying for when buying a WD RED isn't necessarily a more durable drive, you are essentially paying a premium for future warranty claims, it's essentially an insurance scheme in which WD RED NAS drives are defined as higher risk than say their Black or Blue series.
In some (many?) cases, performance is limited on a motor by the ECU because the hardware is unable to cope with the extra wear.
For example same block, heads and intake but different (cheaper) pistons, valves, springs, injectors, etc ... Sure you can easily dial up the power on the cheaper engine to match the expensive one, but at a higher risk of breakdown.
In many cases due to how the supply chain is structured there aren’t any “quality” differences the wear and tear as you’ve mentioned is simply amortized in the cost of the car.
BMW is probably the biggest offender in this regard and you can buy the “unlock cables” for the older (<2015) models
on EBay later they switched to a software lock, which you can also hack.
You can also tell there is no difference in the valves, pistons or pretty much anything else since the part numbers in the service manual are identical.
The only difference in parts comes to the trim and the breaks on some of the models.
That doesn’t unlock extra power out of the car, it tightens up the power steering to give more road feel, changes the shift points and messes with the drive-by-wire throttle sensitivity. Sure it shouldn’t be a paid for feature to you, but I think it should be. If you pay for tightened up steering and more sensitive throttle thinking it is a power increase, that’s your money I guess.
Owners of photoshop don't get free updates even though they own their computer. Software costs money to develop so saying all updates should be free simply because they already own the hardware doesn't makes any sense.
I don't agree with the analogy. Tesla manufacturers the whole package and you buy the car as a package. You don't buy the metal from your local car dealer and the software as a separate thing from Tesla.
A more fitting analogy would be Apple charging you to upgrade your BIOS.
Except they're selling incomplete software and preorders of may-never-exist software with complete/finished hardware.
Updates to things I trust my family's life and health to should be classified like recalls, a sign of manufacturer failure and not a consumer privilege.
If insignificant accessories are properly isolated then I suppose such 'updates' can just be optional patches. But if a media center bug means someone can cause my car to break hard or swerve then even those should be classified as recalls.
> Updates to things I trust my family's life and health to should be classified like recalls, a sign of manufacturer failure and not a consumer privilege.
To be scrupulously fair, that's true of all software; it's just more important for safety-critical software, because safety-critical software is more important.
That was 8 years ago. Mountain Lion came out before even Windows 8, where even Microsoft was charging for upgrades too before releasing the final version (major version, not build version) of Windows.
A more fitting analogy would be Windows. For Performance Updates, they don't charge money. Nor did they asked for updates for previous versions too. Adobe Is Subscription based while in Case of Tesla you pay for a lifetime ownership of a product rather than buying a service.
You should pay an extra 5$ to use notepad with your windows and no you cannot install another software that opens txt files, if you do, we remove your windows activation.
Owners of GIMP get free updates (or any other FOSS/libre software or OS), and can improve things themselves with the right skills. Car software out to be the same.
It might be helpful to distinguish a few different principles here, as it looks like some people are talking at cross-purposes in this part of the discussion.
Personally, I would argue that the most important principle to protect the customer is that they should get what they pay for when they choose to buy a product. That product should not then be retrospectively nerfed through software shenanigans, either for them, or for any future owner they sell the product on to. This is one idea that car manufacturers have been flirting with recently, and IMHO we should stamp on it hard.
Another idea, but to me a clearly distinct one, is that a manufacturer of a combined hardware/software product might develop software-only improvements after the product has been purchased. In this case, I would distinguish explicitly between fixes for problems where the product wasn't performing as expected at the time of purchase (things like safety issues or security vulnerabilities that clearly shouldn't have been there in the first place) and enhancements (things like performance improvements or additional functionality). Again IMHO, the former should be supplied free and unencumbered to all customers, as they are essentially fixing a defective product. For the latter, I don't have a problem in principle with the manufacturer charging for the upgrade, as potentially it incurs additional costs and risks, and it brings a genuine benefit to the customer that they didn't have at purchase time.
A third idea is a manufacturer deliberately shipping a product that isn't using the full hardware capabilities because of artificial software limitations. They might also then offer upgrades for sale later, which is really just a special case of the enhancements-after-sale idea above. Once again IMHO, charging for these enhancements is still OK even if they manufacturer knew in advance that they might ship that software later on, as long as they were honest about what the customer was actually buying at the time of purchase and they didn't claim or imply that those enhancements would become available for free or on any other specific terms that they don't then honour.
There are at least two good reasons for taking this view. One is the general principle that if someone has bought a product of a certain specification for a certain price then that transaction is then concluded. Just as I don't think the manufacturer should be allowed to move the goalposts after the sale in a way that harms the owner, I also don't think the owner is entitled to free extras from the manufacturer that weren't part of the sale. The other is the practical reality that hardware+software products are enormously complicated, software is never perfect, and the idea that a manufacturer should be liable for not shipping optimal software from day one or prohibited from continuing to do work that might develop useful improvements that benefit customers in return for further revenue is kind of silly if you think it through.
One very important issue I'm glossing over here is whether the terms of the original sale were fair to the customer. This is a standard problem in any sort of retail environment, and we usually rely on some combination of competitive markets and government regulation to protect the little guy. But these are also separate issues to the ones above that would have to be considered on a case by case basis.
Maybe it required new algorithms to control the torque to not cause stress on the frame. Better algorithms and fine tuning are real work that deserve compensation. Maybe the intial algorithm was just simplistic and conservative.
I think the definition of monopoly should be updated to include this case. When a company sells you hardware without documenting the API or making it fully accessible, then they have a monopoly over selling software for that particular hardware.
(A similar thing would hold for business models like selling printers for cheap but making the cartridges expensive, etc.)
Bro hardware with improper software can break or kill. They pushed the hardware in advance because .. it's 'hard'ware. Then they tried optimized motor control.
If they gave you beta motor logic they'd have to fix whatever would burn or fail.
Sure, software and hardware come together. However the price of software should be factored in the price of the product itself (hardware + software). I am paying for both to own the product. If they issue a software update that makes better use of hardware, it means they failed to release good software to begin with (ofc perfect software doesn't exist). Now imagine if they found a way to increase battery life just with software, and asked you to pay for it.. kinda not fair right?
First, sorry as I misread your comment and was cold.
Indeed they're trying to milk the software side. But it's business as usual I believe. You paid for some specs, everything else is off contract. Unless they promised otherwise.
On the flip side, what if they have an idea to improve battery life through software, but it will require significant R&D. If everyone were like you and refuses to pay for any software updates whatsoever, they wouldn’t want to make the investment.
Normally a big improvement with additional costs would go into the next model. I think charging for a hardware replacement is acceptable.
A pure software update fixing an existing issue I would say no. Car companies have recalls all of the time paid for by the company when something doesn't work as expected.
A software recall should be treated the same as a hardware recall.
But that wasn't the point of the previous poster. We're not talking about an existing issue if the car performs according to the spec you bought with it. Then that's a performance upgrade.
The question is basically whether it's an issue or something that works as intended but could be better.
I can't edit my comment now but it seems like HN thinks once you buy a CPU, you should get all software for free, because that general-purpose CPU can execute any arbitrary programs, so whatever new software you use is merely exercising the functionality that is already present on the CPU, which you paid for. Ergo, all software must be free (free as in beer).
You pay for software updates/upgrades on your PC, right? Like it or not you don't own rhings anymore. Neither software or hardware. Everything is going towards subscription models.
But I wouldn't accept my motherboard supplier locking hardware features behind software updates either. Like if my can do pci express 16x. I wouldn't think it is right that it only does 8x unless I pay for a software unlock
Every consumer motherboard that I've bought in the last decade or more has supported RAID, and none of them have required any additional purchase to "unlock" it.
Or... We could change the law to make it clear that when you buy some hardware you do own it, and to punish businesses that attempt to abuse their customers with owner-hostile retrospective software changes (to hardware products or otherwise). Consumer rights laws exist, and they can be strengthened if necessary to ensure fairness in the market.
I'm not from the US, and as an outsider it appears that the US political system is largely dysfunctional at the federal level. I'm afraid solving a problem of that scale is outside the scope of a discussion like this!
However, some parts of the world are more enlightened when it comes to consumer rights. For example, the EU has at least attempted to make constructive regulatory interventions in the interests of consumers as technologies have evolved, even if their success has been mixed. Here in the UK, aside from EU rules we're inheriting after Brexit, we too have some solid basic consumer rights laws of our own. The EU+UK market is already larger than the US one, so that's a pretty big incentive for Tesla not to try those sorts of games around these parts. And if we get reasonable treatment, maybe that's enough for customers in places like the US to demand the same standards.
How is that? Every new Adobe Creator package used to have a different price(e.g cs3, cs4) Now you can't even upgrade. You pay monthly subscriptions. You pay for OS upgrades as well(i.e win vista, 7, 10 etc)
And one has not needed to pay a separate fee for OS upgrades in quite some time. Linux has obviously always been free. macOS since at least Mavericks - if not earlier - is also free of additional charge.
Adobe Suite is a subscription based software solution. It is an inappropriate analogy. Does Microsoft asks for money for performance updates in Windows?
Err well actually depending on the edition of Windows Microsoft has long had limitations on the amount of RAM and IIRC multi socket support. Not as part of some architectural change within Windows, literally just a limit on the amount of usable RAM like Windows 7 Home Premium would only allow 16GB.
I have never paid for updates of the drivers in my PC. The software to control the motors of a Tesla is akin to that, and should therefore not be compared to software sold purely.
It doesn't seem like that would work very well for most laptops and phones, given how people won't pay for online backup or anything above the minimums.
Anyway, IBM had a vision of "computing on demand" many years ago but it wasn't in the cloud, it was in your data center.
It's not impossible, but an outright resale fee probably isn't in the cards.
These things take time to develop culturally, if they even do. If they just do it, it will antagonize consumers. ATM, I doubt it's worth it for Tesla.
Meanwhile, they are already selling software, and it seems pretty lucrative. Whether it's taxing used car sales or voluntary upgrades, it's all just software revenue. Unrepentant antifeatures are more of a "late stage" game. There are plenty of less controversial and more lucrative ways for Tesla to make money with software, especially platforms. Tesla now has one, and even if they don't increase production (they will).. it's a growing platform.
...That's not to mention the 800lb gorilla software upgrade.
Agree on the principle though. Everything is becoming a hunk of metal running never software we don't own.
IMO, the really unpopular moves are likely to come from traditional OEMs. They're playing the game of tight margins and high volume. More incentive, at least for now.
They have been doing that for rebuilds, for supercharging. They then had some programme where you could have it inspected, but they changed their mind and disabled it once again for all rebuilds.
Rich Rebuilds on YouTube has documented his entire ordeal with them.
I don't think I believe Tesla's mission statement about the environment if they are so willing to generate all that e-waste.
Tesla aren't the only car company to dabble with a business model based on what the FSF calls antifeatures. [0] Mercedes and BMW have done similar things. [1][2]
How long until owners of autonomous vehicles (or vehicles with autonomous mode) demand libre software so that they (or the tech wizards they hire) can make sure there are functional off switches. Otherwise the AI overlords win.
How long until a however-motivated hacker permanently bricks the whole fleet? Or at least makes it stand still and mine bitcoin until repaired at a licensed garage?
I am a strong supporter of the ownership for things I buy. That said, this is a business decision for Tesla: they can insist that the use only rents the software and see if enough users still buy.
It doesn't work well through competition as it is a feature that is not relevant at the time of purchase. We have seen this already in other markets, from ink cartridge to planned obsolescence.
It is. When you purchase a car, you don't care about salvage and resale value? Tesla's move is akin to killing your money from resale. You are buying a 50k car, not your 1k smartphone.
As I understand it, if you buy a non-salvage used car from another individual then the package follows the car. If you buy a salvage car then the package does not follow it as the car is officially junk (it also loses warranty, etc). If you buy a used car from Tesla they will remove the package before sale.
There's one case where Tesla apparently messed up and didn't remove the package from a car they re-sold until after sale. I can't find any other cases of that or removing packages during private sales.
edit: This seems to be about Tesla discouraging salvage cars rather than private sales of non-salvage cars.
I read in the past that Tesla does this also to normal used cars that weren't totaled and salvaged.
Either way, you paid for it, and even it it's technically "totaled" it's still fucking yours. When Tesla disables functionality remotely, they don't say it's because the warranty ran out or because it's unsafe now, they say they are happy to re-enable it for fresh money.
That's why I wouldn't buy a Tesla (or any car of a manufacturer pulling the same crap) now, and if I did already buy one, would be looking into filing a class action against the company, because remotely disabling features like that that you already paid for is fraud.
I am reasonably confident a large percentage of Tesla's antics are blatantly illegal, but Tesla owners are still too few for someone to have actually gotten fed up with them enough to start suing them.
Refusing to activate a car you have the legal title to in any scenario is almost certainly illegal, whether you "salvaged" it or not, for instance. Some of the ways they restrict your car they already sold you, the way they use your cars sensors to collect data for their use, even if those sensors are disabled for the owners' use (Autopilot not purchased), etc. are probably one good lawsuit away from being thrown out.
Yep, sounds like a class action lawsuit that sounds easy to win. It might be tangled in with right to repair lawsuits as well. Also, I think the first sale doctrine should apply. Usually the VIN itself maps to a complete list of specifications. Supercharger access seems to be a harder one to sort out.
It is amazing that ludicrous performance mode is a software upgrade. That makes for amazing margins.
You should read into the supercharging debacle, where they charged people $10k to recertify their used/salvage Teslas for supercharging and then later changed their minds and disabled the feature (except for Model 3s) again for those who paid.
Even if you buy a used Tesla direct, it can take _months_ before they get it to you.
Telsa is junking out cars with minor fender damage and no frame/battery problems because they don't have the labor pool available to recertify their cars.
The insurance companies would much prefer minor repairs than to write off the whole asset, but they can't get quality work done to the asset.
This practice is driving up _everyone's_ insurance rates.
Why would it not just drive up Tesla owners’ insurance rates?
I guess it might affect everyone if it increases liability costs in cases where the Tesla driver is not at fault, but I imagine that’s an extremely minor portion of expenses considering the tiny proportion of Tesla cars.
A salvage title doesn't necessarily mean the car is junk, though. The fact that you can revive a salvage title clearly shows this. A lot of the cars my family has driven were revived by my father, it is economical and more sustainable in my opinion.
I personally don't support any attempts by auto makers to make cars more disposable.
I'm keeping a 33 year old vehicle alive and it's still a joy to drive.
My other car is newer but still with low mileage and in excellent condition.
It's not really that hard, but so much has been done deliberately to make it more difficult. I'm finding older vehicles more and more desirable than newer ones.
I've never understood how tesla doesn't get subjected to a very expensive recall to retrofit their vehicles with an OBDII port that actually works. Bare minimum it should have to provide the subset of PIDs that are applicable to it. Odometer, time since start, voltages, throttle position, battery pack remain life, etc.
Legislators, lobbyists and car manufacturers are working hard together to obsolete and replace OBDII with something that is completely locked away from consumers and independent mechanics forever.
You know, a newer thing that gets lots of remarks like that is the Security Gateway Module (SGM) from FCA (Chrysler) on 2018+ models. Everybody thinks its getting locked away from end users except read access. Less understood is along with this change they now they sell their micropods for $1800. (obd2 wifi dongle) Meaning, for under 2k you literally have the same tool the dealers have to use. And you can pay for 3 day subscriptions for $50 a pop that give you access to everything (firmware updates, repair procedures, wiring diagrams, etc)
But if you still want to use a 3rd party tool you pay $100 a year for an autoauth subscription that supports all tools an independent shop could possible have among all their employees. That effectively allows the 3rd party tools to request FCA unlock the SGM so they can program the car directly with aftermarket tools. And if you just don't want to deal with chrysler or care if nefarious actors can potentially hijack and program your car over a cellular connection. You can replace the SGM with a bypass and even ditch the cellular connection. Or you can add another OBD port for yourself by plugging in at the star port. Or use something like the 8+12 method.
So its not like John Deer or Tesla where you can't do anything. Its more like if you owned an Apple computer and Apple allowed you to purchase their software to work with it. And did so at a very reasonable price (comparatively) any independent shop could afford. But also allowed you to register with a auth service that allows you to disable all the stuff blocking you from doing things with 3rd party software.
If we're going to go down this road of cellular vehicles I really hope FCA being out there ahead of others rubs off on how other manufacturers handle it. I think its a pretty good engineering design to address modern concerns as well as support independent shops by extending access to their tools to work with. You don't have to worry if Autel or Snap-On understood something well enough to program the various modules correctly. But you can still go that route if desired.
I mean, with my 30+ year old car I can buy a Haynes manual for $10 once and I have the wiring diagrams and guides for how to make specific repairs forever.
Plus you only get those subscription services for as long as FCA decides they want to sell them to you. Will they still offer that 10 years from now? 20? Consider me extremely skeptical.
I understand the skepticism and you're right certain things remains to be seen. Specifically that they keep techauthority open to aftermarket. Less so that they'd drop support for 20 year old cars on their dealerships.
WiTECH isn't entirely brand new here. This release (WiTECH 2.0) is a continuation of WiTech 1.0 (installed software) that has existed for decades with full support for all OBD2 model years up to 2017. v2.0 is all web based so you can print off whatever you feel is important while you have an active subscription.
You can still get a haynes, chilton, etc manual but I feel we're comparing apples to oranges there. Those sorts of things are not shop manuals + dealer tools even on a 30 year old car. I'm pointing out that the dealer tools are starting to be within grasp of a shade tree mechanic and they're letting YOU service the modules. You don't have to settle for a reverse engineered manual based on a teardown or 3rd party tools. But they aren't stopping you from using those either. I appreciate it with how computerized cars are getting. Who else lets aftermarket flash modules with OEM firmware updates? This is the exact opposite direction tesla has been going in.
All that said. I very much respect a carbureted vehicle that only needs a dull spark on 6 out of 8 cyls to get you down the road. No question about it.
One of the most common reasons for Salvage title in Ohklahoma is hail damage.
"In Oklahoma, the insurance companies will declare a total loss and deem a vehicle as salvage when the damage is greater than 60% of the fair market value of the vehicle."
PBR is ~$3K, anything more severe and they will write whole car down due to cosmetic damage.
That depends on the feature. They generally do not remove EAP/FSD on cars they resell. There have been mistakes though, and it takes some pressure to get them to fix those mistakes. There have also been cases of people getting EAP/FSD when they didn't pay for it.
Other features, like unlimited supercharging on newer cars (older unlimited supercharging followed the car) or free data were only for the original buyer, and they will remove those when they resell a car.
Wait. So features are onwer AND car bounded? It does not carry to the next owner of the same car and does not carry to the next car of the same owner? At least when going through Tesla dealership? That would be pretty despicable..
There is a lot of shady tricks a lot of companies do (but not all of them), like planned obsolesce, but disabling features of a product retroactively and demanding you pay again to re-enable those features is not a common occurrence and even worse in my opinion.
> I mean, they aren't giving it away.
Tesla wants to get paid for the same thing more than once. If they made sure the customer knows from the get go that some of their features are really subscriptions to a service and not ownership, then OK, but that's not what they are doing.
There is a belief running around that Tesla should act like a charity instead of a business while trying to claw its way up to a volume automaker. Software sales are high margin compared to physical auto sales.
Tesla is free to do whatever is supported by contract law as it relates to software licensing, including stripping licenses off vehicles when transfers (like trade ins) done through Tesla (versus a private transfer).
I don't think this is specific to Tesla at all. I think it's more that people are waking up to the fact that they no longer own the things they buy. We've seen the same discussions take place recently around ebook and music libraries disappearing or being non-transferable.
Personally I believe that the current licensing situation may be good for company profits, but presents a net negative for society. As a result I'm always happy when I see it being discussed rather than simply accepted as "the way things are".
Hopefully sooner or later there will be a consumer lawsuit with teeth contesting rentier corporate product lifecycle deaths/EOL feature or usability withdrawal.
>There is a belief running around that Tesla should act like a charity
There is a belief that when you buy a car, features you paid for should not disappear for the sole purpose of ripping off customers. I don't accept that shit, and will never buy from companies with scammy practices like this
>Tesla
I wish it was just tesla. BMW does this too, and I'm sure there are other cars I will never buy for this reason. I don't really care, I have other choices.
They don't need to act like a charity and nobody expects them to. They should decide if the features are a purchase or not, if they are why are they taking them back? If they're not, why are they selling them like purchases?
When I bought Autopilot I asked about taking it to another Tesla if I bought one, and was told it belonged to the car. Meaning when I sell the vehicle I assumed I could advertise that I was selling Autopilot with it. Tesla is 100% in the wrong here.
They would be in the wrong if that is what they were doing, but it isn’t.
If you sell your car to a private party it keeps all its options. If you sell it back to Tesla, ie trade in, they may add or subtract options before reselling it.
That said, there have been some screwups, especially with third party dealers, leading to the current kerfluffle.
Then they're selling features for tens of thousands of dollars and what are you buying? Do even they know? Sounds like they're deciding retroactively case-by-case what the original purchase meant.
And the rest of society is free to use the legal system against Tesla, and to change laws so as to punish them specifically, or the court system. And I personal hope that such things could be applies retroactively.
I was a little confused (haven’t read the article) by your comment, but it made more sense if I read it as a response to this other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952161
Teslas are notoriously expensive to fix, partially because the automaker retains a tight hold on parts availability. So when a Tesla gets into a crash, insurance companies are quick to declare them a total loss because the cost of repairs approaches the value of the vehicle. At that point, Tesla stops supporting the vehicle, meaning all warranties are voided and Supercharging is disabled, even after the repaired vehicle passes a high-voltage inspection by Tesla’s own repair staff.
I take it most crashed vehicles written off in this way can't really be used for parts because Tesla is sabotaging the market for used vehicles and wants to boost sales of new/replacement parts at dealerships, correct?
Also, is the warranty of a Tesla voided if an independent repair shop makes repairs with such parts?
> Sadow sees the act of salvaging so-called “total loss” Teslas as, paradoxically, part of Tesla’s corporate mission to promote sustainable energy. “We (collective white hats) have saved thousands of cars from the scrap heap and put them back on the road,” Sadow said. “That's the only green thing to do!”
I totally agree. The right to repair[1] should be the basic premise for any device you expect to last more than a couple of months.
I really want a Tesla but I would say my biggest misgiving is the perceived lack of “ownership”.
I can’t really take it in for third party repairs. They seem to refer to me as part of their “fleet”. What data are they collecting? I can’t use it on Uber?
Maybe Tesla should link these features to a user's account, not the vehicle. If I sell my iPhone, I'm not selling the apps that I have installed on it.
A side effect of this approach is that you could get a new Tesla and log in to activate the features you already paid for. If you crash your Model 3 and insurance buys you a new one, should you have to pay for Autopilot again?
That said, that approach may piss off people as well. Imagine paying $50k for a Tesla, and only being able to get $30k when you sell it because you paid $20k for features that won't transfer over to the new owner. Even worse if your new car isn't a Tesla: that money would be lost.
I agree. It should either be tied to the account holder, and transfer from vehicle to vehicle owned by that person, or be attached to the car and be transferred right along with every other part of the car.
From a little bit of reading, it really seems like TSLA is trying to have it both ways on this, where it can just disappear after any private transaction?
The fact that there's question here is insane. This should be an easy question to answer from the purchase agreement, but I downloaded a purchase agreement I could find, but it didn't say anything about FSD.
Has anyone here bought a Tesla with FSD? Did your purchase agreement say anything on the subject?
FSD and other software upgrades follow the car. Cars can transfer owners just fine. If the car is wrecked and declared salvage, the software value is gone and only the parts can be used. If you rebuild the VIN you don’t magically get the software features back because in the Tesla DB it’s a salvaged car and they can’t (or won’t) be liable for it.
Because Tesla can’t (or won’t) be liable for those aspects in a post-salvage vehicle. I’m not saying it’s optimal. It would be nice of there was a way to re-certify a vehicle or something. But in lieu of that I think it makes sense for the liability of running e.g. FSD software to transfer to the people salvaging or to the final new owner by way of third party modification to enable it.
Regarding your scenario, that wouldn’t happen unless you were as unfortunate as the only person (that we know of) that had their FSD removed after a private sell due to Tesla’s own mistake when selling the car[0]. Otherwise, FSD transfers with the car to the new owner unless you sell it to Tesla (who pays you for the value of FSD) and then maybe decides to remove FSD to sell it at non-FSD price to increase flow of pre-owned inventory.
> That said, that approach may piss off people as well. Imagine paying $50k for a Tesla, and only being able to get $30k when you sell it because you paid $20k for features that won't transfer over to the new owner. Even worse if your new car isn't a Tesla: that money would be lost.
There's an easy fix for that: add the option to transfer the Autopilot to another account. Then you can sell off the Autopilot as well.
Given, of course, Tesla being willing to allow that, or if not, sufficiently consumer-friendly legislation.
None of this adds up -- there must be details missing.
First, if a dealer advertises a car with a feature and the car is missing that feature, then you have recourse -- with the dealer.
Second, how does Tesla even know that a car has changed owners? What triggered Tesla disabling the feature at this time for this car?
I mean look, if you want to sell your Tesla back to an official Tesla dealer and they have an agreement with Tesla to disable software add-ons before reselling... then that's Tesla's right. But then the purchaser would never have seen any extra features enabled in the first place -- there would be nothing to complain about.
So the story is that the dealer had it enabled for demos and included it in the sale info but didn't actually pay for the actual customer to have the product.
I would be a lot more okay with them removing FSD from cars being sold if the FSD transferred to the next Tesla you bought, like a license to have the feature.
That isn't the case, though. I paid for FSD on my model 3. If I trade it in for a Model Y, I don't get to transfer my purchase, but you know that they're going to charge someone else to enable FSD on that vehicle. It's double-dipping.
While I don’t believe any of this is acceptable, I understand the supercharger disable for salvage title vehicles. Tesla has no idea what damage has been done to the battery pack and how they were or were not repaired. If the car catches fire while supercharging then Tesla is the one in the news, not the company that rebuilt the car.
Battery safety and compliance testing is going to be a big industry in the next decade as a result IMO.
They don't allow Supercharging in the case where they've had a good close look at the battery:
meaning all warranties are voided and Supercharging is disabled, even after the repaired vehicle passes a high-voltage inspection by Tesla’s own repair staff.
Yes, and I still understand why Tesla does that. The stresses a battery undergoes during supercharging are incredible and, as far as I am aware, there is no fool proof way to make sure things are in good enough condition. Tesla is relying on the initial construction of the battery pack for supercharging safety - it only takes one cell with damage to overheat and cause a cascade to nearby cells. The Model 3 has 4,416 of them.
To an extent, it even makes sense for FSD. If you're going to take on that much risk and liability, you don't want to rely on other people.
We need new frameworks to handle this kind of stuff.
Tesla is turning out to be an environmental disaster.
Normally a car is serially produced by established factories, and sometimes even re-using parts from other models. And this car will still be in use 20 years later with no restrictions on its features except wear.
While a Tesla is manufactured in a brand new factory with no previous precedence of parts or processes.
And on top of that, it's re-sale usability is apparently garbage. So we'll see a bunch of old Teslas litter nature because no one wants them.
Got it. So it seems in the Jalopnik case, Tesla missed disabling those features while it was in their possession, so did so after they sold the vehicle to a dealer and after the dealer sold the vehicle to a private party?
Then it would seem to me, in the Jalopnik article that Tesla was just in the wrong in this instance. They could have disabled the feature when they sold the car, but once they transferred title of it and it retained that feature, they should no longer be able to revoke that feature.
All I want is the work truck equivalent. I don't want all the features. I want it to be cheap and just have basic features. It needs to be reasonably repairable too.
The new hummer ev is a step in the right direction. The original hummers had a pickup style so hopefully that's next.
Edit- I've always missed the true small trucks like the 90's era rangers and b2000's. I feel like that's an excellent place for a new ev truck startup to begin. The new rangers and colorados are as big as the old f-150's.
The small trucks were killed by fuel efficiency standards. Bigger trucks have lower MPG targets, so small trucks died.
Ford did make a 2000 era electric Ranger though. Perhaps success of an electric f-150 will enable electric trucks in general, and smaller trucks again.
The Ford/Lincoln/Rivian SUV was canceled (or all eat postponed) earlier this year because we're in the middle of a global pandemic. Ford still has an ownership stake in Rivian but they're also building some EVs without Rivian (Mustang Mach-E, Transit, F150, etc). And Ford also has an agreement with VW for building vehicles based on the MEB platform.
I think solutions like this will be best for the near future for folks who want a car with an electric motor, rather than a cell phone you can rent to drive places.
It seems like every manufacturer is generally going higher and higher grade on feature set and (some) performance metrics, and saying "screw you" basically to maintenance, repairability and general comprehensibility concerns.
The cars I've owned from the 60's up through the 90's all had wiring diagrams that would fit on a few pages and could be maintained, largely, with a handful of tools in a normal suburban driveway. Newer cars seem more and more to require specialized tools or equipment and are harder to debug.
Generally the maintenance / repair process is aimed at shops and professionals, not the end user. This specialization is brittle, and unlikely to survive any significant systemic shocks. We've been locking ourselves into this model for decades, and I don't see an easy way out.
I look forward to some high quality open source EV hardware becoming available eventually. That's probably when I'll get an electric car.
Thanks! I had heard of some third party conversions, but hadn't heard of GM's.
Yeah, my old 89 caprice had a computer, but the wiring wasn't too bad. Of course the self diagnostics were not very advanced which makes some troubleshooting more difficult. Ah, the days of bending a paperclip and sticking it into the OBD port...
I'm guessing Ford and GM might have better repair options. I forget who they partnered with. I think Ford and Rivian have a "skateboard" they can use which is self-conatained. I'm guessing that one might not be super repairable, but might not have the same restrictions that Tesla does. I think GM is with Lordstown Motors. Not sure on their implementation.
I think price is the big issue. The batteries and motors are expensive in a variable cost way. Most of the features use relatively inexpensive sensors or components and have low variable cost. So a consumer sees all these features as justifying the high cost. Removing those features probably wont make it much cheaper (unless maybe you're a separate company that doesn't develop/engineer those features at all).
Afaik the bad repairability of Tesla is mostly down to the lack of parts. You cannot just order parts from Tesla, you need to be an approved shop and even then it sometimes takes months for basic things like a bumpers or fenders to be delivered.
I'm not sure how that's even legal under the magnufson-moss act. If Tesla requires you use their parts (the software portions and other many other parts are copyrighted to prevent aftermarket suppliers), then they would be required to provide them.
Honestly surprised there hasn't been more work put into designing an open source electric car. While open source doesn't necessarily mean it's secure and bug free - it does bring a sense of security that I can look at the code that's controlling this 2 tone metal death trap I am in.
The over the air updates from tesla that adjust things like the pedal heights and performance characteristics of the motor makes me want to avoid them.
I own a VW and while it is a top-spec model and has most of the optional hardware, there was quite a lot of stuff disabled in software. For example, cruise control was available after replacing a switch. I have enabled a "needle sweep" which was only available on Audis and a fog light turn thing which was only available on Seats (I think). I can do this stuff because I own my car. You don't own a Tesla.
Continuously making money on the same car by making every new owner of the same vehicle pay again for extra software. Genius, absolutely genius.
The private seller can only sell the car without asking for money for the software features and the new owner instead has to pay Tesla again. Brilliant!
So I'm a little confused. If I buy a tesla, and pay the extra $8000 (or whatever it is) for self driving. If I sell my car, is Tesla refunding the $8000 to the original purchaser?
So basically it's not worth buying because the license is not resellable. Also what about Elon's tweets about how the "value of your car appreciates" specifically because of the self driving feature. If it appreciates that's referring to selling the car. I imagine a giant lawsuit is coming around this.
Sorry quick search but take a look at this (paywall but you get the jist):
Ugh. I'm so sick of this shit. Why can't we just own the car if we buy it? I was actually researching a model 3 recently, now I have to go scratch it off the list.
If it’s optional, is it really a feature? I know that’s a technical question, but a few years ago, when one got a car with a nav system, that was sometimes an optional purchase. Basically, it’s not that clear cut.
It's remarkable how the personality and ethics of founders (or early investor in Musk/Tesla) appear in how a company behaves, as in Zuckerberg/Facebook and Newmark/Craig's List for other examples.
Full self driving seems like an app. I think it would be okay to deactivate, but shouldn’t be included in the resale value of the car. Assume over time the capability becomes tuned to the driver, in that case it wouldn’t be the same as transferring it over.
The Tesla model is the iPhone model... you pay good money for the device, but it remains in the full control of the manufacturer. As Apple has had more time to demonstrate, this model has advantages and disadvantages. If you don’t want this business model, don’t buy a Tesla.
This is why I don't want a car connected to the internet. The behavior of my 50k vehicle should not change unexpectedly because some guy in silicon valley pushed an update.