You still have to buy a Tesla. You’re acting like it’s a win to control the software that is on the hardware that you own. It’s sad that it is.
Locked down software is shit don’t get me wrong, but being able to jailbreak it feels so good.
It’s worth noting our regular cars have locked down ECU. I had to pay good money to be able to get around it. But I agree it’s not great overall and isn’t headed in a promising direction.
Even my 2005 Audi A6 had software locked features.
Some were probably tuned for different markets, like lock confirmation beep, but others were added as later model year updates like visualization of parking sensors which, IIRC, was added with the 2006 model year update.
Now, granted, the Audi dealer that had serviced my car prior to my ownership never bothered to install firmware updates, but even when I did it was off by default.
To update I needed to flash new firmware onto the ECU’s using 3 CD’s with various updates while the car was hooked up to a charger. The whole thing took about 3 hours.
And then I could use a third party diagnostic tool (VCDS) to set and enable the visualization of the parking sensors. Honestly can’t remember if it actually worked, but at least I got other features made available due to the software updates.
The problem, IMO, is the trend towards never owning anything - not software gated features.
And that trend is certainly negative.
So many people are going to brick their teslas
You would need to be crazy to apply a voltage regulation hack to the CPU that they don’t sell spare parts if something goes wrong. Risking bricking a $50000 car to unlock the $300 heated seats?
And while the root access is unpatchable, because the car is always connected to internet and always sharing too much telemetry to their servers, it would be trivial for them to add an additional server side check to see if some feature has been unlocked without paying.
Is the MCU no longer replaceable? Definitely was possible to replace them when they were shipping with weak eMMC that degraded and bricked the car (plenty of people also soldered better chips).
It’s still not cheap, but there are crashed Teslas aplenty, could pull it off one if you can’t pay retail.
This mod is something that people will more likely do when the car has depreciated anyway.
I meant it can be technically replaced, but Tesla won’t sell you one if you break it for fun
Idk, seems like a quick buck earned on a car already sold, why wouldn’t they? They even sold upgrade kits from MCU to MCU2. The key ingredient was outrageous margins (MCU2 upgrade kit cost over 2k, but ebay MCU-Z units are under 800 used and I’m pretty sure that the used ones are STILL more than what Tesla pays for them).
It costs them nothing if you do manage to upgrade your car with a mod, but they make money if you fail and have to buy a new unit off them. I’d keep the thing going if I was in charge of Tesla tbh. And then in like half a year announce that these cars lose access to Supercharger network or something.
That’s what I’d do if I was Musk, anyway. If you’re a villain already, why not go full evil
You could disable their spyware. Cars didn’t always phone home to snitch on you.
You could. But then they could also deactivate your ignition of it doesn’t phone home every 1/2/3 week. For “safety” reasons.
You could also disable that disabler. Once you own that shit you can dk what you want with it. Block tesla domains, alter the ignition code.
would really spark some anger after people get stranded with disabled cars while camping for prolonged periods of time, or just parking underground while flying abroad.
I’m sure it would, but someone must think of the children, and make sure that the on board software is up to date for safety’s sake. (I can hear the money changing hands to fill the election coffers of the congressional oversight committee members even as I type this).
