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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday February 12 2020, @11:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the fine-print-giveth-and-small-print-taketh-away dept.

People Are Jailbreaking Used Teslas to Get the Features They Expect:

People have certain expectations when they buy a car. For example, they expect it to work for years afterwards needing only basic maintenance. They also expect that the purchase price includes ownership of not only the physical car itself but all the software that runs it.

Tesla doesn't agree.

Last week, Jalopnik ran an article about a person who bought a used Tesla from a dealer—who in turn bought it at auction directly from Tesla under California's lemon law buyback program—advertised as having Autopilot, the company's Advanced Driver Assistance System. The entire Autopilot package, which the car had when the dealer bought it, costs an extra $8,000. Then, Tesla remotely removed the software because "Full-Self Driving was not a feature that you had paid for." Tesla said if the customer wanted Autopilot back, he'd have to fork over the $8,000.

Tesla clawing back software upgrades from used cars is not a new practice for the company. "Tesla as a policy has been doing this for years on salvage cars," said Phil Sadow, an independent Tesla repair professional. One former employee, who used to work in an official Tesla service center and asked to remain anonymous because he still works with Tesla in another capacity, said he was told to put the software features back if people complained to avoid bad publicity. He left about a year ago.

But that doesn't mean Tesla owners are helpless. Sadow and others have ways to push back against Tesla by jailbreaking the cars and getting the features owners feel are rightfully theirs.

"As far as I am concerned removing a paid-for feature, regardless of the state of the car, is theft," Sadow said. "It's as if a bunch of guys show up in a van and take your upgraded 20" wheels. Just because it's software, it's no different."


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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 13 2020, @09:24AM (2 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 13 2020, @09:24AM (#957661) Journal

    People should have full control over their computing to begin with.

    People should have the knowledge and abilities to be able to exercise the control over their computers before even starting "to begin with".
    Wake me up when this knowledge exists in even a non-trivial part of the population (as a first step before their number is large enough to ask for/obtain protective regulations).

    Anything else is inherently oppressive and will be used by mega-corporations and governments to take advantage of people, as already happens.

    Yeah, it happens. Deal with it the best you can, because most of the people don't care, so don't expect their support.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 13 2020, @11:46AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 13 2020, @11:46AM (#957676)

    People should have the knowledge and abilities to be able to exercise the control over their computers before even starting "to begin with".

    No, that's not how a specialized society works. People should have access to people with knowledge and abilities to be able to exercise full control over the objects they own. And yes, that includes buying a $1,000 second-hand dinkytoy and upgrading it with a $2,000 rolls royce engine, and driving it in public if the resulting contraption is road-worthy. Just because (parts of) the engine is made with software should not invalidate that freedom.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 13 2020, @01:44PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 13 2020, @01:44PM (#957698) Journal

      and driving it in public if the resulting contraption is road-worthy.

      You mean, if they have enough money to hire someone to assess the road-worthy-ness, right?
      I don't know, but I have this hunch anyone can do it right now, within the bounds of the current regulations. Enough "fast and furious" movies featuring custom modded, hot rods and shop-build cars for me to believe it is legal.
      So, wipe clean Tesla's firmware (to avoid breaching DMCA) and replace it with your own choice of firmware, pass the inspection and Bob's your uncle.

      Look, even the diabetics that hack their own pump into something better [medicalxpress.com] a free to do so as long as they don't endanger others (even when some make fatal programming mistakes) - that is they do no sell the hacked pumps without FDA's certification. Were they to have enough money for certification, I'm sure they could compete with the actual manufacturers.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford