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."
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday February 14 2020, @12:34AM
Correction: Melbourne, Australia.
Born in one of the East European countries under a former communist regime. What this does teach one: pick you fights, you may finish dead over a nothing; if you end disappeared, at least there should be a worthy reason for it.
Hint: Tesla disabling autopilot in its second hand cars doesn't worth a fuss - vote with you wallet and be done with it - there's nothing about "human rights" or "my liberty" in there, just buy another car.
No disrespect meant or intended in the below, and I admit I may be wrong, but this is how I see you from outside.
You - the American people - never dared on your own. If the french weren't to finance it [wikipedia.org], I think it's very likely your Independence War wouldn't have started then (or ever - nothing wrong with that, Australia didn't have a war over its independence and is well and fine independent today, thank you). "Tyranny, oppression, injustice"? Heh, that's what the french told you, that you war was "the incarnation of the Enlightenment Spirit against the English tyranny" (it would have to be kinda ironic to raise against royalty with money provided by a king)
And it's also likely you couldn't maintain your independence, were it not for the french, dutch and spanish to support you afterwards (just to spite the brits, of course). The French even gave you a statue as a reminder to be proud of your achievements.
After that, whenever you went to die over something, it was because you - the people - have been tricked into it, not because you actually wanted it. Even the WWII.
Post 9/11, you de-facto lost heaps of your liberties - I don't see, within the population, any effort to regain them in any way, by any means (ranging from voting persons that support that, political movements, civil street protests, rioting or revolution). It looks you are more afraid of losing jobs than you are afraid of losing your rights and more preoccupied to fight with you fellow than with those who stole your freedoms (thanks God your infighting is using speech only).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford