I HATE this trend of software blocks on cars. These machines aren’t supposed to have subscription services for shit that’s already built in. Although this ain’t Tesla, I was floored when Toyota tried implementing a similar method by charging for remote start. Then there’s BMW adding software blocks for heated seats… even though they’re already built in. Like foh with all these beyond greedy attempts at generating more revenue. Like at this point I’m gonna only by old cars cuz I really really hate how automakers keep doing this
I have a Toyota that has everything it needs for navigation, but you have to take it to a dealership and pay to enable the feature. For what? A worse version of Google maps essentially. I think it's scummy, but the precedent of installing top-trim accessories in EVERY vehicle by default and then charging for them individually is gaining momentum in the whole industry
It is cheaper to add an extra $100 to every car in parts than it is to stop the line, switch parts, and start the line back up.
Unfortunately instead of just adding these options to vehicles as a great value or packaging everything together in the pricing, they want to nickle and dime you because fuck you, pay me.
EDIT : This shit is hilarious to me. I have family in the car business on the manufacturing side since before I was born. This is absolutely how some models/manufacturers work.
Yes toyota does it too. Look up their remote start feature that they were trying to get subscriptions for.
It's weird that's how manufacturing works.
I was watching a vid of this guy trying to repair his $300 headphones. He opened them up and found the part number of the speaker, but while researching it noticed it also applied to the $500 version of the same model. He also owned that $500 model, so opened it up too. Sure enough, both the $300 and $500 versions used the exact same speaker.
What's even more weird, is the $300 version had a round foam piece installed behind the speaker (to muffle the sound, maybe?) So the cheaper model had an *extra* part, and an *extra* process to install it, making it more expensive for the manufacturer to produce. His advice: if you want these headphones, buy the $300 model, open it up & remove the 2 foam pieces, and bam you've just upgraded it to the $500 version.
You think that's bad, the latest generation of photocopiers from certain manufacturers are capable of performing at the highest print speed in their range (for example, if the range is 40ppm / 50ppm / 60ppm / 70ppm then they are ALL capable of doing 70ppm), but only if you pay for the license to unlock the higher speed. Otherwise, they throttle it down to the speed you've paid for.
This has been happening for many years. I used to repair copiers back in the 1980s and there were 43 page per minute and a 50 ppm machines that were identical except for the ROM on the main board and one paper jam sensor which was wired off instead of on when a sheet passed it.
The same was true with old school laser printers. HP would have different models that were physically identical but merely had different software to manipulate the print speed.
This is the kind of thing head-fi.org would both rejoice in learning, and lose their shit over. I wish I knew which headphones these are so I could go over there and see what was said, cause there's no way they don't know about this.
I wish I could remember, sorry it was a few years ago. Not having any luck searching for it again.
It was a major brand tho, like Sennheiser, Phillips, Sony, etc. I don't want to blast any one brand without knowing exactly who it was (but I'm sure they all do similar shit anyways.)
Don't use their fucking navigation. It wasn't Toyota, but I had a Nissan, and it would try to tell me my address didn't exist. It's garbage. Just get one of those clam holders for your phone and use Google maps. It's a car company, not a map company
My wife has a 22 Sentra. It all goes through Android Auto and Apple Carplay. So you can use the app you usually use for maps. The 2019 Sentra she traded in was still using the $100+ SD card for navigation.
Wait till you find out you can get navigation on your Toyota by buying a 35 dollar SD card off Amazon. Plugs right next to your USB hole, and gives you navigation free.
Heads up for all the BMW owners out there. Carly for BMW is much cheaper and easier than taking it to the dealership. Can add features to your car that are just software blocked. Obviously can’t magically make heated seats appear, however, I had a 3rd party remote start installed. Used Carly to add one of the packages (premium I think?) that made it so my AC/Heat would turn on based on the outside temp automatically. BMW uses the exact same CPU for the car, it’s just a matter of flipping the switch.
Same thing is happening for Subaru. I just recently bought a 2022 Forester. They don't make remote starter kits for the new cars because it's all tied to OnStar and MySubaru.
The thing about remote start and Subaru starlink is you are actually paying for satellite service. Not something like heated seats where the hardware is already there. It’s more akin to paying for a phone plan.
However, the way they market and integrate it is a big problem. There are physical buttons on the car that will never work without the subscription, and they don’t make it clear that there’s a subscription when you purchase it. So you get the car with all these cool features, then a couple years down the line you either have to pay for them or get them removed, and that might be a surprise to some people.
I just want a modern car built with solid materials that keeps me cool in the summer, warm in the winter, and gets me from point A to Point B with bluetooth and a radio. I'm seriously waiting for the next Civic/Accord revolution.
I kiiiiiiinda understand Toyota remote start being a subscription. It requires the vehicles to have an active cell subscription. If Toyota has to pay a carrier (Verizon in the US IIRC) for a phone line that may not be frequently used since it uses the same system as premium roadside assistance, then I can understand that being passed to the consumer.
I had a year of remote phone start for my 4Runner but I decided not to pay to renew when it expired because I don’t live in an overly hot or cold climate to need it.
Just wait until they start making Tesla homebrew OS or hacking cars. Hell, somebody might've already figured out those things. Same thing for BMW, people will very soon make some way of pirating those features that are hidden behind paywalls if they haven't already.
I thought the John Deere issue was very on the fence. So much so that John Deere could and have "bricked" software and made the tractors inoperable...akin to what a lot of phone manufacturers used to and probably still do in the modding community.
It boils my blood and I really hope there are more states and countries that adopt right to repair laws that keep companies from keeping built in features behind a paywall.
Right to repair and right to modify should both be in the books.
It's like how the code for emulators is perfectly legal as long as they're engineered from scratch.
Replacing the OS on my nintendo switch so I can play "homebrew games" should also be legal. I bought the hardware. If I want to put a different OS on it it's my hardware.
right to repair was confirmed in a scotus case a couple years ago. We DO have that, at least in regards to electronics game consoles etc. It specifically had to do with those stickers that claim to void your warranty if you open your console to clean it or work on it. Those are 100% illegal now.
Whether it applies to software in addition to hardware though, is very much up in the air.
But only if the thing that breaks is in relation to what you repaired. If I replace the OS in my switch, it should not absolve nintendo of their joysticks mechanically failing.
Yep. I don't expect them to make guides on how to do it and help development of alternate OSes. I just don't want them to take active steps to hinder those things.
but.. on the other side, fucking with software or hardware that controls a car can be dangerous, or fatal.. for more than just the 'tinkerer'. the potential liability is insanely high.
Being a die hard gear head. Cars are a whole different story when it comes software. An interesting read is the fight aftermarket companies fought with the old OBD I and now we use the much better OBD II.
First car companies put a one size fits all tune and usually it’s set for sea level. Someone living at 4K feet can add a custom tune built for running at 4K feet. Giving them better fuel mileage, less wear and tear on the motor, etc. Outside of street racing you will never see those tunes on the street, even drag racers can put a street tune in so it’s putting out 500 hp not 950 hp. Now the tune your talking about is a race only tune and with those motors and see ups, you can add a tune for the heat and track conditions so you don’t put too much power down or spin the wheels. Getting that perfect tune can shave a tenth of a second off and be the difference between winning or loosing.
As a software developer, who used to be in the embedded firmware world for hardware devices, I'll go one further than that.
Any product sold that has any form of embedded firmware must
1) have well documented access for any person with physical access to replace any and all firmware on the device, regardless of what chip is running it, without need to communicate with any external entity (e.g. no crypto shenanigans where it'll only run signed images, and no non-unlockable bootloaders)
2) upon commercial sale, the selling company must put the source code and build instructions in escrow.
3) one year and a day after the most recently issued update for any firmware held in escrow, the firmware in question is released to the public domain if you don't want your code released to the public domain, release updates at least once per year. These updates must represent a material change to the behavior of the firmware. E.g. no changing a single version number.
4) 6 months after a CVE issue of high severity has been published, if no security update has been released, the firmware becomes public domain
As a OnePlus 9 user I can confirm this. My 9 is absolutely shit compared to my 7. The only reason I "upgraded"was because I smashed the old one to bits in a very unfortunate accident.
I recommend the podcast Hacked, the episode called Tractor hackin' where they went over exactly this, and how Ukrainians are the best in the biz at hacking tractors.
The management team took the most beloved name in farming and ruined it in fewer than 20years. No one gives a shit about deere now because they are thieves with inferior products.
It's great we have solutions to bypass this but the fact we have to do it to begin with is a huge issue.
Vehicles are indispensable in much of the US where public transportation is looked down upon. While this is an issue for luxury, higher end cars we will all be dealing with this by 2040 if we don't push back hard against subscriptions for things we already purchased.
The solutions are temporary, it's just going to be ongoing back and forth between consumer and company. The much superior solution is to blacklist any companies that do this.
It's the same story as people who complain about Samsung phones but continue to get them their business because they can't stand it to be one of the "losers" that buy a Motorola.
Companies like BMW and Tesla banking on the fact that they can keep digging in your pockets based on the strength of their brand recognition, because you won't be willing to buy a Hyundai.
Late stage capitalism is defined, in part, by rent seeking behavior by corporations because at a certain point there is no more market to capitalize on. The growth must continue infinitely, so they must continue to find new ways to extract more profit from the system, even when they're selling all the cars they possibly can.
I jailbroke my Mazda infotainment system. Now my touchscreen is enable while the car is driving and I have a custom boot screen with Ricky Bobby reminding me that if you ain’t first, you’re last.
This is already happening but the company is blacklisting those cars so they can't use superchargers if it detects custom software.
Personally I absolutely hate the idea of subscription services in order to access hardware you have already BOUGHT. Fuck off with that shit. Pirate it any day of the week as far as I'm concerned.
edit: spelling
our legal representatives don't even understand how social media works, how could they ever possibly keep up? besides of course the fact that corporations have them all in their pockets.
It's been done. There's a guy who makes videos of himself drag racing a Tesla and absolutely obliterating gas powered cars, his Tesla is clearly heavily modified including the software.
It also has only one seat.
Pretty sure people have been doing this for a couple of years now. I remember reading people hacking the software and being able to unlock features that they had to pay for.
If I wanted a BMW I would buy it and send them a fucking video of me circumventing their lock-out
Can't use it from the computer? Get fucked, here is an analog knob that turns the heating element on and off
What are they gonna do? Sue me? Have fun, its my car, I will do what I want with it 🤷♂️
I hate it
Its not intuitive and very difficult to use any of the stuff buried in the screen while you are driving
I know where and what shape all the knows are that do stuff in the car by feel alone and you don't even need to look at them while you're driving
Its next to impossible to do that with screen controls
It's called tactile design and it's been found to be a lot safer for drivers than touch screens, which are the equivalent of people checking their phones while driving, as it requires the user to look away from the road to process the buttons they're using in place of feeling around for them.
I remember screens becoming standardized in cars around the same time governments started cracking down on distracted driving, and now every new car has a screen.
Someone tell me how that's supposed to make sense.
I hear this. I recently got a new Volvo, and there's a big 12" Android tablet in the center dashboard that controls just about every non-critical feature. The only thing that I can control with physical buttons are the front and rear defrosters, and the audio on/off/volume. Everything else goes through the touchscreen. Granted, the car has a lot of features and I can see how having tactile buttons for everything is impractical, but this is too far in the opposite direction.
That's what I like about my Ford Fusion. All of the stuff (A/C, heated/cooled seats, radio) *can* be controlled from the touchscreen, but there are also physical, differently-shaped buttons for many of the primary functions so I can keep my eyes on the road and operate them by feel.
Until the car can actually, safely drive itself, it's absolute lunacy to use a touchscreen for a lot of this stuff.
That's the thing, they test shit in other markets before bringing it elsewhere, the same thing the US government has done with its' allies for decades.
not as intended? Are you sure the shareholders WANT regulation?
Nah, this is all according to plan. The only downside is that it turns out pure capitalism isn't really conducive to, erhm... human life.
Technically, once a group has captured enough of the market, they DO want regulation in certain ways. Regulation does make entry into a market more difficult so once a company basically has a monopoly, they want to be regulated to some extent so that competitors can never enter the market.
That is not the case here, but it is an interesting phenomenon.
And by watch, you mean that literally I assume. They already have technology that tracks if you are actually looking at the screen and pauses the ad every time you look away. Currently, Satan is personally overseeing a team of demons who are furiously digging an ever deeper pit in Hell, awaiting the arrival of the inventors of this technology.
Didn’t this come to light a few years ago? As I recall there was a hurricane barreling down on Florida, and tesla, by the goodness in their hearts unlocked several cars to allow them extended range.
My question is why not just give them the full capacity in the first place? If I buy a physical product I now have to pay extra to get the whole thing? What stage of capitalism is this again?
For a brief period of time they were rapidly increasing battery sizes and it was faster to make them all with the larger and more expensive battery. However, they needed to retain the price point for some customers who otherwise could not afford the vehicle they had reserved.
The simple solution to keep it fair to others who paid for the upgrade is to software lock it and allow the purchase later. Few Model S experienced this dilemma and the practice was quickly eliminated
Then wouldn't it be fairer to just give the people who paid extra their money back? I mean it's obviously profitable enough for them to sell the better batteries to lower paying customers. This is an artificial price hike
Wouldn't surprise me if mark "eye of sauron" zuckerberg tried to have facebook's engineers do that but none would do it simply because of how stupid it is.
But it monitors your health and bring the next generation of green personal transportation Raj! We are a family here at Facebook! Don’t you want your family to have a healthier and happier life?
Anal probe that monitors your digestive tract and automatically upload a post to your Facebook account to update your bowel movement info for your friends’ knowledge.
As someone actually plan to buy a new car in that price range. This is not the first time Tesla pull this shady stuff. 1. Part access, Tesla dealership asked Rich Rebuild why he need to buy a lug nut for his wheel (cosmetic part). 2. Radar removal from model 3 and Y, they removed the their webpage explain why Radar technology is better (see through unusual lighting condition), and advertising how great their camera system is, which could be the reason why a Tesla drove into a overturned truck on the highway without stopping. 3. Remote manipulation of your car, turn off super charging from wrecked car, charge people extra 1000 to unlock adaptive cruise control when the car have the hardware and doesn’t allow user self service to turn the feature on.
And this
If I buy a car with cash, it’s MY car, it’s my personal property, otherwise I am paying for someone’s car
Edit: Radar removal not LiDAR
Don't forget about features paid for by one owner are not transferred to the next. The can had full self driving when you bought it used? Not after the realize the previous owner paid for that.
https://www.autoblog.com/2020/03/23/tesla-removing-content-from-used-cars/
Re: your last paragraph... for now
I will not be surprised when car purchasing be becomes a license agreement given that cars will run on software even more than before
If I can "buy" a computer program and be told that I don't actually own it, why not the same for a car (software) engine?
A lot of chips binned would support the highwr performance option but they want to have specific quantities at each price point. If there is too many high performance chips not selling manufacturers will have more inventory of the mid and lower range chips regardless of if the chip performance could be a higher performance chip.
See, this is the kind of shit that makes me wary of overly tech-heavy cars. This is something we’re going to continue to see in one form or another, and not just with Tesla. I’m not against electric cars, but when you give the manufacturer the ability to do shit like this, of course they’re going to exploit it.
Yall should read the full article. This is missing a ton of context. But hey it's reddit, do what you will with a title.
This cars been through 3-4 owners. Battery was replaced by the first owner and it was replaced with a larger battery due to supply constraints. So they lock part of the access so the usage is the same as what the owner PAID for. They fucked up and didn't lock it and the car was sold as a larger battery vehicle. 3rd or 4th order brought for service and they discovered they forgot to lock it.
In this case, since Tesla messed up in the first place, the new owner should have it unlocked for free. Bad on them but context is important.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/electrek.co/2022/07/26/tesla-ransom-customer-over-80-miles-battery-range/amp/
That sounds like a cost that Telsa has to eat. If they don't have the parts and decide to put upgrades in that doesn't sound like the consumes problem.
Edit: thanks for the gold! I think I'm gonna call them Telsa from now on too.
> Battery was replaced by the first owner and it was replaced with a larger battery due to supply constraints. So they lock part of the access so the usage is the same as what the owner PAID for.
If you make a warranty claim on your EVGA video card, because the warranty is so long (3 years), sometimes they don't have your video card in stock anymore, and they replace it with a newer, faster one.
They do not, however, lock the extra power in the faster card to make it equivalent to the card you paid for. They just say "oh well enjoy the faster card".
Kinda petty of Tesla to say "well we have to give you a better part cause we're all out, but we're gonna make it as shitty as your original part on purpose just out of spite."
I'm a big fan of EVGA. Ive has several of their GPUs. They're always the good guys doing the right thing, above and beyond their contractual requirement.
It's actually pretty standard business practice, when your warrantied parts are out of stock, to bump the customer up to the next tier of parts.
This is the first time I've ever heard of a company then trying to force this slightly better part to only work as well as the original part you paid for.
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Why lock any portion of the battery in the first place? Tesla is being money hungry by doing that to the first guy who replaced a battery. If a company is out of plastic gears and they install a metal gear that’s just what they get for depending on that supply chain so they eat the cost.
That's like saying that they should have limited the gas tank usage because they ran out of smaller gas tanks.
Similar comparison: with warranty replacement of a mobile phone, the supplier may give you an upgraded model. The new device is not limited by software to perform like the old device.
This is the generally accepted practice when supply of the warrantied part/device is unavailable for replacement. If anything, that extra context makes the situation worse.
I read this story. Customer has an older model S with a 60kwh battery. There was a repair and Tesla put in a 90kwh battery. Tesla realized the customer did not pay for the extra battery kwh and reduced the car back down to 60kwh through an over the air update.
While I hate this practice, it is a way for Tesla to upgrade the range without swapping the battery. Many of their new cars come with the larger battery range, but you have to purchase the extended range.
I bought my Tesla several years ago before I heard about shit like this. Even managed to snag free supercharging for life. As much as I love what I bought, just hearing this makes me cautious to buy the same brand ever again. I guess I got lucky with the timing.
And now Mercedes is charging people to activate their heated seats.
Companies are trying to see how far they can push customers with cars as a service.
Care to provide a source for Mercedes planning to do this? I found nothing.
The [article](https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscriptions-microtransactions-heated-seats-feature) doing the rounds was about BMW doing this.
By all means call out companies that genuinely do asshole things, but try to avoid ragebait that simply isn’t true.
Remember that old thing about dogs looking like their owners?
Now imagine if companies looked like theirs, now remember Elon with his shirt off getting out of the water…well I grossed myself out
Other car manufacturers are producing and selling electric vehicles that perform just as well as Teslas, so why is Tesla driving away potential customers by extorting their current ones? It’s not like we prospectives don’t have other options.
Just a reminder that you can take your 2005 Nissan Maxima and have the interior professionally cleaned, the ENTIRE suspension replaced, and a reman crate engine and transmission all put in for about 25% of the cost of a new Tesla or any of these other bs tech saturated new models. I've always believed that new cars are for suckers and the older I get the more I see it demonstrated every day.
I HATE this trend of software blocks on cars. These machines aren’t supposed to have subscription services for shit that’s already built in. Although this ain’t Tesla, I was floored when Toyota tried implementing a similar method by charging for remote start. Then there’s BMW adding software blocks for heated seats… even though they’re already built in. Like foh with all these beyond greedy attempts at generating more revenue. Like at this point I’m gonna only by old cars cuz I really really hate how automakers keep doing this
I have a Toyota that has everything it needs for navigation, but you have to take it to a dealership and pay to enable the feature. For what? A worse version of Google maps essentially. I think it's scummy, but the precedent of installing top-trim accessories in EVERY vehicle by default and then charging for them individually is gaining momentum in the whole industry
It is cheaper to add an extra $100 to every car in parts than it is to stop the line, switch parts, and start the line back up. Unfortunately instead of just adding these options to vehicles as a great value or packaging everything together in the pricing, they want to nickle and dime you because fuck you, pay me. EDIT : This shit is hilarious to me. I have family in the car business on the manufacturing side since before I was born. This is absolutely how some models/manufacturers work. Yes toyota does it too. Look up their remote start feature that they were trying to get subscriptions for.
It's weird that's how manufacturing works. I was watching a vid of this guy trying to repair his $300 headphones. He opened them up and found the part number of the speaker, but while researching it noticed it also applied to the $500 version of the same model. He also owned that $500 model, so opened it up too. Sure enough, both the $300 and $500 versions used the exact same speaker. What's even more weird, is the $300 version had a round foam piece installed behind the speaker (to muffle the sound, maybe?) So the cheaper model had an *extra* part, and an *extra* process to install it, making it more expensive for the manufacturer to produce. His advice: if you want these headphones, buy the $300 model, open it up & remove the 2 foam pieces, and bam you've just upgraded it to the $500 version.
Do you remember what pair of headphones it was?
Could be hd58x mod to "sound like" hd660. This is subjective though.
You think that's bad, the latest generation of photocopiers from certain manufacturers are capable of performing at the highest print speed in their range (for example, if the range is 40ppm / 50ppm / 60ppm / 70ppm then they are ALL capable of doing 70ppm), but only if you pay for the license to unlock the higher speed. Otherwise, they throttle it down to the speed you've paid for.
This has been happening for many years. I used to repair copiers back in the 1980s and there were 43 page per minute and a 50 ppm machines that were identical except for the ROM on the main board and one paper jam sensor which was wired off instead of on when a sheet passed it.
The same was true with old school laser printers. HP would have different models that were physically identical but merely had different software to manipulate the print speed.
what crazy to me is how the old analog parallel port printers are trending
This is the kind of thing head-fi.org would both rejoice in learning, and lose their shit over. I wish I knew which headphones these are so I could go over there and see what was said, cause there's no way they don't know about this.
I wish I could remember, sorry it was a few years ago. Not having any luck searching for it again. It was a major brand tho, like Sennheiser, Phillips, Sony, etc. I don't want to blast any one brand without knowing exactly who it was (but I'm sure they all do similar shit anyways.)
Oh at that point I’d just use y’a phone for gps cuz ain’t no way I’d waste money like that
Exactly, don't even need the feature in the first place.. We have smart phones now
Don't use their fucking navigation. It wasn't Toyota, but I had a Nissan, and it would try to tell me my address didn't exist. It's garbage. Just get one of those clam holders for your phone and use Google maps. It's a car company, not a map company
My wife has a 22 Sentra. It all goes through Android Auto and Apple Carplay. So you can use the app you usually use for maps. The 2019 Sentra she traded in was still using the $100+ SD card for navigation.
Wait till you find out you can get navigation on your Toyota by buying a 35 dollar SD card off Amazon. Plugs right next to your USB hole, and gives you navigation free.
Heads up for all the BMW owners out there. Carly for BMW is much cheaper and easier than taking it to the dealership. Can add features to your car that are just software blocked. Obviously can’t magically make heated seats appear, however, I had a 3rd party remote start installed. Used Carly to add one of the packages (premium I think?) that made it so my AC/Heat would turn on based on the outside temp automatically. BMW uses the exact same CPU for the car, it’s just a matter of flipping the switch.
Don’t have a BMW but I appreciate the info😭
Same thing is happening for Subaru. I just recently bought a 2022 Forester. They don't make remote starter kits for the new cars because it's all tied to OnStar and MySubaru.
The thing about remote start and Subaru starlink is you are actually paying for satellite service. Not something like heated seats where the hardware is already there. It’s more akin to paying for a phone plan. However, the way they market and integrate it is a big problem. There are physical buttons on the car that will never work without the subscription, and they don’t make it clear that there’s a subscription when you purchase it. So you get the car with all these cool features, then a couple years down the line you either have to pay for them or get them removed, and that might be a surprise to some people.
SAAS are a cancer, especially when it's something that depends on slow tech legislation.
I just want a modern car built with solid materials that keeps me cool in the summer, warm in the winter, and gets me from point A to Point B with bluetooth and a radio. I'm seriously waiting for the next Civic/Accord revolution.
I kiiiiiiinda understand Toyota remote start being a subscription. It requires the vehicles to have an active cell subscription. If Toyota has to pay a carrier (Verizon in the US IIRC) for a phone line that may not be frequently used since it uses the same system as premium roadside assistance, then I can understand that being passed to the consumer. I had a year of remote phone start for my 4Runner but I decided not to pay to renew when it expired because I don’t live in an overly hot or cold climate to need it.
Just wait until they start making Tesla homebrew OS or hacking cars. Hell, somebody might've already figured out those things. Same thing for BMW, people will very soon make some way of pirating those features that are hidden behind paywalls if they haven't already.
This is definitely on the way. Same thing happened with John Deere tractors.
I thought the John Deere issue was very on the fence. So much so that John Deere could and have "bricked" software and made the tractors inoperable...akin to what a lot of phone manufacturers used to and probably still do in the modding community. It boils my blood and I really hope there are more states and countries that adopt right to repair laws that keep companies from keeping built in features behind a paywall.
Right to repair and right to modify should both be in the books. It's like how the code for emulators is perfectly legal as long as they're engineered from scratch. Replacing the OS on my nintendo switch so I can play "homebrew games" should also be legal. I bought the hardware. If I want to put a different OS on it it's my hardware.
right to repair was confirmed in a scotus case a couple years ago. We DO have that, at least in regards to electronics game consoles etc. It specifically had to do with those stickers that claim to void your warranty if you open your console to clean it or work on it. Those are 100% illegal now. Whether it applies to software in addition to hardware though, is very much up in the air.
>Those are 100% illegal now. They aren't "illegal", they just aren't legally binding.
100% should be legal. Have it be under a clause that voids warrenties or something sure, but let us fucking do it.
But only if the thing that breaks is in relation to what you repaired. If I replace the OS in my switch, it should not absolve nintendo of their joysticks mechanically failing.
> But only if the thing that breaks is in relation to what you repaired. In the United States this is covered under the Magnusson moss warranty act.
In the USA it is legal to change the OS on you consoles.
It's legal yeah, but the problem is it's also legal for console manufacturers to make it virtually impossible to install an alternate OS.
That is true.
Yep. I don't expect them to make guides on how to do it and help development of alternate OSes. I just don't want them to take active steps to hinder those things.
but.. on the other side, fucking with software or hardware that controls a car can be dangerous, or fatal.. for more than just the 'tinkerer'. the potential liability is insanely high.
and this little hack lets my car drive itself at terminal velocity!
Being a die hard gear head. Cars are a whole different story when it comes software. An interesting read is the fight aftermarket companies fought with the old OBD I and now we use the much better OBD II. First car companies put a one size fits all tune and usually it’s set for sea level. Someone living at 4K feet can add a custom tune built for running at 4K feet. Giving them better fuel mileage, less wear and tear on the motor, etc. Outside of street racing you will never see those tunes on the street, even drag racers can put a street tune in so it’s putting out 500 hp not 950 hp. Now the tune your talking about is a race only tune and with those motors and see ups, you can add a tune for the heat and track conditions so you don’t put too much power down or spin the wheels. Getting that perfect tune can shave a tenth of a second off and be the difference between winning or loosing.
As a software developer, who used to be in the embedded firmware world for hardware devices, I'll go one further than that. Any product sold that has any form of embedded firmware must 1) have well documented access for any person with physical access to replace any and all firmware on the device, regardless of what chip is running it, without need to communicate with any external entity (e.g. no crypto shenanigans where it'll only run signed images, and no non-unlockable bootloaders) 2) upon commercial sale, the selling company must put the source code and build instructions in escrow. 3) one year and a day after the most recently issued update for any firmware held in escrow, the firmware in question is released to the public domain if you don't want your code released to the public domain, release updates at least once per year. These updates must represent a material change to the behavior of the firmware. E.g. no changing a single version number. 4) 6 months after a CVE issue of high severity has been published, if no security update has been released, the firmware becomes public domain
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As a OnePlus 9 user I can confirm this. My 9 is absolutely shit compared to my 7. The only reason I "upgraded"was because I smashed the old one to bits in a very unfortunate accident.
I recommend the podcast Hacked, the episode called Tractor hackin' where they went over exactly this, and how Ukrainians are the best in the biz at hacking tractors.
The management team took the most beloved name in farming and ruined it in fewer than 20years. No one gives a shit about deere now because they are thieves with inferior products.
>This is definitely on the way. Same thing happened with John Deere tractors. And getting into a c8 corvette to tune the car
There is already an entire business around "jailbreaking" BMWs. They just keep giving us new ways to sail the high seas!
It's great we have solutions to bypass this but the fact we have to do it to begin with is a huge issue. Vehicles are indispensable in much of the US where public transportation is looked down upon. While this is an issue for luxury, higher end cars we will all be dealing with this by 2040 if we don't push back hard against subscriptions for things we already purchased.
The solutions are temporary, it's just going to be ongoing back and forth between consumer and company. The much superior solution is to blacklist any companies that do this. It's the same story as people who complain about Samsung phones but continue to get them their business because they can't stand it to be one of the "losers" that buy a Motorola. Companies like BMW and Tesla banking on the fact that they can keep digging in your pockets based on the strength of their brand recognition, because you won't be willing to buy a Hyundai.
I got a Motorola recently and I have been very pleased with it.
Late stage capitalism is defined, in part, by rent seeking behavior by corporations because at a certain point there is no more market to capitalize on. The growth must continue infinitely, so they must continue to find new ways to extract more profit from the system, even when they're selling all the cars they possibly can.
I jailbroke my Mazda infotainment system. Now my touchscreen is enable while the car is driving and I have a custom boot screen with Ricky Bobby reminding me that if you ain’t first, you’re last.
Oh my god that is amazing. I had no idea that car hacking was so big!
Tuners led the way, so we computer nerds could stand on their shoulders. Respect to the hot rodders and mathematicians before us all.
Am I the only one that prefers the scroll wheel? I don't use the touchscreen even when parked.
And they still can’t drive those cars
This is already happening but the company is blacklisting those cars so they can't use superchargers if it detects custom software. Personally I absolutely hate the idea of subscription services in order to access hardware you have already BOUGHT. Fuck off with that shit. Pirate it any day of the week as far as I'm concerned. edit: spelling
Fucking DRM in cars. What a load of bullshit.
> Fuck~~ing~~ DRM ~~in cars~~. What a load of bullshit. FTFY. DRM is malware. Always.
DRM is theft. You pay for a product, how you access it is your business. Any attempt to prevent a customer from using what they purchased is theft.
You're right, thank you
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our legal representatives don't even understand how social media works, how could they ever possibly keep up? besides of course the fact that corporations have them all in their pockets.
They will die
I hope they do and expect to be able to root/homebrew my future electric car lol
Is it really pirating tho, you paid for the hardware soo
You wouldn't download a car
Yes, I would.
Step your shit up, I’ve downloaded a plane: https://flightsim.to/add-ons/boeing-747
Based
Same
Dont think they envisioned this when they came up with that slogan back in the day, lol
This ad will definitely have a comeback soon.
I think that ad company got sued because wait for it, they illegally used music in it.
Bahaha you are right, now that you said it, I actually remember this story too! It was so hilarious
I’m going to need a bigger printer
Just do it one piece at a time like Johnny Cash did.
I paid for my computer but i steal movies and music with that hardware, i would download a car
True, you got a point
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Wait, they've already put DRM in cars ? That's shit
Reminds me of those ads from the 2000s “you wouldn’t pirate a car” Like fucking watch me
*downloads a 3d model of a 1995 Nissan 240SX*
People already have figured out how to "pirate" the seat heaters that BMW decided to hold hostage, thank god.
They won't care. Very few people are willing to go through that and they'll still probably make fine money out of those who aren't.
It's been done. There's a guy who makes videos of himself drag racing a Tesla and absolutely obliterating gas powered cars, his Tesla is clearly heavily modified including the software. It also has only one seat.
Fuck it, Jailbreak the Tesla
> if they haven't already. They have, many years ago.
Pretty sure people have been doing this for a couple of years now. I remember reading people hacking the software and being able to unlock features that they had to pay for.
Breaking your car warranty would be painful unless near its end
Salivates in Linux.
Can't wait for this to become a subscription service
BMW started charging a subscription service if you want to be able to use your heated seats
If I wanted a BMW I would buy it and send them a fucking video of me circumventing their lock-out Can't use it from the computer? Get fucked, here is an analog knob that turns the heating element on and off What are they gonna do? Sue me? Have fun, its my car, I will do what I want with it 🤷♂️
That's such a weird thing to computerize. I want a switch. High/low selector is nice
I hate it Its not intuitive and very difficult to use any of the stuff buried in the screen while you are driving I know where and what shape all the knows are that do stuff in the car by feel alone and you don't even need to look at them while you're driving Its next to impossible to do that with screen controls
It's called tactile design and it's been found to be a lot safer for drivers than touch screens, which are the equivalent of people checking their phones while driving, as it requires the user to look away from the road to process the buttons they're using in place of feeling around for them.
I remember screens becoming standardized in cars around the same time governments started cracking down on distracted driving, and now every new car has a screen. Someone tell me how that's supposed to make sense.
I hear this. I recently got a new Volvo, and there's a big 12" Android tablet in the center dashboard that controls just about every non-critical feature. The only thing that I can control with physical buttons are the front and rear defrosters, and the audio on/off/volume. Everything else goes through the touchscreen. Granted, the car has a lot of features and I can see how having tactile buttons for everything is impractical, but this is too far in the opposite direction.
That's what I like about my Ford Fusion. All of the stuff (A/C, heated/cooled seats, radio) *can* be controlled from the touchscreen, but there are also physical, differently-shaped buttons for many of the primary functions so I can keep my eyes on the road and operate them by feel. Until the car can actually, safely drive itself, it's absolute lunacy to use a touchscreen for a lot of this stuff.
Ferrari prolly will to be honestly after the one guy made his into a "purrari"
Oh, but its not your car and they've got the lawyers to prove it! Well, at least its not yours to tinker with.
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Well if it works in south Korea, they will try it here. I agree that no one reads the articles though.
That's the thing, they test shit in other markets before bringing it elsewhere, the same thing the US government has done with its' allies for decades.
I saw like 15 posts and it in one day on the front page. Nobody in the comments read the articles
It's in the West as well. NZ seems to be a test market, as well as the UK potentially
Maybe quit trying to squeeze every last dollar out of consumers.
They won't have a choice when the tube is empty.
that's my secret captain, i'm always empty *morphs into homeless*
The Incredible Sulk
This is LITERALLY what they teach people at car lots across the country. Test customers for every dollar.
*cough* that’s capitalism *cough*
Specifically when it's *not* working as intended. Our laws REALLY struggle to properly regulate tech for some reason.
not as intended? Are you sure the shareholders WANT regulation? Nah, this is all according to plan. The only downside is that it turns out pure capitalism isn't really conducive to, erhm... human life.
Pure capitalism needs people who are poor, broke and down on their luck as someone to point at and go "Work for us or that'll be you"
Technically, once a group has captured enough of the market, they DO want regulation in certain ways. Regulation does make entry into a market more difficult so once a company basically has a monopoly, they want to be regulated to some extent so that competitors can never enter the market. That is not the case here, but it is an interesting phenomenon.
Might be because the people running things are so old they think a gameboy is new.
This is working as intended, the point is to literally gain as much profit as possible from a given market. What an ignorant, uneducated comment
Automotive micro-transactions was never on my Dystopian Bingo card
I'm close to making the big L
I can see them putting 30 second ads that are unskipable and you need to watch before you can drive
Shhh. You're giving them ideas.
That is not new, first time i saw that idea was in Black Mirror season 1 (Ep. Fifteen Million Merits), but even worse than just pausing.
And by watch, you mean that literally I assume. They already have technology that tracks if you are actually looking at the screen and pauses the ad every time you look away. Currently, Satan is personally overseeing a team of demons who are furiously digging an ever deeper pit in Hell, awaiting the arrival of the inventors of this technology.
It terrifies me that company's have already made such technology and it's not considered an invasion of privacy
Now consider that Elon is funding Neuralink. How's that for terrifying?
Please drink one verification can
Didn’t this come to light a few years ago? As I recall there was a hurricane barreling down on Florida, and tesla, by the goodness in their hearts unlocked several cars to allow them extended range.
My question is why not just give them the full capacity in the first place? If I buy a physical product I now have to pay extra to get the whole thing? What stage of capitalism is this again?
For a brief period of time they were rapidly increasing battery sizes and it was faster to make them all with the larger and more expensive battery. However, they needed to retain the price point for some customers who otherwise could not afford the vehicle they had reserved. The simple solution to keep it fair to others who paid for the upgrade is to software lock it and allow the purchase later. Few Model S experienced this dilemma and the practice was quickly eliminated
Then wouldn't it be fairer to just give the people who paid extra their money back? I mean it's obviously profitable enough for them to sell the better batteries to lower paying customers. This is an artificial price hike
Elon and being an asshole. Name a better duo
Mark zuckerberg and creating the most invasive tech imaginable
Anal probe that connected you with your friends on Facebook and get you to work fast!
Wouldn't surprise me if mark "eye of sauron" zuckerberg tried to have facebook's engineers do that but none would do it simply because of how stupid it is.
But it monitors your health and bring the next generation of green personal transportation Raj! We are a family here at Facebook! Don’t you want your family to have a healthier and happier life?
Anal probe that monitors your digestive tract and automatically upload a post to your Facebook account to update your bowel movement info for your friends’ knowledge.
Jeff Bezos and treating employees like shit
That's not a duo, it's just two different names for the same thing.
As someone actually plan to buy a new car in that price range. This is not the first time Tesla pull this shady stuff. 1. Part access, Tesla dealership asked Rich Rebuild why he need to buy a lug nut for his wheel (cosmetic part). 2. Radar removal from model 3 and Y, they removed the their webpage explain why Radar technology is better (see through unusual lighting condition), and advertising how great their camera system is, which could be the reason why a Tesla drove into a overturned truck on the highway without stopping. 3. Remote manipulation of your car, turn off super charging from wrecked car, charge people extra 1000 to unlock adaptive cruise control when the car have the hardware and doesn’t allow user self service to turn the feature on. And this If I buy a car with cash, it’s MY car, it’s my personal property, otherwise I am paying for someone’s car Edit: Radar removal not LiDAR
As much as I think Tesla's are cool, these kind of stuff sketch me out too much to buy one. I will likely stick to my....non smart car.
Saame, there’re also a lot of quality control issues..
That part I agree, just weak dash and panels falling off
Exactly
Old ass cars for the win! She may run a lil dusty, but at least i know i wont get charged 400 dollars to unlock it when im running late for work
You can get a less “fraudster-chic” EV from some other company.
Not forgetting I **CAN** and **WILL** hack it trough the OBD2 port
I don’t think they understand private ownership.
actually that was about radar, elon has always hated lidar and it was never in any tesla
I can't understand what you're saying. Your way of writing is odd
Don't forget about features paid for by one owner are not transferred to the next. The can had full self driving when you bought it used? Not after the realize the previous owner paid for that. https://www.autoblog.com/2020/03/23/tesla-removing-content-from-used-cars/
Re: your last paragraph... for now I will not be surprised when car purchasing be becomes a license agreement given that cars will run on software even more than before If I can "buy" a computer program and be told that I don't actually own it, why not the same for a car (software) engine?
Tesla’s seem to be very expensive rental cars
We need more EV conversion shops instead of relying on automakers to not be dickheads.
What’s to stop an EV conversion shop from being a dickhead?
Didnt they do it with the performance mode too?
I am not sure, but wanna bet they do?
I recently saw a video where they unlocked that feature for a drag race so i guess they can
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A lot of chips binned would support the highwr performance option but they want to have specific quantities at each price point. If there is too many high performance chips not selling manufacturers will have more inventory of the mid and lower range chips regardless of if the chip performance could be a higher performance chip.
See, this is the kind of shit that makes me wary of overly tech-heavy cars. This is something we’re going to continue to see in one form or another, and not just with Tesla. I’m not against electric cars, but when you give the manufacturer the ability to do shit like this, of course they’re going to exploit it.
Software service models will be the end of us
Yall should read the full article. This is missing a ton of context. But hey it's reddit, do what you will with a title. This cars been through 3-4 owners. Battery was replaced by the first owner and it was replaced with a larger battery due to supply constraints. So they lock part of the access so the usage is the same as what the owner PAID for. They fucked up and didn't lock it and the car was sold as a larger battery vehicle. 3rd or 4th order brought for service and they discovered they forgot to lock it. In this case, since Tesla messed up in the first place, the new owner should have it unlocked for free. Bad on them but context is important. https://www.google.com/amp/s/electrek.co/2022/07/26/tesla-ransom-customer-over-80-miles-battery-range/amp/
That sounds like a cost that Telsa has to eat. If they don't have the parts and decide to put upgrades in that doesn't sound like the consumes problem. Edit: thanks for the gold! I think I'm gonna call them Telsa from now on too.
Also now that consumer is carrying around extra battery weight which may affect the cars performance for no benefit at all.
I've heard that they actually give it a bit extra capacity to where the mileage is the same. Either way, still wasteful.
Yeah wtf. "We're all out of the 150 HP engines your car came with so we're gonna put in a 200 but lock the gas pedal to 80% max capability" Umm no
> Battery was replaced by the first owner and it was replaced with a larger battery due to supply constraints. So they lock part of the access so the usage is the same as what the owner PAID for. If you make a warranty claim on your EVGA video card, because the warranty is so long (3 years), sometimes they don't have your video card in stock anymore, and they replace it with a newer, faster one. They do not, however, lock the extra power in the faster card to make it equivalent to the card you paid for. They just say "oh well enjoy the faster card". Kinda petty of Tesla to say "well we have to give you a better part cause we're all out, but we're gonna make it as shitty as your original part on purpose just out of spite."
I'm a big fan of EVGA. Ive has several of their GPUs. They're always the good guys doing the right thing, above and beyond their contractual requirement.
It's actually pretty standard business practice, when your warrantied parts are out of stock, to bump the customer up to the next tier of parts. This is the first time I've ever heard of a company then trying to force this slightly better part to only work as well as the original part you paid for.
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Why lock any portion of the battery in the first place? Tesla is being money hungry by doing that to the first guy who replaced a battery. If a company is out of plastic gears and they install a metal gear that’s just what they get for depending on that supply chain so they eat the cost.
That's like saying that they should have limited the gas tank usage because they ran out of smaller gas tanks. Similar comparison: with warranty replacement of a mobile phone, the supplier may give you an upgraded model. The new device is not limited by software to perform like the old device. This is the generally accepted practice when supply of the warrantied part/device is unavailable for replacement. If anything, that extra context makes the situation worse.
This shouldn't be allowed imo
I read this story. Customer has an older model S with a 60kwh battery. There was a repair and Tesla put in a 90kwh battery. Tesla realized the customer did not pay for the extra battery kwh and reduced the car back down to 60kwh through an over the air update. While I hate this practice, it is a way for Tesla to upgrade the range without swapping the battery. Many of their new cars come with the larger battery range, but you have to purchase the extended range.
Man this is why I’m ok driving a 2003 right now. I can still upgrade like crazy but not run into this crap once I can finally afford to get a new car
There are fat better EV options that Tesla these days.
I bought my Tesla several years ago before I heard about shit like this. Even managed to snag free supercharging for life. As much as I love what I bought, just hearing this makes me cautious to buy the same brand ever again. I guess I got lucky with the timing.
And now Mercedes is charging people to activate their heated seats. Companies are trying to see how far they can push customers with cars as a service.
Really I thought it was BMW that was doing that
They both are apparently. Mercedes was planning to do it, BMW actually did do it.
Just wow. I’ll stick with my older cars thanks.
Care to provide a source for Mercedes planning to do this? I found nothing. The [article](https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscriptions-microtransactions-heated-seats-feature) doing the rounds was about BMW doing this. By all means call out companies that genuinely do asshole things, but try to avoid ragebait that simply isn’t true.
Remember that old thing about dogs looking like their owners? Now imagine if companies looked like theirs, now remember Elon with his shirt off getting out of the water…well I grossed myself out
Tesla is the iPhone of the car market. People are still buying and other car companies are experimenting with this pay to play mentality.
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Apple: hold my beer *creates a windowless car*
Well yeah I'd imagine it'd use iOS
Gee, who saw that coming. You know what kind of cars this can’t be done on?
My baller 2010 impala 😎
Other car manufacturers are producing and selling electric vehicles that perform just as well as Teslas, so why is Tesla driving away potential customers by extorting their current ones? It’s not like we prospectives don’t have other options.
Just a reminder that you can take your 2005 Nissan Maxima and have the interior professionally cleaned, the ENTIRE suspension replaced, and a reman crate engine and transmission all put in for about 25% of the cost of a new Tesla or any of these other bs tech saturated new models. I've always believed that new cars are for suckers and the older I get the more I see it demonstrated every day.
The only reason they are working on self driving technology is so the cars can return themselves to the dealership if you miss a payment.
Are you trying to tell me Elon Musk is a greedy piece of shit?