Revenue from self-driving Teslas only allowed through the Tesla Network

If Tesla's APIs can't handle input spam, that's on them. That's a very predictable and easily-solved problem. The entire point of an API is to expose a limited surface area so that you can easily interoperate while maintaining control and responsibility.

> Or screws up the location and sends a passenger a dozen miles from their intended destination? Or where the Tesla algos find a route it's been given to be undriveable and just turn back? Sure, you and I would rightly hold the modder accountable, but that's because we understand how this stuff works. Everybody else will see "Tesla cars" not working right, and that's a huge headache and liability for Tesla.

If Uber sends your car to the wrong location, then that's that. No big deal. People go to the wrong locations themselves all the time. I don't see how this is an Uber-specific problem, and I don't buy the argument that people are smart enough to hook their Tesla up to Uber but too stupid to understand who's at fault when the car correctly navigates itself to an incorrect location.

> And I don't think they'll ever ban people from going to places - as long as you use approved Tesla tools to request that destination.

There is no "approved Tesla tool" to connect to Uber. What happens if they modify their "approved Tesla tools" so they won't auto-drive you to a Burger King?

Sure, it's on them, and it appears they've solved that problem by cutting out other apps entirely. Certainly I'd prefer it if they would let people experiment with their product, but I can see why they wouldn't want them to, considering that it's a rapidly evolving, high-stakes product.

> If Uber sends your car to the wrong location, then that's that. No big deal. People go to the wrong locations themselves all the time. I don't see how this is an Uber-specific problem, and I don't buy the argument that people are smart enough to hook their Tesla up to Uber but too stupid to understand who's at fault when the car correctly navigates itself to an incorrect location.

It's not "Uber-specific", it's just an example of the sort of thing that could happen if a third-party app makes errors. Reasonable people will understand that it's the app at fault, but most people will just see the headline: "Panicked partiers trapped as Tesla self-driving car goes on a robot joyride!"

> There is no "approved Tesla tool" to connect to Uber. What happens if they modify their "approved Tesla tools" so they won't auto-drive you to a Burger King?

Tesla disallowing third-party apps and self-driving-for-revenue outside Tesla Network doesn't make a difference to whether they could do such a thing. But you can see that they have sensible reasons to not want these things (software concerns, commercial insurance, public/regulator perception) and there's no real reason that they would block you from going to particular destinations. Internet Explorer could block you from using anything but Bing, but they don't. That would be ridiculous.

The reply link doesn't appear right away on new posts. If you click the post time next to the poster's name it will open the post by itself which has the reply link.

> Every time a Tesla has caught on fire, it's been reported on in numerous news outlets.

And in every one of those stories there are ten people asking why this is a story because battery fires are less common than gasoline fires. System working as intended.

> So whatever choice Tesla makes, all their competitors will also make?

They don't have 10,000 competitors. It isn't a stretch to imagine that the small handful all make the same choice.

But suppose they don't. You can't have it both ways. Either someone allows modifications and whatever hypothetical bad reactionary laws that causes will come to pass, or nobody does and the laws are never passed but the result is the same.

> Or, in the case of Uber's in-development car, probably already have made?

Uber is going to make a self-driving car and then sell them to the public so that members of the public can lease it back to Uber and Lyft?

> But that's the thing - they don't want to be pointing the finger anywhere because that's almost always bad press for them. Throwing blame just looks bad.

You're assuming the net problems as a result of openness are more rather than less, which is wrong. People fix more problems than they create, because people don't like having problems. You open things up and you get a lot of people fixing trouble and a smaller number of people causing trouble. The net result is less overall trouble and the ability to blame the troublemakers for the trouble they cause. None of that hurts you.

> While helpful users are certainly an asset, it's mostly as a resource for identifying problems, not attempting to solve them on their own cars.

Well first of all that's false, having them fix the problem saves you the trouble of doing it. But even identifying problems doesn't work without understanding. 99% of the fix is thoroughly understanding the problem.

If the system is a black box then the user doesn't know how it's supposed to work. So you simultaneously get spammed with false positive bug reports from users who think there could be a problem but aren't allowed to understand whether there really is, and lose true positive reports because weird behavior gets written off as "it's a black box" and the last three things they reported were false positives.