Live data from Hacker News

Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

twitter.com

261–270 of 659 posts

Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upon closer analysis, all analogies will break down. I'd argue the car in the sumtotal of all the parts in it. So rather your analogy about Alienware is: You own a dell gaming pc. Under warranty repair, Dell replaces some of the parts with parts from an Alienware build. Are you allowed to put on Alienware decals on your Dell desktop and re-sell it as an Alienware?

Well, I own a Dell gaming PC. It came with the "Alienware Command Center" installed. I suspect it may be an Alienware PC. If so, why wouldn't we call it that?

> I suspect it may be an Alienware PC. If so, why wouldn't we call it that?

You could call it an Alienware PC.

My question: Would it be ethical for you to represent it as an Alienware PC, and sell it as an Alienware PC by purposefully attempt pass it off by changing the appearance to make it look like an Alienware PC?

To add to the gray area:

Say DELL XPS 1000 and Alienware 90210 are essentially the same machine, save for custom tuning, drivers, and cosmetics. Alienware gets a 25% markup.

You have the XPS 1000, apply the custom tuning and drivers to get the performance of the XPS to that of it's Alienware's counterpart.

Could you sell it for more than the market rate for a use XPS1000? Yes. I'd argue you have added value by custom tuning the PC. But I believe responsible to disclose that it was an XPS that had been modified.

Taking this back to cars. If an when I sell my Golf R, I will disclose it has received a Stage 1 Turbo upgrade (and hopefully use that to increase the resale value--though it typically does not except to other enthusiasts).

Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#262
post #229

I hope I can be buried with my current "dumb" cars. I have ZERO desire to have any vehicle with a built in modem or one that won't run without it being active.

My car came with a modem and was calling home. Now whatever wireless service it uses is no longer available. My car has been telling me it couldn't connect and that it would stop trying but it never stopped trying. Apparently, I have to take the car to the dealer and pay them to disable the feature in software. I'm not finding any value in this.

Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#263
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is a controversial opinion here, but I think software locks aren't inherently bad in a car that can be driven by software. I don't really trust Tesla's self-driving software as is, I certainly don't trust some random person's hack of already questionable Tesla code. This isn't an iPhone. Someone mucking about in the software can kill people.

This sort of justification would never fly if we were talking about modding ICE vehicles: * Illegal to replace your own brake rotors or pads, as faulty ones can cause safety issues. * Illegal to replace your own headlights, as bad ones could be too dim or too bright and cause safety issues. * Illegal to change your own oil, as bad ones could seize up your engine in the middle of the road and cause safety issues. * Il…

In EU many modifications are illegal and you'll get huge fines and/or lose your vehicle.

Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. Maybe not. If I sold you my car, and I wanted my stereo but forgot it, the first sale doctrine covers the whole thing as delivered. If I was to go to the car, while in your ownership and possession, and attempt to remove the stereo, you'd call the cops for vehicular theft. That's because it's covered under first sale doctrine. And being a vehicle (unlike most other goods) has an attached ownership registered w…

> If I sold you my car, and I wanted my stereo but forgot it, the first sale doctrine covers the whole thing as delivered. If I was to go to the car, while in your ownership and possession, and attempt to remove the stereo, you'd call the cops for vehicular theft. You could just have included the stereo explicitly in the contract. This happens all the time in large purchases like real estate. You would of course need…

If the time in which the stereo was "forgotten" was at the time the exclusions were written into the sales contract (or the sales ad), the stereo would be legally conveyed to the purchaser of the car once the buyer and seller complete the sale.

Similarly, once a real estate purchase is completed, all items within the bounds of the property purchased--whether it be roof shingles, trees, or former owner family heirlooms they forgot to take with them--legally become possessions of the new owner unless itemized in a sales contract along with agreed-to stipulations that permit retrieval of the items by the former owner after completion of the sale.

Goodwill (and being a reasonable buyer/seller) goes a long way in situations such as these, and in most situations a buyer and seller will work out property sorting issues amongst themselves. However, there would be nothing legally preventing a buyer that stumbles upon a stash of gold bars left in the basement of their new-to-them house--that they did not know about, and that the previous owner did not disclose--and immediately selling them. [1]

BMW's recent second attempt at "enabling equipment features as a service" is a canary in the coal mine, or trial balloon, so to speak. BMW's argument for heated-seats-as-a-service is, flippantly, "What if the second buyer of the vehicle doesn't want heated seats? They don't have to pay for the service. Problem solved." This distorted-reality C-suite speak so drenched in logic fallacy is worthy of a conversation by itself, but I bring it up to say this: instead of buying a car in the traditional sense, OEMs are attempting to change the model to buying "the physical components comprising a car, and the option to enable features of those physical components".

I want no part of it. I like to use hyperbolic (at least for today) examples adapting commonplace business models for smart home devices, software licenses, hardware compatibility lists, EVs, cloud services, etc. to traditional / legacy / analog items:

- What if you went to use your hammer you've owned for years, only to find out that it can't be used to drive in a nail because the company that made the hammer is no longer in business?

- What if your basement flooded because, while the trench drain around your foundation is physically capable of directing enough water away from your foundation into your sump pump, you didn't opt to pay for the "catastrophic flooding capability" license? Better yet, let's say you paid for the license, but haven't checked your email in a few days (maybe because of the storms, since your power has been out and you don't have ready Internet access) to learn that the credit card the trench-drain-as-a-service company has on file has expired and the license renewal charge was declined, so the license you leased was deactivated via OTA update without notice sent via the post?

- What if you find out while driving that your car brakes won't work because a repair shop you've gone to for years installed a set of third-party brake pads that used to be but are no longer compatible with your car (or part of an OEM-certified or OEM-supported configuration) as the result of a recent firmware update to your car's PCM/ECU?

All of those sound terrifying to me.

[1] Source: myself, but not about gold bars, unfortunately. More than one year post-purchase of a house I purchased, the seller decided they wanted a lamp back that they thought they left at the house prior to its sale. I did not remember if they left it or not, but they did leave several items behind. I sent items to their forwarding address that I deemed to be personal items (e.g. monogrammed clothes), but assumed that all other items were left because they didn't want to take them. I donated all of the items I didn't want, possibly including the lamp they desperately wanted returned, to charities. After spending a good bit of energy harassing me over the lamp, the seller consulted with counsel and learned that they had no options for recourse. The harassment stopped, and I have not heard from them since.

Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#265
post #172
post #48

So the way I'm reading the post is Tesla swapped out a battery pack for a 60 with a 90 and enabled the 90. Tesla, years later, discovers that even though the hardware for a 90 was installed it should have been software limited to be a 60. (I'm assuming that Tesla only made the owner pay the cost of the 60 battery swap even though they replaced it with a 90). They go and "fix the glitch" and set it back to the 60. Sin…

Not quite, a software limited 90kWh battery is worse than a 60kWh battery pack due to weight. So, Tesla can’t fulfill their warranty obligations with a software locked higher capacity battery. A full capacity battery on the other hand could reasonably qualify as an as good or better replacement which is fine. Therefore whoever did this change at Tesla is exposing them to liability. Technically if car identified as ha…

Otoh a software limited battery will last longer.

Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upon closer analysis, all analogies will break down. I'd argue the car in the sumtotal of all the parts in it. So rather your analogy about Alienware is: You own a dell gaming pc. Under warranty repair, Dell replaces some of the parts with parts from an Alienware build. Are you allowed to put on Alienware decals on your Dell desktop and re-sell it as an Alienware?

Why use analogies at all? Tesla replaced a 60 with a 90, the owner now has a 90. They list it as a 90 when selling it. The new owner gets hit with the update to turn it back into a 60. New owner is pissed at old owner, when they should be pissed at tesla.

It is endlessly baffling to me that people love making analogies (and arguing about analogies!) when the situation is fairly simple to explain.

Like another comment suggested, this is a small error in the customer's favor, and companies who care about customer satisfaction should really just eat the minimal cost when stuff like this happens instead of getting bogged down in technicalities.

Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it a bit akin to disclosing hidden defects for a house? If you have known about those defects, or they were properly disclosed to you when you bought the house, in many jurisdictions you're responsible to disclose them to the next buyer, are you not? I'm not on Tesla's side here: I have an expectation of reasonability that they're not meeting, and I feel that they've forfeited their "rights" to locking this con…

The thing is this isn't a defect. Say my brand new house came with a 40 gallon water tank and it failed (didn't flood, just stopped heating). The home warranty company provided a 45 gallon replacement. Nobody would expect that to be disclosed years down the line.

I think the difference is more in how you (or in this case the previous owner) sells it.

To stay with the water heater analogy - what if when the water heater needs to be replaced under warranty and the company says oh hey we have 40s in stock again so we're sending you what you should have had?

Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#268
post #157
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Presumably this cost them a fortune to do it in the first place. Why not get some good will out of it? "Hey sorry about your battery. We only had a 90 so we threw that in there. As I understand it, all batteries are the same size. They are just software locked. So no additional costs. It's the same as how Tesla remote unlocked the battery life of people fleeing natural disasters. Which means not only is it there, i…

The batteries weigh different amounts so it isn’t just software locking at the factory. https://themotordigest.com/how-much-do-tesla-batteries-weigh... It’s more likely they didn’t have a 60kWh battery at the time pack to do the replacement. Which brings up an interesting point, a 90kWh battery software locked to 60kWh is a defective part as the added weight takes more energy to move around, has worse acceleration, m…

That might be a new change that happened in the past few years ago. But it certainly was the way Tesla made cars in 2019:

https://insideevs.com/news/342746/more-on-the-return-of-tesl...

Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#269
The big brands like ford who actually know how to make a car are going to swallow Tesla. Tesla had a jump on them for sure, and sold a cool brand, but their cars have major qc issues, the company is a mess, and I do not trust them long term. Bet on the real auto makers.

Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#270

I had no idea they could even do something like this remotely. What else can they do? Shut the engine off? Lock the steering? What intelligence agencies have access? What if a side-channel can be created and (other) malicious actors obtain access? This kind of remote access to a car is genuinely terrifying.

They aren't the only ones - Toyota was toying with retroactively charging for *keyfob* remote start access until the outcry caused them to double back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLlzAv2GTdc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfDoc6wegss

But other manufacturers have to be looking at what Tesla and BMW are pulling and thinking about ways they could follow suit. A pox on all their houses; if I never buy another new car I'll be more than happy.

Post reply on HN