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Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

electrek.co

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Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#731

Post by kevincox »

circuit10 wrote: post #555
oatmeal1 wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People overreact to this. If this didn't exist, they would just manufacture cars the old way where multiple version of the same car are produced at high and low prices. I have seen no evidence provided this actually increases the total price of a high feature car. This might actually lower the average price paid because of the economies of scale achieved by making fewer different versions of the same car. Resale valu…

In an ideal world we could just give everyone those features if they didn’t cost any extra to add instead of creating an artificial pricing structure to get more money out of people. Maybe it can’t work that way but making people’s lives worse just to punish them for paying less in order to incentivise them to pay more, rather than as compensation to the company for doing more work, seems wrong

But they do cost extra to add. Heating coils and controllers aren't free. Doing it this way has real benefits.

1. Lower total cost of manufacturing (which should be passed on to consumers as lower purchase price).

2. The cost of this hardware is only paid for those who value it.

3. You can add these features later (maybe your budget is tight when you bought the car but want to add it later).

I am definitely not a fan of the subscription model for hardware features, but I think that locking features to the customers paying for it is a logical way to make these features available for less cost. If the unlock is one-time and reliable (doesn't rely on some external service to validate your subscription) then I don't have a fundamental problem with it.

I don't think providing a cheaper model is "punish[ing] them for paying less". It is making the car accessible to a wider audience. If the cheapest model included heated seats, self driving and more then they base price would be higher and the car would be less accessible.

Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#732

Post by kevincox »

m463 wrote: post #389
alistairSH wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's relatively clear to me... Features cost money, so I should pay for them. Wether that's via an option package (traditional) at order time OR via a software update (Tesla) after purchase doesn't matter. BUT! As long as that feature doesn't have recurring costs to the manufacturer (heated seats), it should be a one-time fee, and transfer with ownership. Something like self-driving, where there might be an active in…

> Hacking otherwise reasonable software-locked features feels like theft to me. I disagree, pretty strongly. There is a line. They sold you something in its entirety, including the seats with wires. I would agree with you if you had to download the control software from their servers. I would agree with you if you if the upgrade provided you physical wires to install, even if you had to install them. Related I think…

The counter-argument is that you are "unfairly" shifting the cost to others assuming that if a workaround wasn't available you would have paid the premium price. Let's say that it is expected that 1/3 of people will purchase heated seats. If you unlock your seats without paying then you are harming Tesla because the heated seats package was priced assuming that 1/3 buy it (so it was priced at 3x the per-car hardware cost plus some markup). Now less than 1/3 people buy it (as they are hacking it to be available) so it was underpriced and they lose money. Next year Tesla adjust their expectations to 1/4 people buy it and accordingly raise the price of the package (Now 4x per-car hardware cost + markup because it still has to cover the cost of installing the hardware in all cars). Now you are harming the people who are buying the package because they are paying for the cost of the hardware that you are using without paying.

> They sold you something in its entirety, including the seats with wires.

This is the part I have to agree with. There should be nothing to legally prevent me from doing whatever I want with my hardware. It may be unethical to use this hardware without paying for it, but I shouldn't be legally prevented from doing it. They did sell me this hardware even if the cost was paid for by those buying the heated seat package and I should be able to do whatever I want with it.

I think this works quite well with things like CPUs where they blow hardware fuses to disable features and it is infeasible to restore this functionality at any practical scale. However for things like seat warmers where the controller is likely easy to bypass (and in this case the lock is actually implemented very far away in the infotainment system) it will likely turn into a arms race between tamper-resistant hardware and those who what to unlock the feature without paying for it.

Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#733

Post by xkcd1963 »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #507
xkcd1963 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heated seats is essentially a bool somewhere in the code implemented as artificial limitation. Self-Driving is much more complex and abides much more as an argument to your view.

Even if it is a bool there is probably an extra factor: Liability in case there is an fire or other incident. Tesla probably on its side reduces it's cost as well, by only insuring (be it by having cash reserves or actual insurance) it's liability only for the cases where it is enabled. It's of course hard to prove as cause, but if there is a liability case it might become "interesting" Edit: Also relevant: even with…

Isn't it rediculous to assume a seat-heating feature could cause a fire? I would assume there are even hardware limitations in place to prevent heating that would otherwise cause damage.

I imagine the situation at court "you implemented combustive seat-heating for this model?¿"

Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#734

Post by kevincox »

nordsieck wrote: post #89
theluketaylor wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t mind hardware shipping locked and being an optional fee to unlock. I have paid for the rear heated seats in my model 3. What I’m vehemently opposed to is ongoing fees for things that don’t have ongoing costs. BMW wants to charge monthly for seat heaters or carplay, but those things are not a service and don’t have ongoing costs for BMW to provide. If anything creating an ongoing software lock creates an avail…

> What I’m vehemently opposed to is ongoing fees for things that don’t have ongoing costs. IMO, the real issue is the price. There is pretty broad and well established equivalency between OPex and CAPex. The problem is that car companies are trying to charge OPex as if there was a 1 year depreciation schedule, when cars typically last for decades. I think that if BMW charged 1/240th[1] the cost to buy the option in o…

...and if I could continue paying this price and it would continue to work without third-party servers or network connectivity.

One of the worst problems with this subscription-based everything is that it creates an ongoing reliance on the company instead of allowing things to be pure local.

For example Netflix downloads are a huge pain because of refreshing and re-verifying. In theory these wouldn't exist if they didn't need to worry about your license expiring. You would never run into a scenario where you couldn't play the video that was stored locally because they can't prove that you are still subscribed (even though I'm only half way through my month so it is literally impossible for my subscription to have ended yet).

So yes, if I could guarantee that I could pay a fairly reasonable price for as long as I wanted to and it would work flawlessly for that entire time it wouldn't be too bad. But in practice I can't rely on that and have to dread the day I am offline and can't get heated seats or they take the licensing server down since it wasn't worth maintaining for the 8 people who are still subscribed to this service.

Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#735

Post by kevincox »

kelnos wrote: post #427
nordsieck wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand the mental gymnastic here. They built car with heated seats. You paid for car with heated seats that are technically fully functional but you can't use them until you pay even more. No, doesn't make sense to me. That's because you don't understand. The customer didn't pay for a car with heated seats. The manufacturer included them anyway, but disabled them in software. Presumably, a consumer coul…

> The customer didn't pay for a car with heated seats. The manufacturer included them anyway, but disabled them in software. Sure they did. Maybe they didn't pay the full price for those heated seats, but they definitely paid more for the car with them (but disabled) than for a car without them entirely. The carmaker is hoping that people will pay for the unlock in order to recoup their costs. But they're certainly n…

Money is fungible so it is really hard to say but it is entirely possible that the base model doesn't pay anything for the seats. They could sell the car with $10,000 and expect that 1/2 of the customers pay $500 for the upgrade. Those customers are essentially paying to install the seat hardware in all cars (because it is cheaper than them paying for a new production line that makes 1/2 the number of cars). So in 2 the purchaser of that car still pays $10k and their "other half" who statistically bought the heated seats paid for the $100 cost in their car.

You can also picture this as a marketing cost. Maybe Tesla things that a $100/car marketing cost is worth paying because they expect that 1/2 of the cars will pay $500 so they have $150 expected return.

Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#736

Post by kevincox »

theluketaylor wrote: post #220
Aloha wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel different about extra cores on a CPU than I do about heated seats. The manufacturing price delta between an 8 core CPU and a 16 core, nowadays is functionally meaningless. The manufacturing cost between a car with heated seats and without headset seats is functioningaflly meaningful. The way I see it, for things like heated seats or CarPlay, I'm already paying for the base hardware cost (plus some margin) as p…

> The manufacturing cost between a car with heated seats and without headset seats is functioningaflly meaningful I don't believe that is the case. BMW determined it was more expensive to have the supply chain, inventory, and manufacturing management to build both heated and non-heated versions of their seats. Rather than just make heated seats a standard feature they saw an opportunity to maintain and even expand th…

Also keep in mind that heated seats may not be the only option available. If you add in a few other options like backup camera, self driving/driver assist and maybe a few more you end up making a dozen or so different production lines and complex logistics. If you have a dozen features you are basically making custom cars at this point. It can definitely be cheaper to make a single model of car and lock features instead of dealing with all of that complexity. Sure, for one commonly purchased feature like heated seats it make make sense to have 2 production lines (at least for the seats) once you start adding dimensions to that matrix it gets expensive very quickly.

Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#737

Post by DangitBobby »

LeafItAlone wrote: post #703
liendolucas wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it is that you're supposed to own the car and every feature you paid for it.

Which would you rather have: Option A: A vehicle that lacks the hardware for heated seats, heated steering wheel, and driver assist that costs $25,000 to produce and that you pay $25,000 for. If you want these items next year, you have to buy a new vehicle. Option B: A vehicle that includes the hardware for heated seats, heated steering wheel, and driver assist that costs $27,000 to produce. You can pay $25,000 now a…

Highly doubt they sell at a loss unless you unlock the features. You are paying for the seat warmers whether you get to use them or not.

Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#738

Post by kevincox »

asdff wrote: post #191
johnl1479 wrote: post #7

I'm torn. On one hand, I absolutely think that a capability available in the vehicle/device when you purchased it should be available for you to use, and not behind a software lock (heated seats, etc). On the other hand, an "upgrade" or 100% new software delivered via OTA (self driving, etc) seems a little more like it should be a separate thing.

That's kind of just how cars work in general even outside of software. I put in the oem fog lights in my old car. All I had to do was basically screw through a plastic bracket in the grill that was installed at the factory specifically for the lights, plug in the lights into one end of the harness that was already in the car, pop out the preinstalled plastic cap in the dash and pop back in the fog light switch after…

You can also look at this the other way. Most people don't value the fog lights, so the very few owners pay the cost to install fog lights in every car because it is cheaper than creating a separate production line. So you are "cheating" the system by taking advantage of that hardware without sharing the cost of it.

Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#739

Post by eschneider »

sawjet wrote: post #563
eschneider wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done a fair bit of work with engine ECUs and remapping for more power is almost never "free". It's not like manufactures are offering different power outputs strictly via software, though sometimes they'll make different _tradeoffs_ between power/drivability/reliability. I mean, it's easy to get 20% more power out of an engine if you don't care if it idles like a washing machine. And for some applications, that'…

>I mean, it's easy to get 20% more power out of an engine if you don't care if it idles like a washing machine Can you explain this? How does remapping an ecu make the idle different?

Sure, you're basically running the engine with a different tuning and you can't optimize for everything. Getting more peak power, or a broader power band out of an engine often means sacrificing smoothness in other parts of the power band.

Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#740

Post by DangitBobby »

jjulius wrote: post #85
matwood wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of the way production lines work it can actually be cheaper to include it on every seat and unlock it with software.

Cheaper to manufacture, yes, but the cost of the hardware is still included in what you pay for the software-locked car. You've paid for the hardware and you own it, even if it's software-locked. At that point, you're just being asked to fork over $1k or whatever the additional charge is for what essentially amounts to an "on/off" switch. Edit: Hell, to make it sound even more stupid, you're being asked to fork over…

You're also paying for the software they used to lock you out of the features.
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