I saw this article earlier:
Tesla ‘going bankrupt’ is endpoint of protests, says local organizer
In the spirit of right to repair, self-hosting, giving a second life to old devices, and limiting data collection by car companies:
- What are some considerations?
- Are there any projects worth keeping an eye on?
An example that came to mind was Valetudo, which is a cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation. Some robot vacuums are easy to install this on, and others require more invasive modifications.
What I’ve found so far:
probabaly full replacement of the motor controller and user facing hardware. basically a diy ev conversion using tesla motors but converting the tesla itself. you would lose features but they would be lost regardless.
Realistically they would get a bailout “for the consumer”.
More likely than central hosting would be some of the same people enabling faster modes via software hacks currently making them run offline.
Bailout, or government ownership run by DOGE? I hear they have some servers available - well, soon.
Not in these next 4 years.
Afterwards, if judges still exist, you can try to force Tesla (with the help of judges) to allow your right to repair.
Assuming that Tesla goes bankrupt, actually shuts down forever, and shuts its servers down…
At a minimum someone would have to find out where the software sends and receives data from. Then you’d have to reverse engineer the software to control the vehicles.
Then you’d have to reprogram the software to send to your C&C server. I don’t think it would really take all that much to host that… it’s getting there that’s difficult.
If I had a Tesla and someone smart enough to hack into I wouldn’t doubt I could probably figure out how they build their dashboards and reverse engineer them, they’re most likely browser based or qt or something like it. It’d be too costly to do it in anything else and Id bet many spacex dashes are the same tech. But I ain’t rich enough to get one of those things so someone else has to. There’s only so many ways to draw pixels on a screen in the name of profit
They are browser based, their whole UI and much of the in car backend is a JavaScript.
JavaScript
Ah, they’re that kind of evil.
You’d likely need all kinds of cryptographic keys to get anywhere with that. Tesla is unlikely to ever publish those, even if they go bankrupt.
On the upside: if you mod your car to get around all that, you’ll probably be able to emulate old consoles on it and play pokemon games while driving.
…But will it run DOOM?
Pretty sure someone would have already done it. Anything with a screen and some sort of computer behind it is low hanging fruit for doom. It’s shit like running it on a calculator using potatoes that raises the bar!
Yeah it’d be a LOT of constant wireshark and reverse engineering to figure out every API it calls. Then probably something in the middle to sit on the host, need to figure out https certs since you’d be spoofing the host, and of course making sure you get the responses absolutely correct.
Not impossible, but it’s not trivial anymore either.
First, second and third most important point is : Tesla needs to allow the connection to an alternative server.
The fourth should be access to the api and data that are exchanged.
You shouldn’t mess with the FW of your own car even for some innocent feature like this one, you don’t know/understand the interactions that may happen between different Sw components and the hw layer, you can not provide a similar of level of testing, including some worst case scenarios, that can make your car unsafe during some problems or unforeseen conditions. And perhaps also, the car could loose its license for driving…
If tesla allows that, then we can start speaking about it. But last time I check on that was not possible
That mentality is how we got here in the first place. A person should have a right to understand and repair everything happening in devices they own. Because they don’t, we get stuck in the shitty situation where Elon Musk can unlock any Tesla he pleases and I can’t refuse to send my data to him. Or any other car manufacturer. Or tractor manufacturer. Or IoT manufacturer.
Then don’t buy tesla, or force legislation about introducing such feature.
But make yourself a favor and don’t play Russian roulette with something that you can not understandbecause there are not data available.
And for final tip, if you really cares about that then enforce the fsf (fsf.org)
I agree we should legislate it! But in the US, that isn’t going to happen, and the EU also doesn’t seem to quite have enough teeth yet to do it.
And buddy, we play Russian roulette all the goddamn time. The people that modify their cars start off not knowing shit. Why would the computer in said car be any diferent?
Mixed feelings on this. Yeah, you buy it you should own it. But if your ability to fuck with a two-ton rolling death machine puts my ass at risk, we’ve got a fucking problem.
People fuck with two ton rolling death machines every day. What are mechanics? What are car enthusiasts? You just have accepted that you can’t touch the computer because they told you you can’t. That’s stupid.
Nothing has stopped people with ice vehicles.
I have some bad news for you - any random idiot with a driver’s license and a two-ton death machine already puts your ass at risk, all the time. We call it “traffic” because we’ve just gotten used to it
I’m talking ‘I disabled the awareness requirement of autopilot’ or ‘I fucked with the object detection and here goes my beta test yolo’ or ‘I added a button to disable all the lights so I can covertly street race’ or…
And? People can already do this with most cars.
There’s a difference between ‘physical work required’ and ‘plug in this dongle and run the exe’ though
Imagine thinking Tesla has all-that-much in place to prevent those things in a stock configuration. Full-stop, any self-driving is one of the first features anyone trying to disconnect their cars from Tesla servers would lose outright.
Ehh doubt, but I don’t have a tesla to verify. If I can sever the connection to the home base, I can fuck with it however I want, and their kill switch is useless. Maybe they implemented the kill switch in the modem or something, but again I can’t test. I highly doubt that when you’re road-tripping in bumfuck nowhere the ap disables itself…
Anybody want to give me $40k? We can be besties.
Have you never heard of tunes?
Any idiot can make substantial software changes to almost any modern car with easily available inexpensive hardware. Look up Cobb, ECUtek, openflashtablet, Hondata, etc
You literally just plug it into a port and flash the software
It is not comparable, not even by far.
Assuming your are not a psycho, to safely drive a car is orders of magnitude (in plural) easier than modifying the Sw in a safe and deterministic way.
It is not only that bad people exists, it is about that making a small mistake can kill you
Yeah, the potential for real hazard to life and limb is very high here. This isn’t like fucking around with your IOT lightbulbs. This could kill somebody.
I wait for the day when we install Graphene OS Automotive Edition on the car
You can’t
We are talking about a car here not some random cleaning robot.
Not that you aren’t entitled to your opinion, but software running on a Tesla is, in many ways just as mallaible as code on a vacuum robot.
There are several challenges, but basically the protections stopping people from reading and writing firmware would need to be defeated.
I think there have been some software jailbreaks on earlier models already that have been patched, but software is complicated, it’s hard be bug free.
Depends what you want to do. They don’t require a network connection to operate as a vehicle. So if you don’t care about the remote app features (local ones such as lock/unlock still work over BLE), live traffic, streaming music or updates, then a network connection isn’t necessary.
If you do want any of those features, then you would need to either get root access to the gateway and infotainment systems to modify the endpoints or take over the C&C server (formerly named “mothership”) domains and certificates.
Some brainstorming from me:
- Ideally people do not buy more teslas
- An initial goal would be to use the vehicle without it phoning home. Would the TeslaMate project be sufficient for that?
- Long term, would it be possible to replace the software running on the car’s console? Or would it be better to tear out the console and replace it with something else?
Alternatively, what would a recycling/conversion program look like?
I’d guess that, like all tech that’s highly locked down, it will be very hard to do anything with - like Apple devices.
So the only thing to do right now is - not updating.
Everything that polls Tesla data goes through (at lease negotiated access) Tesla servers.
That includes TesMate, TeslaFi, Tessie, etc.
It sucks that the stick is rising. Trumps asshats are actually investing.
You’re better off building an open source car. Teslas aren’t complicated
that’s pretty obvious. Their body panels are falling off and showing how little there actually is their vehicles :D
Something else that people don’t think about besides the backend server is the connectivity. A lot of these cars use LTE with eSIMs that can’t be replaced, and getting an internet package for it will be next to impossible since Tesla gets them at bulk rates. Once upon a time cars did allow “bring your own SIM cards” but not anymore. Also as cars get older the cell networks get shut down. Some companies did offer upgrades but that was few and far between. Most just said “sorry, you’re SOL”.
So even if you could hack your car, your car won’t have any way of talking to a custom endpoint.
Could a Tesla ever work if the cell network went down
I think I mentioned it in another post but Schwaticars are a bit different. Though I’d assume they’d have to have some basic functionality in the event of an outage. “Always on” hasn’t come to cars… yet
It would be funny if old cell network dependency bought down tesla. Just every car made in gets bricked in the Future
And this is another reason why putting internet on cars is a bad idea
I mean, what’s the alternative? It’s not like it has to have internet. Anything internet connected is mainly quality of life:
- Traffic
- Remote (app) features
- Music
Except maybe Teslas, damned if I know what they do. But they’re nice to have things that generally require realtime updates but the car functions just fine as a car without it.
Public transit/bikes are (or should be) a good alternative if you can’t find normal, used, dumb cars anymore
That’s a non-sequeter. You started by saying that internet on cars were bad and then switched to “you should be using bikes”
Both of my statements are correct. Cars shouldn’t have internet and there should be less cars. In total absence of offline cars (meaning no used cars, nothing at all), use bikes and public transportation if you can.
I mean you literally asked for an alternative and I gave you one.
- Traffic
- Phone (CarPlay/Android Auto (yes I know Tesla doesn’t have them, a garbage decision you’ll have to live with if you bought one))
- Remote (app) features
- Don’t care/want/need, plus security risk. If you really can’t do without, use WiFi when at home, and no-idea-what for when on the go.
- Music
- See point 1, also “dumb” media devices via Bluetooth/USB should be possible.
Again though, they are all quality of life things. You don’t have to use it on most cars. Don’t want it, don’t pay for it and don’t use it. So just like giving people the choice of AA/CP, what’s wrong with giving them the choice of using those features?
Just cause you opt out of those features doesn’t mean the car doesn’t have other mandatory shit that connects to the internet to, say, sell data like the exact times and locations of when you have sex.
Inb4 “but I don’t have to worry about it cause I don’t have sex” we know, but that’s not the only thing they gather data on.
If you bought a live service car you’re probably shit out of luck
It’s not.
Just sell the car to a derby demolition show. We all win.
That’s wasteful and dangerous
Harvest the beast for batteries and GPUs
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