Tesla has remotely disabled driver assistance features on a used Model S after it was sold to a customer, Jalopnik reports. The company now claims that the owner of the car, who purchased it from a third-party dealer — a dealer who bought it at an auction held by Tesla itself — “did not pay” for the features and therefore is not eligible to use them.
The features were enabled when the dealer bought the car, and they were advertised as part of the package when the car was sold to its owner. It’s a peculiar situation that raises hard questions about the nature of over-the-air software updates as they relate to vehicles.
Tesla is claiming it can yank access to software features using OTA updates
Cars sold with hardware-based upgrades, such as four-wheel drive versus all-wheel drive, or advanced adaptive cruise control, do not lose those features when they are resold on the used car market. But because Tesla can update its vehicles remotely, the Model S and other Tesla vehicles can apparently lose key features. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The owner in question, who Jalopnik refers to as Alec, purchased the car last December. The dealer bought the car a month earlier from a Tesla auction, with both “Enhanced Autopilot” and “Full Self Driving Mode” features intact, according to Jalopnik, which reviewed documents related to the car’s ownership and sale.
The dealer then listed the Model S, advertising both features. However, unbeknownst to the dealer, Tesla had independently conducted a software “audit” of the car after selling it, and disabled those features in a December update. The end result: when Alec picked up the car on December 20th, he did not have access to all its advertised features.
After contacting Tesla customer support, Alec was given the bad news:
Tesla has recent identified instances of customers being incorrectly configured for Autopilot versions that they did not pay for. Since, there was an audit done to correct these instances. Your vehicle is one of the vehicles that was incorrectly configured for Autopilot. We looked back at your purchase history and unfortunately Full-Self Driving was not a feature that you had paid for. We apologize for the confusion. If you are still interested in having those additional features we can begin the process to purchase the upgrade.
The value of the self-driving features that were supposed to remain active in the Model S comes out to about $8,000. Alec paid for the car under the assumption that the features were bundled into the car’s price. Tesla now says Alec has to pay the company for the features to get them re-enabled.
With a normal car’s built-in features, even ones that may depend on software, it’s reasonable to think a technician or mechanic would need to physically access the car to remove it. Even with a technology product like a laptop or smartphone, updates generally can’t be forcibly rolled back without the consent of the owner — unless the device has special IT software installed. In those cases, the company generally owns the device or has the owner sign a legal agreement anyhow.
Tesla’s over-the-air updates have caused anxiety before. This kind of control by a carmaker wasn’t possible until recently, and Alec’s situation raises questions about what used car owners can expect in the future.
rudebii on February 7th, 2020 at 23:35 UTC »
I know I’m late to the party, but I worked for an aftermarket automotive tools manufacturer, specializing in diagnostic tools and software. Previous to this, I worked for an aftermarket parts distributor.
Cars are becoming more dependent on software, and unless there’s some financial or regulatory pressure, auto OEMs are going to start treating vehicles like android phones - no more updates, even if the phone can run it because fuck you, pay me.
Auto manufacturers are already locking behind software some basic maintenance, like brake pad replacement. If you dont pay the licening fees and buy the hardware to the OE, as an independent shop you’re screwed. And if you do general repairs on all cars, as many indie shops do, that’s thousands to EVERY manufacturer EVERY year.
“But what about OBD2?” OBD2 is an on car diagnostic protocol that Reddit gets wrong all the time. OBD2 only exists due to government mandate and is an open and universal protocol for the same reasons. But manufacturers are only required to use it for emissions-related diagnostics. Manufacturers can and have created closed protocols that are read over the same communications bus. The aftermarket has to reverse engineer vehicles in order to create tools to read these specific codes, and some are easier to crack than others. Vehicles today have several subsystems that are inaccessable by design to independent repair techs.
Basically the horse i out of the barn, but it hasn’t run off too far yet. please support right-to-repair.
EDIT: not online, I meant on car.
Helzacat on February 7th, 2020 at 21:46 UTC »
The feature was present on the car at the time of purchase. so the feature must remain on the car. I'm pretty sure there's some consumer laws that deal with this type of issue
Tantric989 on February 7th, 2020 at 21:45 UTC »
There goes the resale value.
And before someone goes "read the article," I did. Still, imagine the reality that you're trying to buy a used Tesla and you have no idea if the features are even in there. Or just turned on for demonstration purposes. Or you might have to buy the car you want and then talk to Tesla to pay more money to get things to work that are already in the car. This sounds like a giant mess and people are going to think twice about the used market for these.