While the servers going dark might be annoying, you still have access to your cars hardware, giving various attack vectors in making your car "go" again.
- CAN protocol between components is relatively straightforward to reverse engineer, and on a fundamental level all modern EVs work "the same"
- you/someone can put a new circuit board into the remote-disabling component and tell the rest of the car "everything is fine, please drive"
- depending on how much the OEM has invested in preventing this, it might get harder, but it will always be possible (last resort, swap to new brainboard)
So, all that said, this is of course a worry for the consumer (liability as well when modifying the car of course), but if you control the hardware and enough other people have the same car as you I believe they will be reverse-engineerable.
You can check my submissions, I am making a video series about how modern EVs work, also check out openinverter.org community.
One more anecdote: Fisker Ocean was in a similar place recently and I started looking at their owner groups to see if there would be a business case for me to get more involved, but I haven't pursued it further.
So in the same way that "life will always find a way" in Jurassic Park, I think if you bought something that enough other people have bought, someone will hack it/share a solution (albeit voiding the warranty in the process).
The liability seems to be the same as historic vehicles, for... vehicle repair. So why is this any different?
The burden of proof is on the manufacturer to prove that a modification caused damage to the vehicle.
Dealer mechanics make mistakes too, but at least they're trained on the specific car, and they can collect data to notice a pattern of things breaking after certain people worked on them.
It is only different in that by making cars internet-connected, the manufacturers see a golden opportunity to make them all cars-as-a-service that you must buy but no longer own. In other words, profit and more profit, greed.
What I am highlighting is that if enough people are affected by a bankrupt OEM, it is not the end of the world to fix them so all is not lost in that case.
I also don't think it is a particularly smart idea to have your car needing to chat to the mothership before it decides to do it's job of driving you somewhere. At least for the consumer I see limited benefits of this trend.
The obvious solution (to those of us here) is open-source and right-to-repair requirements.
I admire the spirit but I just don't think hackers will do much with $100k bricks beyond salvage components.
I'm working in EV charging domain. EV chargers that comply with ISO 15118-20 may prove difficult to get working once more (due to key signature requirements). Otherwise, all should continue working as long as the charging protocol they use continues to be supported. And that said, the EV charge managing component should be replaceable.
Depending on the hardware this can range from needing to attach a debugger to JTAG, to dumping a flash chip, to decapping a microcontroller at the hardest.
I'd assumed everything was some terrible impenetrably dense proprietary cruft, but oh, the whole system runs some standard well known protocols that would be super super super great & convenient to use, if we had network access to the car? Yeah, nice.
Wouldn't it be so great if someday things actually got better. The "Hack" was, oh, you can engage the parking break if you get network access. Oh no! So the response is that now we for sure will never be empowered useful-to-ourselves consumers again. It sucks that the low-trust society keeps dominating, that it keeps overshadowing the can-do is-possible universe, that making possible is forever dwarfed by Fear Uncertainty and Doubt.
The one really bright spot of the past, in my view, was Webinos, which was a super cool IoT system that had some automotive interest. Notably, unlike most systems, it kept users sovereign, let devices (like cars, or car windows/stereos) expose themselves up to user-specified gateways, securely without intermediaries. Didn't make it, but I have yet to see anyone with 1/5th the promise, with anywhere near as low-ickiness as modern devices.
The community I linked above is full of people doing this kind of stuff. Some if it illegal, some of it legal.
Jailbreaking an EV I haven't thought about yet, but if the original manufacturer is bust, and you can show some degree of care to the licensing body I am sure it's negotiable.
Obviously it would be better to not be in this position in the first place, but problems are fixable.
Rich Rebuilds got one for this exact reason recently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_OxgAYG0Io
There should be some escrow system for software and service for something as expensive as a car. When Saab Automobile went bankrupt in 2016 a number companies where quick to announce that they'd be able to source or manufacture replacement parts. You can build a brand new 2CV from replacement parts, with an electric motor, and I'm almost certain you can do the same with a VW Bettle.
All the "smart" stuff leaves us a risk of having to discard brand new functional vehicles at a huge environmental impact. Unless you drive a lot, it's better for the environment to maintain an old Saab, compared to buying a new Chinese EV.
If you can't maintain it because you go bankrupt or whatever, you've already paid another company to take over. No different from mandatory insurance, basically.
The main problem points for incompatibility are places where the car interfaces with software outside of itself. As that software gets updated or APIs change, the car can go out of date. I think chargers and automatic payments might be the most important one there.
Why did Chinese companies jump into the car industries producing cars when they didn't have the know-how before? simple, rent seeking. Chinese government was offering incentives to do so. https://reason.com/2023/08/23/chinas-e-v-graveyards-are-an-i...
A “life and death race” has begun to unfold in the world’s largest market for electric vehicles - https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/24/business/china-ev-industry-co...
The first generation Model S still works just fine at Superchargers. Any EV you buy today is even more likely to have support a decade from now.
Well, the place they parked had no cell phone reception, so they couldn't unlock the car there and leave (how they locked the car is another question).
From the article
> He also couldn’t see his car’s mileage and charging status on the dashboard.
I'm assuming this is in the app...
All it took is one trip to the Salton Sea where either my phone or car didn’t get cell service and I’m never making that mistake again. Which is especially weird because Polestar claims that the digital key works using Bluetooth, but the auth itself must be done over the internet or something.
Sure I do have to take my phone out of pocket maybe once a month (not unlock screen), but I blame Apple here for going into some weird power saving mode.
This is a solved problem. Problem is Polestar, not the concept.
One way you can tell - if you open your frunk from the app, if you’re on Bluetooth it’ll do it immediately. If you’re talking to the car over the Internet, it’ll warn you about needing to close the frunk manually.
Still, jealous of the Tesla wallet keys!
This seems like an odd approach. If you’re gonna site maintenance as the concern, then what you’re saying is you’re concerned about the consumer; meaning if the company is gonna go bust, you should take the money that you’d spend keeping these companies afloat and give them directly to the consumer to replace the car.
As far as I can tell my Tesla S will continue to work even if Tesla and all the charging stations disappear. But the navigation system will be much less usable and many features of the entertainment system will stop working (Spotify, TuneIn).
And if you buy from a company that produces a very large volume of cars then at least in some cases third parties will step in to support the vehicles for a fee.
But why won't Spotify work? Isn't it just a web app?
2. There might be all sort of Teslas API wrappers or keys that Spotify will revoke once stop getting a kickback.
Are there kickbacks involved? Why? There are millions of Teslas on the road and they make 2 million cars a year, and the app is just a web app in a headless browser.
I wouldn't be so sure. It's about 6x cheaper than typical unlimited data plan here.
Is Spotify API completely open? I haven't checked but I'm sure there are api keys + api spec will eventually change. Is web app embedded?
Tesla going bankwupt - much less so.
If you have a first gen iPad from 2010, it still works with modern AirPlay and AirPrint devices.
If you have a car that supports the old iPod protocol where you can see what’s playing and change the “song”, it will still support modern music and podcast playing apps on iOS devices.
I've actually tried that few weeks ago and it didn't work. Car was from 2008 or so.
Every year I have little gremlins asking me to "fix" a toy someone brought them the previous year; the app doesn't work/update anymore - and the toy is a brick.
EVs, solar inverters and wrist watches are definitely one of them.
Most people want modern infotainment systems in their cars with up to date traffic data in the navigation system.
I like having my inverter online, I can monitor it and change the settings from anywhere.
You are right, most people want to create problems out of nowhere.
Having an inverter (or anything) online means you are connected to cloud services meaning someone/something automated can control your inverter and that's what the article is trying to convey.
Kindly read this https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/the-gigantic-unregulated-p...
I think that's the only model that Tesla has dropped support for. The original Model S from 2012 is still supported by Tesla, and still gets software updates. Of course you won't get new features like self-driving improvements, but they still ship bug fixes and stuff like Spotify support. They also do maintenance and repairs, though I'm pretty sure all of the vehicles from that era are outside of warranty coverage.
There are millions of Model 3s & Model Ys around. If you buy one of those, you'll never have to worry about finding someone to do maintenance or repairs.
Unrelated, but its one of the reasons why unsolicited advice is distasteful.
I’m pointing out the worst case scenario to show your fears are unwarranted. With popular vehicles, you’ll have no problem getting repairs for decades to come.
EVs are equated with being computers on wheels, but that's just because barely any BEVs existed in the pre-software era, so there aren't many people who vow to never upgrade from their 1976 Sebring CitiCar.
I understand that some Internet-required features (such as viewing real-time charger availability in the car) will certainly become unavailable. But I'm prepared to use my phone to do the same thing.
So to your point - you can probably use a car after the manufacturer is gone or stops supporting a vehicle. But this comes with a risk of trusting these not very legal enterprises.
Probably by the same people running third party WoW servers :-p
All modern cars have this failure.
I just bought a used 2023 Nissan Leaf. It's the last model year of the original design, and has many tactile mechanical button, not jut a tablet on the dash. It's also totally self sufficient WRT cloud connectivity.
I'd highly ecommend this model and year...