It feels like this is something you should get by being owner of the car, and not have to do free speculative research for the manufacturer to get it.
Right-to-repair legislation is chipping away at this but slowly. The EU's right-to-repair directive covers physical repair and doesn't really touch software access. The real test would be a regulator taking the position that restricting root access on hardware you own constitutes an anticompetitive tying arrangement, since you can't use the car's data for your own purposes without going through Tesla's APIs and paying their fees.
John Deere has been the main battleground for this argument so far. Farmers can't repair their own tractors without paying for dealer access to diagnostic software. Tesla is the same pattern applied to consumer vehicles, but the consumer advocacy pressure is weaker because fewer people feel the pain directly.
No i'd push back on this because the entire workshop manual is available for free without even registration required. You can literally google and land in the relevant sections and it is of a far higher quality than ford, VAG or bmw as three examples i'm pretty familiar with. I haven't seen the John Deere stuff.
Tesla does have "special tools" for some repair procedures, a practice as old as the auto industry but they don't rely on them to the same extent as BMW for example. Anecdotally, the special tools i'm aware of are genuinely useful - for example, the tool for disconnecting seatbelt anchors saves time vs the traditional bolt - where special tools on other marques are often clearly to workaround a failure of packaging or engineering resulting in tight access for a regular tool.
Their online API access is a little bit annoying, or at least unfriendly to casual home user, specifically the workflow to register an OIDC client, but not insurmountable.
That's because they were forced by Massachusetts expansion of Right to Repair laws. Before that in 2021, service manuals were withheld and required $3,187 a year or $371.88 a month to see them. Before that in 2018, it was $100/day to view them. Before that, you had to pay and book an appointment and go in person to view them.
Craig's point about the special tools being well-designed is fair, I don't think Tesla is uniquely bad on the mechanical side. but the software lockdown is a separate thing from workshop manuals. you still can't get root on the infotainment system or run your own diagnostics without going through their API, which is the part that's more like John Deere than a traditional automaker.
Here in the UK (where i also have free tesla repair manual access) i have to pay a daily rate (there are annual subscriptions available) for other marques and i would say it's not cheap.
For example, ford charges me £20/hour or £75/day for access to manuals, wiring diagrams, online connected diagnostics (which sounds more impressive than it is, the UI will show vehicle status like fuel tank level or error codes reported by the various ECUs, without physically connecting to the vehicle, i.e. it's done over the vehicle telemetry link), and the ability to connect via a data link connector device for diagnostics and some reflashing activities. Security activities like key coding require a further (chargeable) registration).
The same setup is available by at least VAG, BMW and Fiat Chrysler (the latter has an annoying extra device registration step the others don't). All chargeable.
It really isn't. Unlike John Deere, Tesla is actually pretty good on right-to-repair. All of their technical and repair manuals are available for free to anyone. The service/diagnostics software ("Toolbox") is also available to anyone, albeit for a (not entirely unreasonable) fee.
(There is also a service mode built in to the car which can do many basic diagnostics for free)
That should be the bare minimum. Ford charges you 40 dollar an hour for it and unless you know exactly what you are looking for you will spend several hundreds on it.
Too bad ford killed their old site, the print form was unauthenticated and you could print the entire schematics to pdf if you knew the internal model number. Or do what I did and run a script to dump it to higher res PNGs.
More legitimately, alldata.com has repair data, workshop manuals for most marques up to today and will sell you either single vehicle (called "DIY") or a package aimed at independent mechanics where you can access anything. Same manuals either way, but you pay per vehicle with DIY (and have to contact support to switch.)
I use alldata for my GM truck, it is fantastic.
I won't go into details but searching around with the "forum" keyword and etis might get you somewhere (at least that did the trick a few years ago, now with LLM slop I don't know, and what the other person posted).
With this, the John Deere approach to gatekeeping vehicle repair would no longer be legally protected by the DMCA or by copyright law. All the other protections afforded by copyright law would still apply: you cannot rip the firmware off the hardware and distribute it, the manufacturer is under no obligation to help you modify it, etc.
However, tools which patch or circumvent antifeatures of the firmware would now be legal to use on hardware you own: it would be legal to patch out software locks, retune engine computers, etc.
What does that mean? "The software" is a specific configuration of the hardware you own. How can you own the hardware and not the specific copy of whatever data is on it? Note that I'm not confusing the copy of the data with the IP rights to it.
When you bought a DVD, you didn't "Own" the movie, but you had a legal right to do things with that data you didn't "own" anyway, like format shifting and selling that physical object on to another person. You could copy that data off and do things with it. I think technically it would be a copyright violation to then put that movie file into Movie Maker and cut up your own personal highlight reel, but good luck finding a judge willing to hear that case if you don't upload it to youtube.
Now, thanks to the DMCA and courts being absurdly credulous of bullshit arguments from corporate attorneys, you no longer have basic consumer rights. If you try to even inspect the code that runs to protect your literal life, that can be a crime. You own the literal hardware, but if you try to act like you own it, that's a crime. You technically still have the right to format shift a BluRay for example, but bypassing the math protecting that data overrides that "right" and you are guilty of a crime. A CEO's wet dream.
If the DMCA was older, IBM could have prevented the existence of the Clone PC market and ensured a locked up market. We would all be stuck on absurdly shit hardware because that's what was more profitable for IBM.
Pre-DMCA, Sega was told that their trademark rights were overridden by the innate market right to interoperate with their product. IP rights used to be fairly weak! Sony could not prevent a company from selling a software product that ran playstation games. To this day, Nintendo simply pretends these court cases didn't happen.
This is part of why China has so much success in manufacturing and product development IMO. They don't need to develop purposely worse versions of things just so some other company can sit on their hands for 20 years collecting rent. If you want a fast moving market, the ability to lock things down for 20 years is fundamentally unacceptable, only enriching a few owners, and outright harming our country. Basically every time in history that IP rights are weakened or nullified, you see a burst of development and advancement in products and solutions.
This would be okay if there's a way to reject the license and install my own firmware.
It's not really feasible for a private owner, so I can see why it's not offered as an option.
But at least in my jurisdiction, I can mechanically modify the car in any way I please, as long as it still has seat belts, brake lights, and bumpers of a certain height. It doesn't even still require a steering wheel; that's not specified in the law as far as I've been able to find. (Now, if I removed the muffler and made it louder than proscribed by law, I could be cited for a noise violation, but only at such a time as I womped on the gas and actually made the noise. The car itself being _capable_ of the noise is not, inherently, illegal.)
This blew my coworkers' mind once as I unplugged the passenger-side airbag while mounting a bunch of new stuff there. Apparently in some places, it requires paperwork and certifications just to unplug a connector? Weird.
How is this different from the 2000s, or the 90s, or even before, when the normal thing to do with commercial software was to purchase a license to use said software and a physical medium containing a copy? You'd also then not "own the software", but you owned the right to install a copy on your own computer and use it. That worked without having to hand over the keys to your own computer.
Sure, the physical delivery medium is gone, but that's just a detail. Why do we now think that just because we license software for use, we can't be in ultimate charge of our own devices?
These days unauthorized access tends to lose you effective use of the hardware you bought because the hardware requires software features to work and that software often unnecessarily phones home so if the OEM toggles a field in a DB somewhere you lose access to back up assist or whatever other fancy tech features that you a) paid for b) don't strictly need to have dependencies that phone home to work but do "because reasons".
As a pedestrian I prefer for most people to not have root access to their multi-ton fast-moving killing machine.
Give me root access so i can install openclaw.
More concretely, the expertise-required-to-access-root is in a different field to the expertise-required-to-make-wise-changes. i.e. you might know how to hack a car, but that doesn't mean you know how cars operate.
Think of it this way: every concern you have about a teenager having root on their electric car is the same as any sociopath hacker (AI enabled for modern nightmare fuel) who finds a root vulnerability and decides to not be a good person with it. If a teenager can mess with the collision avoidance, e.g. Israel can modify it to murder anyone who talks shit about Israel in the car. Or the CIA could turn it into a weapon. Or one day some dev could push a bad OTA update. Et cetera. Our safety regulations should mandate design features to prevent a malfunctioning computer from posing any greater safety risk than any other modified part in the car.
I know that the car reports practically all user events to Tesla in real time over the cell network (eg, open door), and I know it has root access. I don't know if that root is available remotely and I don't know if foundational commands like steering, acceleration and brake are accessible via the CLI (they are computer controlled actions locally)
THUS I would not want to drive a Tesla if there was the possibility of all cars being rooted and remotely controlled by an unauthorized actor.
https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig...
Computerized vehicles aught to be strictly regulated in terms of how computers may affect the physical operation of the car, such that a reasonable standard of safety can be ensured outside the usual risk one takes when hopping in a motor vehicle. The fact that a hacker can possibly kill people by rooting an infotainment system is a symptom of the general disregard for security in design, and we continue to ignore it for engineering expediency.
This is about selling tools and access. It's another profit pipeline for car OEMs.
As it turns out though blatant irresponsibility is quite rare (depending on your definition anyway) since people have a strong self interest in not endangering their own lives or wallets. It's similar for homeowners - many states explicitly carve out a requirement that insurance companies cover DIY modifications that are within reason and this generally works out since you have a strong vested interest in not destroying your own house regardless of any insurance policy.
Maybe you think daytime running lights are stupid and want to disable them for instance.
The risk profile is very different and non-obvious to your average car owner.
It's the difference between trying to repair your leaky dishwasher vs. trying to repair the electrical panel in your basement.
I don't disagree that it's a bit different in certain ways but I feel like that's drifting off topic. It shouldn't be up to manufactures to determine these things unilaterally but rather the legislature. Particularly any justification to the contrary rings hollow in this case because there's a very strong conflict of interest.
It is. Thousands of people have died because of aftermarket headlights. Harder to assess, but probably much larger, is the number of excess deaths from nitrous oxide etc. emitted by modified cars.
Modified cars can release 1000x more polution, on streets with 800 daily cars that will have an affect.
This isn't complicated FFS.
The difficulty against this in the US is the unfortunate reality that the people coming to these shops to enable their stupid trucks to roll coal are the people who should technically be raiding and shutting down these companies. This can be fixed.
Physically, you can already modify your car to be controlled by a stupid program and that has been possible since at least the 90s. You can do the supposed harm by not being aware of damage to your exhaust system.
The solution to exhaust harms of ICE engines is electric cars, not a reduction in consumer rights.
Almost invariably when that excuse is trotted out, there are are usually many things that are much more common that are also far more dangerous. For example, texting while driving or driving with bald tires in the wet are both 100x more dangerous than anything almost anybody would do by modifying the car's software.
Disabling alertness sensors might worsen drunk driving actually.
Enforcement is abysmal for stupid reasons. Courts are reluctant to remove the ability for people to drive because America purposely made itself dependent on cars, and cops are reluctant to actually arrest a lot of people for drunk driving because they tend to be buddies, or worse. You can find plentiful examples of off duty officers trying to get out of drunk driving simply by being a cop.
This is what you get when you can vote on the sheriff and judges who insist they are "Tough on crime" because they sentence a dude smoking a joint to years in the joint while ignoring real problems like, you know, murder and theft and violence and all the shit their buddies are doing. The "Tough on crime" people are the ones drunk driving often enough.
That, or no company wants to assume liability. In which case, go whine to your local representative. That’ll be hilarious for all involved.
Manufacturers have increasingly restricted control over products as they've gradually been digitized. Prior to the digital era anyone could do anything to personal property (regulations notwithstanding ofc); more expensive items typically came with circuit diagrams for the purpose of repairing them.
They've also revoked certificates from researchers personal cars in the past
If an athlete breaks a world record, they're likely to do it again. Even though it's incredibly hard to break a world record.
If you can open it up and find the JTAG pads, it should be simple-ish to use a JTAG reader to dump the image and then you can figure out the update protocol from that. It's unlikely to be complicated.
There's just so many computers and what-not in modern cars that this is a very tall ask. You'd need a project on-par with HomeAssistant to get anywhere.
each body model (nothing to do with year or style) was different so clearing dtc but nothing else is not a surprise.
i did get that working, but I last touched it in 2007 so I don't remember enough details to be helpful. good luck.
lol that sounds just about right
I'm currently picking apart the firmware in those because it is now impossible to get replacement ignition key fobs, and it just can't be that difficult...
It's pretty amazing what Claude + Ghidra + knowledgable coaching can accomplish. It was basically just setting direction, setting up an incremental workflow with the right kind of documentation, and questioning some of its theories and assumptions from time to time.
I'd love to release a lot of it but I'm torn between releasing artifacts created with expensive software I paid for and thinking that many of those things should really be freely available to anyone (specifically the things which definte the protocol to talk to the car and mapping of what various things are reported vs what they actually mean.
Release it or not, but either way you’re almost certainly going to get paid back the same amount of money: $0.
https://gist.github.com/cole-christensen/cb9119e2f6b0f29b568...
"Early on, the notebook computer and LCD vendors commonly used the term LVDS instead of FPD-Link when referring to their protocol, and the term LVDS has mistakenly become synonymous with Flat Panel Display Link in the video-display engineering vocabulary."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-voltage_differential_signa...
And eDP is a differential signal at 200 or 400 millivolts so I don't see how that's "quite incorrect". It's not "the" LVDS but it's still in the category.
So LVDS is more likely to linger in automotive displays, while in less obsolete devices it has been replaced by either eDP or by MIPI DSI (used e.g. in smartphones).
Spoiler alert: it's still LVDS
Put a voltmeter on the battery terminals of a regular car at 2000rpm and note the voltage. You'd be surpised (the alternator can produce as high as 15V on some cars).
13-14v is normal in all 12v automotive systems as the charging voltage
So the alternator has to put out at least something higher than if it’s planning on recharging the battery after 500 to 700 amps have been pulled from it for a few seconds to start the engine.
It's a bit perplexing that those lead acid systems are referred to as "12V" systems when that figure is effectively the 0% voltage, whereas 3.7V for single Li-ion cell is the 50% voltage.
e: also, ICE transients can be in kV range, coming from ignition mechanisms. I've heard that you can literally measure engine RPM by selecting 1/dt on an oscilloscope and dividing that by cylinder count.
One minute you might be accelerating and the onboard voltage drops as the battery supplies most of electricity. Then, as you reach the crest of a hill and start engine-braking, the car frantically tries to convert all the available kinetic energy to electricity, raising the onboard voltage to quickly charge the battery.
Which in practice means that they do a very miserly job charging the battery and are a ton more sensitive to a battery being in less than tip top shape so you can expect your battery lifetime to go down.
But it's a "win" because they pushed the serp belt change outside of whatever interval the reviewers who calculate TCO care about and they saved .000003mph in the process.
Not understanding this sentence. Most running ICE vehicles product closer to that 14.4 than 12v. I think a standard controller would have worked fine?
of course this is just a modern interpretation. older stuff runs at 6v and some weirdo offbeat cars have a 24v/48v rail sitting around somewhere. Cop cars often had alternators that put out weird voltage ranges for certain equipment, or dual 12v for high amperage output.
"12v" in reference to anything automotive is very much a nominal reference.
That means all computers etc will work at 6v.
> That means all computers etc will work at 6v.
Not necessarily all of them. Plenty of stuff will drop out while cranking; hopefully not the computers that run the fuel injection and ignition, though.
https://x.com/i/status/1722717318009041104
DM me if interested
Can't you just solder some extra wires onto the cut off bits, rather than having to try and find a compatible cable? They've left the connectors in, and that's the hard bit, the rest is just wires
Modern cars have tens of ECUs, so if you had to have all of them for testing, that would get unwieldy extremely quickly. Not to mention that cars are pretty resilient to having random parts failing, you don't want to lose the entire dashboard just because the ECU that provides camera data failed, or something.
Fwiw, mine costs $450 from Ford. Also in the US we call this a wiring harness, with the loom being the material that goes over the wires
Violet HSD Code D 4+2 Pin Female to D Female Jack Connector 6 Pin HSD LVDS High Speed DataTransmission Harness Wire LVDS Cable https://a.aliexpress.com/_EuGOh9e
The car was full of issues and probably spent more time in the shop than on the road. Nissan finally had to buy it back after service techs failed to tighten the oil drain cap after an engine overhaul.
Given the presence of the wiring schematics and the mechanical dimensions, I'm surprised that the author did not try to 3D-print the mechanical parts of the connectors, givem that the electrical parts extracted from the BMW connectors did fit.
What is a "local PCB repair shop"? All the guys who used to fix TVs and radios are gone. Anyone else (not living in China) having trouble locating such an outfit in their neighborhood?
And a soldering robot with a specialist a few rooms away to beam down the latest errata into physical form, at times.
Tracy Kidder just died, and Soul of a New Machine was a favorite of my formative years as an engineer. Once I started in headunit ECU development it felt very familiar to me at times.
I'm a software guy, but the gear has a lot of allure.
Hey, I just remembered my school used to have ages ago some cool power supplies (I think from Agilent?) that were very idiot proof, they had current limit with a dial that I think didn’t went over 1A or perhaps even less, and they would instantly disarm on short circuit (and indicate it with a led), and also the voltage dial I think wouldn’t go over 25V. I remember it was very big and heavy, but it survived countless students that used the lab daily.
Nowadays, is there any power supply available that is that resistant or is the recommended approach to get an used old one? Does anyone have a power supply at home that is also used by kids with a brand/model they would recommend? Thanks!
https://www.mouser.com/c/power/power-supplies/power-supplies...
AT $5k it better make me breakfast, too.
If you want that sort of reliability it will probably go towards 100$.
Completely unrelated. Would be interested if you figure out how to retrofit the new adaptive shocks on performance models to the older cars. Something I would love to do if I had hobby time. I'm pretty sure they fit physically, but needs to be connected to the main computer. I likely would never touch the main computer unless I got root access. In my brain I was thinking about a separate system made with raspberry pi's.
Typical setup for cars (and lawn mowers). As a software guy my first instinct is, computing power is cheap enough, seems like a CAT5-like thing running between all components would do it. Speaking as a software guy - meaning I'm probably missing a lot of the big picture. On the other hand, it's a lot easier to safety-check a mechanical lockout that physically opens a circuit, than something running on software.
That said, I'm sure there's gotta be a better way to solve it with less copper. And I think they did something like that with CyberTruck.
I know CAN is a thing for a while now, and in the aviation world they have ethernet-derived standards like AFDX etc. But for some reason cables abound.
Meh, even in the IT industry cables abound.
> A REST-like API on :8080 which returned a history of “tasks”
I am curious to know what kind of historical tasks- since it's a media control unit; does it show what kind of media was being played in the last trip? does it reveal any other info about the driver?? There might be a privacy angle here that you could exploit and share it with Tesla.
In Tesla terms, the infotainment does much more than just playing music - it has full access to the rest of the car.
:O
Sure someone should do it just to verify the process works, but it isn't really useful. (in general companies are very careful to not violate GPL license terms, often refusing to use GPL3 at all)
It could be clout like "I turned a Shahed into a gaming PC"
I have a Model 3, but I can't say I follow the forums.. but I've never heard of screens failing -- I'm sure it happens but I think if it was common problem I'd have heard of it.
Turns out the early Model S vehicles used consumer grade LCD panels that weren’t designed for the prolonged high heat you get in a metal and glass box left outside in the sun all day.
Tesla since upgraded their vehicle screens to proper automotive-grade LCDs which are excellent.
My point is, automotive-grade hardware is higher spec than regular consumer computer hardware, hence the high prices.
As an aside, I upgraded my whole computer and screen from MCU1 to MCU2 and it was worth the upgrade.
Credit to Tesla for building a retrofit computer upgrade for old vehicles. Thats a non-trivial thing to engineer and I appreciate their effort. Other car manufacturers would prefer you were compelled to buy their latest vehicle instead.
What a waste.
"To promote further security research, Tesla offers security researchers the opportunity to retain root access on their infotainment system even after their reported vulnerability has been patched. In order to qualify, a researcher must send in a valid report describing a novel way to gain root access on a Tesla infotainment system. Upon confirmation, Tesla will instruct the researcher on how to use their existing root access to enable the researcher SSH feature, along with an SSH certificate for the researcher's public key (tailored to their specific hardware ID). The certificate restricts SSH access to the local diagnostic ethernet link. Tesla may renew the certificate as long as the researcher continues reporting vulnerabilities."
Very neat.
I was really surprised to read this at the end of the article -- how could someone be this deep into a project of this depth and not realize this?! Not only because all cars (...er... all vehicles) are wired this way, but also because the documentation they were referencing has plenty of detail to show this... there's even a whole picture of it (and to Tesla's credit they have amazing free docs): https://service.tesla.com/docs/Model3/ServiceManual/2024/en-...
I think this is a software guy who occasionally dips into hardware things (to hunt bugs).
There's a list of them here: https://service.tesla.com/docs/Model3/ServiceManual/2024/en-...
Not to Tesla's credit, they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into it (primarily by Massachusetts) and their right to repair legislation through a solid chunk of malicious compliance:
1. When told that they had to have a site for people to order parts, Tesla put up a site that had every single item as "Call us", including the most simple of bolts. And when a few places called, "Sorry, that's not available to you".
2. The service manual was originally only available in a few locations in MA, and had strict conditions: you had to book in advance, there was a $100 fee per booking, and you could only view the manual on premises, and could not bring electronic devices into the room with you, just pen and paper.
The docs they have are great, and who knows how their attitude would have changed over time, but they absolutely didn't want you to have it, initially.
https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/utivlj/tesla_s...
> This used to cost $3187.50
https://driveteslacanada.ca/news/tesla-service-manuals-free-...
> The access story has been inconsistent over the years. Tesla has opened up free access to both the service manuals and diagnostic software in the past, but that was apparently a mistake, and loopholes were quickly closed.
https://www.teslaownersonline.com/threads/tesla-service-manu...
"Always ... all free to use". Not so much. And before that, even less available.
I will grant you for number 2, there seems to be some ambiguity - some people claimed it was only if you needed to actually use their diagnostic tools, because Tesla wouldn't sell them to anyone at the time (which is also in contradiction to your "everything you need, all free, always").
If you think this is actual diagnostic tools? No.
Free? Weird that Tesla offers a subscription for it: https://service.tesla.com/en-US/diagnostic-software
$700/year is a strange definition of "free".
You seem to miss my point. The OP wanted to pat Tesla on the back for their amazing commitment to freeness and openness. My point was that even if they are doing good/much better now, much of the time they had to be dragged kicking and screaming to it. MA's AG had to wave the right-to-repair laws.
It's not uncommon knowledge that third party repairs have been, for years, difficult to impossible because Tesla wouldn't supply either the information or the parts to third parties. I'm not sure why, in the face of repeated evidence otherwise, you seem determined to retcon those details out of existence.
Again, since you plainly didn't read it: https://service.tesla.com/en-US/diagnostic-software
service.tesla.com - if I'm spreading false information, so is Tesla. Oops.
Sounds alright until you realize after spilling a bunch of flower vases in the trunk (hatchback) that the computer has literally no case on it and immediately shorts out while driving. Or a passenger spills a drink in the rear seat cup holder.
There is now a recall notice to pull the back seat out to install a $5 plastic cover over the thing.
And yep, it’s the main computer for the car which controls the electronic transmission etc. Immediate full on engine-shuts-off at speed on the freeway and you require a flatbed to tow it away level of broken. I’m sure the engine ECU is in the engine bay, but holy hell what a surprise!
I had a small crack in the rubber seal around my sunroof from parking outside in the elements. When it rained, water seeped in, made its way down the a-pillar, pooled under the seat, and fried the computer.
Expensive fix but I was able to drive it to the shop.
Some Mazdas put the metal-cased engine computer in a plastic air box that feeds cold air from the front, to help ensure the engine computer stays cool enough.
In general, I believe the cooling airflow from the frontal air and the cooling fans keeps engine bay in check.
For example, this is the board that’s used in Mazda CX-5 2017+ engine computers (mfr Denso), it lists max temperature range of +150C: https://www.renesas.com/en/document/mah/rh850e1l-users-manua...
This thread is interesting to me 'cause I'm also a software guy and recently took a job dealing with building fighter jets and the amount of engineering going into the wiring and computers on those things is insane. It's been a very interesting learning experience.
It's also notorious for having awful solder connections and failing outright.
https://evilution.co.uk/mod/sam-unit-solder-repair.htm (and Aging Wheels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8AAleKR33Q)
Usually, for most other vehicles, the connectors are either standardized (e.g. radios, ISO 10487 [1], high-current chargers by VG 96917) or the foundation plugs, sockets and re-pinning tools are readily available by the vehicle manufacturer or by aftermarket suppliers.
Tesla truly went out of their way to make the life of third parties (such as wire harness repair shops) more miserable here.
When canbus is already two wires, and by definition, is a bus, so you can just keep stringing those two wires to any module you need. I know Ethernet BUSes exist, but what advantage would those have to canbus then? They're both two-wire buses.
Now they just have to take the next step and have everything in the vehicle running on PoE.
You should see what happens when someone involved in the sciences, e.g. Chemistry, gets their hands on Claude Code.
Their code is aways terrible, and they constantly think it's good.
The exercise is always the same: explain the math to me, like I'm 5, then we profile it and see what is faster.
Oddly Claude Code, integrated into their IDE's has made this situation happen much less.
I never want to work in a place again where the fun way to start the Monday meeting is a "math problem".
PS: Don't even get me started on their SQL.
It's like "software dude thinks he can do hardware", but on steroids. They don't know what they don't know and they think they have a panacea in their hands.
Don't you know? Software is beneath them and the fiddly bits are just standing in the way of them getting their BigImportantWork™ done.
Professionals overestimating their knowledge is a very common thing!
I was a developer for a decade before I went to school for design, so I’ve seen it from the other side. It’s not all bad: that overconfidence can lead people to tackle problems they’d abandon if they really understood the domain’s complexities. But often it presents like developers acting like their genius developer brain allows them to solve difficult problems in completely different fields with a few glib analogies and a few brief thought experiments.
I have worked with a LOT of PHD's in recent years. Their code leaves much to be desired.
As an Australian. I often find myself saying things like “the wiring hardness, or loom, or cable, or whatever were calling it this week”.
Exasperated by living in a state other than the one I grew up in. South Australians are often easily spotted by their pronunciation of certain words.
It’s just a phrase or sentence with spaces removed.
Knowhatimsayin.
https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/c/electrical/wire-cable/tubing...
[1]: https://www.holley.com/products/engine/engine_dress_up/hoses... [2]: https://www.oreillyauto.com/detail/c/dorman-conduct-tite/lig...
[1] Braided tubing and [2] conduit, respectively.
Now why didn't an AI think of that? :)
But then I'm driving brand new Fiat RV with CarPlay this week. Cruise control by itself has 2 or 3 bugs, and that's not even trying to be picky. Or how's this - can't hotspot from me while phone is in carplay. Can't pinch-zoom or pan maps in 2026 and myriad other things that makes me cringe when people moan they don't buy Tesla because lack of carplay.
> Tesla offers a “Root access program” on their bug bounty program. Researchers who find at least one valid “rooting” vulnerability will receive a permanent SSH certificate for their own car, allowing them to log in as root and continue their research further.
Pretty interesting. Sounds like Apple's Security Research Device Program[0], where you're loaned a rooted iPhone, but with a clear qualification criteria.
It strikes a nice balance, because to qualify you have to 1) show you have the skills to get root access anyway and 2) show you're willing to participate in the bug bounty program and get things patched.
I would of course love root on everything I own, but I can understand Tesla's motivation here since root for everyone would make vulnerability discovery easier for malicious actors. And if everyone had root on their Tesla, it'd be much easier to make naughty modifications that might catch the ire of regulators. (like disabling driver attentiveness checks in self-driving mode).
[0] https://security.apple.com/research-device/