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Comment by joosters | Hacker News Reader

True. However, Tesla owners have to accept an 'always on' car, sharing who-know-what with Tesla over its cellular connection. Is there any way to just get OTA updates without giving away personal data (like location) to the company?

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If you want a Tesla, yes, you have to accept that. You don't need to purchase a Tesla though.

As a Model X reservation holder, I am both comfortable and accepting of Tesla having my location data and remote access to my vehicle. I understand that the telematics will allow them to continue to improve the product and future products, and have a better understanding of how their batteries and drivetrains perform in the field. I accept all of the above because they've earned that trust (and would even go further, allowing full access constantly to all autopilot sensor data).

Disclaimer: I am also a smaller Tesla investor. I am biased. I'm willing to make sacrifices for what I consider progress.

Yup, the bumped up the 0-60 time of the 85D from 5.4s to 4.2s just based on usage data after the first few months they were in the wild. They'd found that they'd greatly under-rated the motor and provided it as a free update.

As an 85D owner that was wonderful.

I'm sure they're also doing the same with autopilot. Imagine being able to use your entire fleet of 100k cars to aggregate data about how to best tune critical subsystems.

You can opt out but I don't know of anyone that has. Their language suggests you might not get updates, but I think that language is more of a cover every possibility than reality. They always install updates when the vehicle is serviced anyway. So it's not like you're entirely blocked from updates if you do opt out.

From https://www.teslamotors.com/about/legal

    Rights and Choices

    We give you many choices regarding our use and
    disclosure of your personal information. You may opt 
    out at any time and free of charge from:

[snip some irrelvant bits]

    Any processing of personal information for which you 
    have provided your prior explicit opt-in consent by 
    contacting us as indicated in the "How to Contact Us" 
    section below.

    Our collection of Tesla vehicle data. If you no longer 
    wish us to collect Telematics Log Data or any other data 
    from your Tesla vehicle, please contact us as indicated in 
    the "How to Contact Us" section below. Please note
    that, if you opt out from the collection of Telematics Log Data or 
    any other data from your Tesla vehicle, we will not be able
    to notify you of issues applicable to your vehicle in real 
    time, and this may result in your vehicle suffering
    from reduced functionality, serious damage, or inoperability, 
    and it may also disable many features of your vehicle 
    including periodic software and firmware updates, remote 
    services, and interactivity with mobile applications and 
    in-car features such as location search, Internet radio, 
    voice commands, and web browser functionality.

    Our collection of real-time traffic feature data. We 
    only collect this data if the real-time traffic feature is 
    available to you and you elect to use it. If you no longer 
    wish us to collect or share data from your vehicle for this 
    feature, you can stop this collection at any time by simply 
    turning the feature and the data collection off via the 
    "TRAFFIC-BASED ROUTING" setting in Controls > Settings > 
    Apps > Maps & Navigation.

According to the Washington Post, you can opt-out of telematics by calling Tesla. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/06/24... I don't know if this affects updates though.

There isn't at the moment, but I don't see why you couldn't have an update procedure that tells you that you have an OTA update as you start the car and asks you to apply it. For that matter, I do not see why in todays day and age Chrysler can not release an update that customers could just download onto a USB stick, plug the stick into the USB port on the radio, and be done with it.

That's what Chrysler is doing:

https://www.driveuconnect.com/software-update/

(In addition to having the dealers do it or sending USB drives to people that request them)

Oh, that's really cool, I had no idea. My friend works at a Chrysler dealer, and they have to connect a laptop to the car and update it like that. If it's available via a USB stick, why aren't they told to do that. I guess buy using the USB stick you can't justify billing Chrysler for 45min of work per car.

Actually they bill the same rate no matter how long it takes.

Hmm, well in that case it's beyond me why they have to take the car, drive it into the service station, connect it to the laptop, and have it sit there for 40min thinking. I'll show him that page, maybe they could do it with USB sticks as well, which would really speed up the process, because they can just get 10 USB sticks and have one guy do 10 cars at the same time.

I wonder if the Uconnect hackers could teach Fiat Chrysler how to do over the air updates?

For the most part, I think everything should be designed to be updated in this way.

I have a Harley-Davidson motorcycle that I can update simply by connecting a USB drive, turning the ignition switch on, and waiting about five minutes.

How would you know?

EDIT:

I meant that seriously--any functionality which can update the firmware can, by definition, remove your ability to tell that it's doing other things, too. See also "Reflections on Trusting Trust".

EDIT2:

And another downvote. Some people are absurd and clearly don't understand what is a completely reasonable comment about the nature of the security here.

It's not, "How would you (somebody unskilled in these things, snarf snarf, mere mortal compared to angersock) know (anything about this)?".

It's, "How would you (consumer without access to the source code being deployed) know (given that the machine can be made to fake output to whatever is most likely to make you think it's behaving normally)?"

Jesus.

From Tesla's privacy policy:

* Telematics Log Data: To improve our vehicles and services for you, we collect certain telematics data regarding the performance, usage, operation, and condition of your Tesla vehicle, including the following: vehicle identification number, speed information, odometer readings, battery use management information, battery charging history, electrical system functions, software version information, infotainment system data, safety‐related data (including information regarding the vehicle’s SRS systems, brakes, security, e‐brake), and other data to assist in identifying and analyzing the performance of the vehicle. We may collect such information either in person (e.g., during a service appointment) or via remote access.

* Remote vehicle analysis: We may be able to dynamically connect to your Tesla vehicle to diagnose and resolve issues with it, and this process may result in access to personal settings in the vehicle (such as contacts, browsing history, navigation history, and radio listening history). This dynamic connection also enables us to view the current location of your vehicle, but such access is restricted to a limited number of personnel within Tesla.

Maybe there is a way to opt out of this, but I can't see it.

Deleted comment

I didn't read it that way at all. I read it as "how would you [any consumer] know if personal data was being shared?" not "how would you [comment op] if personal data was being shared?"

I thought about downvoting you. The comment was brief and offered no insight or context into what you were thinking or saying.

If you would have started out with the variant at the bottom, I never would have thought about downvoting you.

Funny quirk of the English language--had I written instead "How would one know?", I think it would have avoided the ambiguity that ruffled feathers.

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