How is it that we can be repeating the exact same mistakes made in software over the past 40 years, without anyone questioning whether the dangers of cloud-enabling cars is remotely justified by the features provided?
1) The features provided by Tesla extend far beyond those provided by "cloud-enablement"; the fact that "informed consumers" are buying the cars does not indicate that their purchasing decision came down to isolating cloud-enablement relative to cloud-features.
2) Your hypothetical informed consumers don't really exist, unless the only people buying cloud-enabled cars are computer scientists.
2) Ever looked at a tech company parking lot in South Bay? A lot of people with CS background are buying the Model S. Not all buyers are computer scientists but informed buyers most definitely do exist.
Of course, even being informed isn't going to help if this sort of poorly secured connectivity becomes the norm for new vehicles, which seems to be happening disturbingly quickly. If you rely on the independence offered by having a car but all cars have similar dangers, you might have only bad alternatives to choose between, but they're still bad.
[Edit: That last sentence was ambiguous. My intended meaning was that the alternatives to using a car at all might also be bad, for example incurring significant costs and disruption moving to live somewhere with viable public transport instead.]
So let me get this straight ...
They were able to plug in a laptop into the car and gain control. In fact, physical access is necessary.
Tesla used the cloud connected features to update the software, removing the physical vulnerability.
Yes, the connected nature of the car is an attack vector. But it seems there are other attack vectors which are far worse and the connected nature can be used to protect the vehicle.
We need to be careful with this kind of risk assessment.
If Microsoft or Google messes up a Windows or Chrome update that is automatically installed, or a malicious actor compromises the update mechanism, maybe a few thousand PCs belonging to people who accepted the risk get broken and there will be some hassle restoring normal functionality afterwards.
If a car manufacturer messes up a firmware over-the-air update that is automatically installed, or a malicious actor compromises the update mechanism, maybe a few thousand cars belonging to people who accepted the risk get run into walls at 100mph.
It is far from clear that providing a mechanism for remotely initiated updates of fundamental system software is a win in this context. As we've seen with automatically updating PC software in recent years, not all updates work as intended, and as we've seen with modern malware, reprogrammable firmware is not always a blessing.