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Comment by iamcasen | Hacker News Reader

As a computer scientist, and all around maker/hacker, I find shit like this despicable. I'd love to be able to get a Tesla, download the data to my own lap top, and play around with their API's and what not, but it's not an option. Tesla owns all the data, and they can do whatever they want with it. No thanks.

All modern cars are all proprietary, and their hardware/software is mostly garbage that can't be tinkered with, fixed, or modified.

If that's the only option in the future, I'll take my welder, and my old cars and head for the hills to try and finish off the rest of my days in relative peace -- free of intrusive spying and advertising.

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Tesla has an API that you can use to download quite a bit of data in real-time. You can't get past data with it.

Also, you can write Javascript apps that run in the web browser.

I did a bunch of hackathon projects using that data when the Model S first came out, now there's an ecosystem of apps and stuff available for the cars.

I won't fault your opinion for Tesla having more access to your data than you might like, but your opinion about what you can download seems a little incomplete.

Im certain hes implying they have stored history of vehicular data

He did, and they do. I don't like that Tesla knows as much about my habits as Apple does. That wasn't my point, however.

Yeah I understand. What I meant by "not an option" is that it's not personally an option for me because I don't like how much data Tesla has in the first place, so I won't be buying one.

This is why I support local motors and their open source vehicle efforts. The cost is high, but my dream vehicle is essentially a rally fighter. Till then, this is why I still like old jeeps and the like.

This is one of the biggest reasons for why I hope gasoline vehicles don't get banned as we move toward a more electric vehicle society.

Why? There is nothing stopping manufacturers from applying this to ICE cars. In some cases they already have as there are some ODB2 codes that are proprietary.

As emissions standards get tougher makers are relying on increasingly complex fuel and emission maps that are also proprietary. There is nothing stopping you from building an electric car today from Open hardware and software. The same can’t be said for ICE cars.

Well I will add some states are quite stringent with safety standards for cars made that year. So if you build a car it may not be road legal in some states. Unless your diy car meats certain safety requirements. That's why either mod or heavily modify older cars. Same applies with emissions.

Yet motorcycles are road legal. I honestly don't understand the law some times.

The workaround for this (while it lasts) is to only buy vehicles targeted at fleet purchasers.

You get the barebones version of a much smaller selection, sure, but the vehicles still tend to be serviceable by in-house/shadetree mechanics instead of the dealership.

I was thinking more a long the lines of cars without ECU's.

Most ICE cars are equipped with ECUs for various subsystems

I couldn't imagine my vehicle doing anything I didn't tell it to do, or at least do anything I didn't optionally allow it to do for me.

Maintain a certain distance from another car when I set the cruise control? Sure, that's not a bad feature.

Play a nasty little ad on a touchscreen "infotainment system" that is downright distracting to use as it is, especially when driving? That sounds like disaster waiting to happen.

Computer engineer here! Totally agree!

You know what about a electric car with open design files, and system firmware and software.

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