Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

A few counter points:

- Loads of aftermarket conversions of existing cars to EVs are done by third parties using a wide range of components from OEMs, custom built stuff, or scrapped EVs. E.g. Tesla batteries have a high value for this. Not that hard apparently.

- There are companies providing aftermarket upgrades to Teslas and other EVs to e.g. install custom batteries. For example, Our Next Energy (One) has installed their batteries in Teslas and other vehicles: https://cleantechnica.com/2022/01/05/our-next-energy-tests-i.... So, it's not true you are dependent on the OEM for this. Same with many older EVs that are still servicable. E.g. the original Nissan Leaf from twelve years ago can be equipped with after market battery replacements.

- Tesla recently urged owners of older models to come in to replace their 3G modules with 4G replacements to keep the over the air updates and other online stuff going. The cars work fine without that but obviously lose some functionality as 3G networks are being shut down.

- ICE vehicles are similarly software intensive. It's just that most vendors are a bit behind on update procedures and the update procedure generally sucks. They're busy switching to EVs instead of developing new ICE vehicles, so there's a lot of effectively unsupported software in the field that will never get serviced even if it is full of bugs. Which is of course common because most car manufacturers aren't very good at creating software. It's not a problem if the car keeps on running.

- Lots of things are software intensive these days. This is not unique to EVs. Why single those out?

"- Lots of things are software intensive these days. This is not unique to EVs. Why single those out?"

Very much this. The description in the article sounds like owning a laptop vs a desktop pc. People don't care that they can't upgrade their car if they're just going to get a new one every three years anyway that has better features and twice the range. It's not how I buy cars, but the majority of car buyers don't buy cars like I buy cars.

Yeah, I think IF (and that's not a huge if) L-Sulfer, Solid State, etc pan out, then the conversion kits may get super cheap, or a flood of cheaper cars without the blings and bloops will hit the market.

Right now the price point of EVs is in the Luxury segment, and these people have never cared about the long term aspects of car ownership. Old cars are low status cars, so they unload them.

The drivetrain cost of EVs is probably under ICE in Tesla (they aren't pricing them like that, they are milking the market right now), and probably will in main auto in a few years, and it will plummet from there as economies of scale hit the OEM component makers. EVs are just batteries, 1-4 motors, and a control. system. Brakes for extra stopping power over regenerative braking if you want.

So the lower end will start to blossom in the next few years.

A lot of right to repair is to keep it under warranty. That's a legit antitrust concern between everyman mechanic and the auto makers. After warranty, if there's enough cars, there will be people that can fix them. And again, it's less components.

I don't own such a complicated car contract so I don't understand: if you don't own the car, how can there be an aftermarket at all? Don't I have to give it back when I'm done with it, so I have no car for the aftermarket? I think I severely misunderstand one of the sides, because it doesn't make sense.

You own the car de jure (you have the right to sell it to someone else), but not de facto (the car manufacturer exercises direct and indirect control over how you use the car, undermines your basic human rights by spying on you, can destroy/permanently disable the product).

Won't these Teslas also possibly loose the ability to super charge eventually as all the verification (certificates) stuff is on the car?

I don't think that's necessarily an issue. Tesla allows other vendors at their charging infrastructure. You might lose your warranty though.

This is not the case everywhere yet, and Tesla does ban some modified (Tesla branded) cars from their chargers.

It's not for entirely malicious reasons. Those super chargers run at very high watts (250 KW) in some cases and people with hobo repaired batteries could cause some serious fires if they could just plug into the chargers.

Tesla does need to have approved vendors at some point, but I definitely understand their logic in blocking access.

Tesla disables supercharging for any totaled vehicle, as they want to reduce the likelihood that a Tesla catches on fire at a supercharger and they're put on blast on the news for the next week.

> most car manufacturers aren't very good at creating software

They're been doing it for decades at this point. Which part of it aren't they good at?

I'm not in the automotive industry, but the code I write has to conform to MISRA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Industry_Software_Reliab...) guidelines. I think they've learned a few things by now.

Based on my experiences with a variety of OEM infotainment systems over the last decade, I would say car manufacturers still have an awful lot to learn about building software that does not suck.

Physician, heal thyself.

How do you expect automotive to not suck when the rest of the software world delights in it?

Have you seen the report on the Toyota source code?

http://www.safetyresearch.net/Library/BarrSlides_FINAL_SCRUB...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9449559

"In a nutshell, the team led by Barr Group found: “a systematic software malfunction in the Main CPU that opens the throttle without operator action and continues to properly control fuel injection and ignition” that is not reliably detected by any fail-safe."

And the black box could fail to record any braking input in such cases.

That's not good! People died! And you would have a hard time convincing a jury that the driver was not at fault, if not for the thorough independent code review.

And that's the safety critical stuff, now imagine all the code for the infotainment systems.

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