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Comment by gvb | Hacker News Reader

Could be but a much more likely cause is a software update that went bad. Likely the cloud rained on them.

> ...the cloud rained on them.

I've yet to hear this expression. Love it! I will be using this!

I don’t update any software I work on without canaries and a slow (order of days) roll-out, you think the bug manifested for a big chunk of the fleet?

Canary deployments in autonomous vehicles? I’m not sure that only sending 1% of customers to fiery deaths is considered a win.

It seems odd they are bunched together in one spot. Maybe these were the canaries?

I would not want a car that's updating during a ride

Future taxis or rentals: Bring Your Own Firmware

Or: Backseat driver via bluetooth, phone to taxi.

Do Teslas update themselves while driving, or only when they're parked?

It seems like a bad idea to deploy an update to a vehicle in traffic.

Only while parked. And they never update "themselves" except in rare specific circumstances. They have to be told to update by the owner.

Except for when Tesla find out you've bought it 2nd hand, and revoke the FSD...

(Or, you know, when you get into a Twitter shitslinging match with Elon...)

It's so tiresome that this (mostly false) story keeps coming up.

The short version of the truth: The original owner did not buy AP. AP was enabled because of a bug. The dealer listed it as having AP included because, at the time, it was enabled. When ownership was transferred, the glitch was corrected, and AP was removed.

The new owner bitched very loudly to the press, and Tesla restored AP to the car, for free, even though it had never been paid for by either owner.

It has nothing to do with FSD, and nothing was revoked because ownership changed.

From the users perspective, they purchased a car advertised with a feature. They could see it functioning. An over the air update removed the feature that they had "purchased" and tested. Yeah, I'd be mad as well.

Good that Tesla resolved the problem but there is reason to be mad about a company retroactively removing features from a product.

There is reason to be mad about a company that builds itself the capability to retroactively remove features from a product.

(/me looks hypocritically at my iPhone and Macbook...)

If a dealer listed something as included, and it was not, I would be beyond livid, and they would be giving me a full refund.

It was a used car and the dealer was not Tesla.

So? If advertised with a feature, it is incumbent on the seller to provide a product with that feature.

"So" it is not the story that people keep repeating. Tesla do not remove AP from resold cars.

Except, as you acknowledge below, that is exactly what they did.

Tesla doesn't have dealers. This sounds like a used car.

> Tesla doesn't have dealers. This sounds like a used car.

And? If I own something (which I do after I've paid for it),the only way the "legal" owner is getting it back is via the courts.

Why is it okay to resolve property disputes by private force?

Cause the post implied that it's right to be mad at Tesla, but that wouldn't help. Feel free to give the car back to the dealer. Although I'd think this would be obvious on the test drive.

Also, being livid is probably bad for your health. Might get high blood pressure.

> Cause the post implied that it's right to be mad at Tesla,

Of course it's right to be mad at Tesla - they resolved a property dispute by force.

> Also, being livid is probably bad for your health. Might get high blood pressure.

I wouldn't be livid in that situation, but I would consider criminal charges against Tesla in my jurisdiction.

After all, the dealer is only on the hook for civil claims, Tesla is on the hook for very obvious criminal claims.

Oh, I missed that AP was enabled at the dealer but then disappeared - thought the dealer had just claimed it was there.

That raises a lot of questions about how it could even happen. I'd understand if it was sold as some kind of "user license", but it's on the car, so I assumed it was a permanent extra hardware addition.

No, all Teslas have the same hardware. (At least, all Teslas made in the past few years. Older ones can indeed lack required hardware.)

Whether you have AP or FSD is a software bit.

>I would consider criminal charges against Tesla in my jurisdiction.

You live in a jurisdiction in which a private person can levy criminal charges?

But something was removed - over the air - from a vehicle that someone had in their possession.

This is a huge deal if it becomes normalized.

This is how supercharger access (revocation) works, by the by. Surprised there hasn't been an investigation and a lawsuit around it yet.

They're only operating from 10pm to 5am so one would expect them to at least update off hours.

My hypothesis is that the software update was done prior to the problem (e.g. off-hours) but that location triggered the bug. This could be as simple as a map update that confused the s/w.

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