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Comment by alpos | Hacker News Reader

Possibly the stupidest day-one DLC play we've ever seen.

>"Customers might see that as “a bit of a cheat,”

Because it is a cheat.

There is exactly zero chance this doesn't get bypassed and unlocked for free with the quickness. Better still though, just don't buy stuff from people willing nickel and dime you like that.

Pay real money for real things that you actually own. You will be happier this way.

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> There is exactly zero chance this doesn't get bypassed and unlocked for free with the quickness

That's a big claim. There are comparable third-party unlocks to get the performance upgrade for a Tesla, but nobody is doing it for free. They still want about half what Tesla charges. The difference being that Tesla will still warranty the car if you buy it from them.

IIRC, the code for at least some of those unlocks is available open source. And usually hacks or jailbreaks have a tendency to trend in that direction even when the hackers are charging for it initially. Someone eventually decides to share their code and methods, for the fame or to do a talk, if for no other reason.

The reason I think it will happen fairly quickly in cases like this is that hackers also tend to be more "challenge accepted" as culture whenever the offending restrictive software is particularly obviously stupid or egregious.

but we mustn't agree to such practices, because if this goes legal next step will be prevent from software hacking and/or police/MOT checks for illegal software tampering

This is already the case in California. Tapering with the ECU (in a detectable way), will cause your car to flunk the smog exam, which, unrectified, makes it illegal to drive your car.

Another thing that only affects poor people. In California your first smog check is at 6 years. Most wealthy people turn over their cars more often than that. So a rich person can hack it up and not worry because they'll ditch the car before its ever checked.

Is there a smog exam in California for electric cars? Honest question, as it wouldn't surprise me if there was due to complicated legislation.

As of now, no. But I wouldn't be surprised because the smog exam doubles as a road safety check, and as more EVs are on the road that are getting old, they're gonna want a way to verify road safety. Probably a state battery exam or something.

Is the smog exam really a road safety check other than if it's so obviously unsafe that they won't drive it to the smog machine? Especially since post-2000 cars are just an ODB-II check, a visual check for exhaust modifications, and a check for smoke at various engine conditions. The procedural manual does mention visual inspection for gasoline fuel leaks (diesel and gaseous fuel leaks are fine, apparently). I'd imagine techs were a little more worried about vehicle safety when they were putting the cars on dynos, too.

OK, interesting. In NY we have a mandatory yearly safety check for all vehicles but also an emissions check for specific classes of vehicles (ie: gasoline cars/trucks >=2 years old, but diesel passenger cars and EVs are exempt). Mostly the emissions test consists of connecting the state software/hardware to the OBDII port and having the car tell if it should pass or not.

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