Tesla, Rivian Put on Fake Show of Support for ‘Right to Repair’
techdirt.com
techdirt.com
Perhaps you could buy the preassembled chassis and modify the rest of the car as you'd like.
Maybe you could tear down the whole thing and rebuild it.
In theory this should be super accessible. You might see a whole community spring up over it. It's potentially a huge market ranging from teenagers to retirees. Lots of people love cars and modifying them.
There might be lots of companies that get in on the action and build a full ecosystem of compatible parts.
It'd be really neat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxkPuEmIX4U&list=PL0vZL9uwyf...
Despite the untold expense and full on car workshop... it felt very accessible and possible. Ridiculous hubris on my part obviously hah! I doubt I could change a tire on humvee without help.
If imagining a kit car then you won't be worrying about the custom designed elements you highlight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jnhh1P86vQ&list=PL0vZL9uwyf...
An EV burns down. The chassis maker points its fingers at what they claim were low quality electronics used, the electronics manufacturer points its fingers at the sharp edges left on the chassis that could create chafe points.
Technical interoperability too aside from standards; in a collision it's difficult to model/simulate/test a car that may have 20 different motor options, placement options, dozens of batteries, etc. They'll all fail differently, how do we regulate that kind of safety? I'd love for it to work.
https://ftp.txdmv.gov/pub/txdot-info/vtr/title_manual_book_4...
>On page 376, under 'Eligibility for Title' it says "Homemade vehicles are not eligible for title or registration. Homemade vehicles are described as vehicles that were not previously manufactured by a NHTSA approved manufacturer..."
(I also know people building planes in their garage. I think Georgia just has a lot of this.)
https://dor.georgia.gov/assembled-and-unconventional-vehicle...
I'd imagine that would either change, or people would start buying up the lowest-cost EVs just to pull the battery out of them (like "shucking" external drives) and resell all the other parts.
Start with 50 km range at beginning, end up with 500 km range by the end of the year.
Would also enforce positive replacement and recycling procedures by creating a standard modular power unit.
Arguably doable, but I doubt any manufacturer or EV will ever tolerate such easy mod-ability or repair-ability. They live to destroy any attempts by the consumer knowing how to service their own property.
This is an enormously exaggerated statement, bordering on entirely false. Yes, the company has done this from time to time, including on some current Model S/X models, but the vast, vast majority of Tesla cars sold (the 3/Y) almost always have a different sized battery pack in reality, not just in software (~50kwh or ~75kwh - there is genuinely ~1/3 less cells in the 50kwh cars almost always).
The Model S/X sell in very tiny volumes, relative to the 3/Y too. There absolutely is not the same pack in "all their cars". Even the type of cells used varies between model packs, typically 2170/4680 in the 3 or Y, 18650s in the S/X. I think there are even some BYD blade batteries in some European Y variants, but I'm not as familiar with the German or China made cars.
I have no experience with electric cars, much less disassembling/repairing them.
Any chance you have a source for this info?
That sounds amazing.
Business models and soft vendor lockouts cause price drift.
More often than not, you’d want your own charge controller anyway to for example run at a lower voltage (different series). At least for the Model S/X modules. The 3/Y modules are a little bit trickier to re-use because they are higher-voltage and not as modular.
A hobby project I've wanted to do is to convert older cars to electric. The more iconic, the better, for troll value :-)
I also think that most car manufacturers will hate this idea since it directly competes with and shows how incredibly un-repair-able current vehicles are. They don’t want to change. They just want to pretend to change.
The difference, of course, is that for obvious reasons, aviation has developed a pervasive culture of safety and rigorous root-cause analysis whenever an accident happens, and deadly crashes frequently result in regulatory corrective action. If car accidents were as rare as aircraft accidents, the NTSB brought a team of investigators whenever one happened, and the results of that investigation led to stricter laws and enforcement, we'd probably be OK with kit cars, too.
The sad truth about automotive is that crashes are so routine that police won't even get out of bed unless there are injuries. And, there is basically no penalty for negligence that leads to a car "accident". It's almost impossible in the USA to lose your driver's license, even after dozens of repeated DUIs. Totally different cultures.
people buying a kit aren't building a tesla, they're building a kit car. When you buy a kit, you're not expecting the same thing you get from a dealership. You're expecting something you can build yourself, which is fundamentally different
This is a privilege that in a decent society ought not be available at any price.
It's silly to say that they are under no obligation when what we are talking about with right to repair is literally whether we ought to create such an obligation.
If you disagree you must explain why such an obligation is a net negative for the millions not the few.
I await your argument to that effect.
Tesla didn't push EVs out of the goodness of their hearts. They did so because they thought they could build a profitable company. Tesla's execs and shareholders are being compensated quite well already for their investment of money/time/work. No need to give them a blank check to do anything we (as a society) don't want them to do.
That you're legally allowed to repair your tractor doesn't help much if the on-board secure TPM chip flags your replacement parts as counterfeit, locks the engine, and reports you to the manufacturer so they refuse to sell you parts in the future.
I know that this probably not a trivial task, but, given the amount of money at stake, it feels worthwhile, but maybe I'm just underestimating the degree of integration of the current control system into the parts. If everything down the internal engine sensors is running priprietary, encrypted software and you basically have to tear it down and replace every single electronic component on the tractor, then yeah it probably won't ever make sense.
Given the number of sensors, it could also be a great way to collect open data for farming innovation, environmental data, etc.
This dispute is all about not letting manufacturers use such tactics. I see it also as an ecological issue, because unrepairable and upgradeable stuff means more garbage.
That's why we need specific laws to protect the freedom which should be the default.
Part of the solution isn't just laws that require something to be reparable, but getting rid of the laws that constrain it. DMCA 1201 is used for this more than it's used for its ostensible purpose, and should have a general purpose exemption for any case where the circumvention or tool is necessary for any reason other than actual non-fair use copyright infringement.
There is a war going on between government and car manufacturers because they succeeded in side stepping most of the right to repair requirements.
Currently, most new car’s OBD2 ports are somewhat useless because they now use a proprietary wireless communicator to transmit error codes. Apparently, the old right to repair laws didn’t say anything about “wireless communication” so they took the loophole and ran with it.
The days of buying a reasonably affordable scanner and diagnosing and repairing your own vehicle are over. We’re back to square one of forcing them to give us right to repair again. It’s actually really really bad.
Toyota, Ford, and Chevrolet are also rumoured to be removing the OBD2 port with their 2025 line-up. They’re just testing how much they can get away with before committing to it.
It’s going to become very hard to repair or even diagnose our vehicles if we don’t start fighting back.
There's no such thing as a default state, only status quo.
And the status quo is that right to repair is not really a thing all that much
If you use the former definition, it’s already the default state. If you use the latter, “right to repair” becomes a reasonable-sounding term for a concept that’s not quite as reasonable.
You can't just declare that any modification of the product voids the warranty, you need to show that the consumer's modification caused the warranty claim.
E.g. you won't get anywhere claiming that replacing the car seats caused the engine to lock up.
You can already intentionally ruin your seats, or use olive oil for your engine. So manufacturers already need to diagnose warranty claims in more detail, without considering modifications to the car itself.
But even so, as long as the customers aren’t legally obligated to use a particular manufacturer’s equipment, any competitor should be able to win them over by avoiding a particularly unpopular practice.
We must fight for our rights now, they have been alienated from us.
This idea of a nice binary black and white cutoff for rights does not, and has not ever existed. This really is an absurdist American viewpoint. Let's make an example
"it's my legal right to pour a cup of water out on my property"
And, no one would really disagree with that.
"So I'm going to do it with a million cups of water all at once"
In which a flood happens destroying others property..., then we would see that the measure of ones actions is the consequences to others. If you make a car for yourself, go ahead and build it how you want. If you are making a mass produced product it's no longer about you or your rights. It's a superposition of your rights, the buyers rights, and the 'publics' rights as you dispose of that product.
The maker starts with a right to make a product as they see best. The buyer has a right to purchase or not. The “public’s” rights are an interesting concept.
I'm pretty sure we're not even on the same planet at this point. If you think this is true, go produce some products as 'you see best' and see how long before you end up in criminal/civil court. There are myriads of regulations on what you can and cannot put in products that are sold to others. To think otherwise is a level disillusionment that only the most staunch libertarians reach.
The public has rights, the market is not a free for all do to whatever you'd like.
As a business person in any industry this is already true in 1000 mostly reasonable ways that mostly derive from outrageous behavior of prior actors in your space. In that context it seems ridiculous to argue against 1001 on principle unless the specific regulation is itself ill advised. The only justification it needs is for it to be a net positive.
Basically why do 338 million people give a fuck if a handful of people want to do user hostile things. Do them somewhere else.
control of a political situation by those outside the conventional or lawful realm, typically involving violence and intimidation.
If we mutually understand that is literally how the world works everywhere then going back and pretending that society needs to justify "taking away Elon's rights to sell consumer hostile cars" then we are being intellectually dishonest. The same way you are being intellectually dishonest by denigrating simple democracy as "mob rule".
The big fish eat the small fish and the game becomes easier the bigger you get.
If people wish to voluntarily trade vehicles without the "right to repair", that's their choice, that's capitalism. The state intervening in transactions one way or the other is a violation of the capitalist ideal.
Competitive markets and price information are also key components of capitalism - and the "right to repair" enhances both. Empirically, manufactures don't like competing for repairs, and they also obfuscate the cost of those repairs so customers would never know the total cost of ownership ahead of time.
State intervention does not violate capitalist ideals when it enhances competition, I'll go further and say coercive monopolies are anti-capitalist. Just because I bought a widget from you shouldn't force me to have it solely fixed by you at a price of your choosing.
No coercion (voluntary transaction, no state involvement): "I'll sell you this widget, but only if you agree to bring it to me for any repairs." "Ok."
Coercion (state intervention): "Hi, I see you are about to sell your widget to that other guy who would like to buy it, knowing only you can perform any future repairs. If you go ahead, I will use the full force of the justice system to punish you, up to and including death."
I realise this is unrealistically ideal. The language is very important to get right though. You are advocating for coercion for the common good, not the absence of it. The state is impotent without violence, you don't need to shy away from it. State == force.
I don't see how you don't see how this all-or-nothing approach as coercive. Maybe if I change the actors it'll become more apparent to you:
"You can sell your widget in our jurisdiction, but only if you agree to our laws." "Ok."
The power imbalance and lack of choice is what makes it not great. Clearly, you see the power of the state, but somehow ignoring the power of corporates over individuals; they might not be legally able to end your life, but they can ruin it (e.g. how recently-convicted eBay executives hounded their victim, or thr list of dead companies that "agreed" to work with Apple or Walmart).
I am unashamedly for using state power as a counterbalance to corporate power. Unregulated profit-seeking has never resulted in good outcomes for humans.
(I am a fascist, for the record.)
Right to repair should be a full set of instructions for "everything" are available.
That's it. Give the full specs for everything. If it's code reliant(which wtf), what does it require to work?
That's. Fucking. It. We give you rules to say peeps cannot sell what you made, you make it so we can repair it.
If you don't like it, sell fucking service.
Tesla provides that (and more) for free:
• Service Manual, Parts Manual, and Body Repair
• Tooling Catalog and Wiring Diagrams
• Service Bulletins
• Labor Codes and Times
• Service Mode Diagnostic Software (on the touchscreen)
Electronics fail more often than mechanical parts and even today with independent auto shops having access to manufacturers programming software you still have to go to the dealer for some things
Most parts pair automatically and can be calibrated by putting the vehicle in Service Mode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e1_xr81l38
Repair shops that buy high voltage batteries have to pass safety training.
It's not even like it's say, a watch that I might actually need specialist equipment or knowledge to repair/maintain.
It's actually something I'm expected to at some point, be required of me, but is tactically not provided to me as to benefit a private entity.
And arguments can be made about who's ethical and economical burden it is to make documentation, but the fact is it'd just save an overall immense amount of societal time and productivity for those who already have the potential to provide documentation, to do so.
And so the expectation that we are left to our own devices on various forums and social media websites that may or may not be SEO'd by google to be brought to our attention with the right combination of keywords.
Is kind of baffling, to be honest. If it's easy for us, it should be even easier and quicker for them. Especially when most in many countries are unfortunately reliant on such things, many of them may not be reverse engineerers, or even versed in google-fu.
If it doesn't need specialist knowledge then why are you asking for people to release their knowledge on how it works? Just use your general knowledge on how it works then.
How do you create secure platforms while also giving consumers the keys to their devices?
(FWIW I'm not advocating against right to repair, I actually hope it helps to get rid of black box IoT devices. My device, my keys, etc)
But how many devices really need that level of attestation? Does a tractor need to be able to prove to John Deere that it is a genuine unmolested vehicle, or does it just need to prove to JD that an active subscription is in place for whatever remote service is being used?
If just the latter, then we can still have encryption, no problems. That's just username & password over TLS, same as we have been doing for decades on untrusted endpoints.
With TLS it’s just authing the server, accept any income connections. Support basic authentication.
For home devices don’t require TLS. I don’t run TLS on my home network. I’m remote, I get devices, I accept that risk. TLS is not required for security.
For encryption just design so customers can swap out keys.
The biggest problem is designing cloud in the loop so they can mine data. This needs to stop.
What alternative would you even propose? The only entity with the ability to feasibly fix the bug is defunct and bankrupt, leaving them both judgment proof and with no resources to develop a patch. The only people with the incentive to spend resources fixing it are the people who own the vehicles. So the owners need the ability to repair their vehicles.
Which you can solve by just doing that to begin with, requiring no separate legislation.
I don’t think people should be forced to self-manage software updates on multi-ton machinery.
That's still a third party. Where are they supposed to get parts or source code after the company fails? It could be a car company in Asia with no engineering team in your country. The reason they failed could be a natural disaster that wiped out their facility.
The ability to make repairs has to be in the hands of the public before something happens to them. And it has to be the public and not some government filing cabinet to demonstrate that whatever they provide actually allows it to be done.
A clear example would be that they rotate the signing keys without providing the new ones to anyone else. Third party mechanics would notice this immediately; government bureaucrats may not.
> I don’t think people should be forced to self-manage software updates on multi-ton machinery.
They're not forced to do it any more than they are now. They can have someone else do it for them -- anyone else, in fact.
The problem right now is that the one someone else is trying to keep a monopoly on being able to do it, which creates a single point of failure in the event that anything happens to them.
You could perform phone phreaking in the 1960s, but a million phones in a botnet provides different challenges even if both are technically just a compromised phone.
Regurgitation via a Google news search link cites absolutely nothing. Its the sloppiest journalism I have ever seen on any tech website.
Some companies might realize that there's a market for repairable products and shift tactics, there seem to be a few out there, though not many.
That's pretty common for EVs (and hybrids), since they don't have (or need) a traditional starter engine and only use the 12V to boot up the car they downsize the 12V and / or switch to lithium chemistries.
However, I have had to get my car towed a mile to a charging station before, I really deeply wish I could have received a jump then.
There's nothing magic about it, you have a regular j1772 plug on the end of a generator, or a battery to provide it. Also a few evs now have 120v or 220v AC outlets, that you could put a j1772 into and give another car a charge. Sadly there appear to be no direct DC charging systems available between cars at this moment.
"Jump" isn't the same as "charging the battery" of other cars.
You can charge a 12v car battery with as little as 4A if you're willing to wait. Jump starting requires between 45 and 60A, minimum. For a larger car engine, you're looking at 80A-100A, or even more.
I don't think that the EV 12v terminals are able to provide that sort of current; I think those terminals are provided so that normal camping equipment (lights, winch, things like that) can be powered.
Regarding the topic of the original post, it is infuriating to try to figure out which fuses do what in this car. It is information that is simply not provided.
Not for me, after signing in and prompting for my country, takes me to a page asking for 165 dollars for a one day access, 500 for a month, or 3,000 for a year.
Edit: oops, despite what I said above, after browsing around I think I found what you're talking about? Nice! TY! This is awesome! There are wiring diagrams!
Also Tesla says not to do this, jumping in the conventional sense is more as you describe, charging the other battery and may require more than 20min to do it.
Not having jumper cables, I've "jumped" several people by hooking them up to my battery charger and getting enough charge into their battery to start their engine.
It supplied enough juice to run the car with no accessories most of the way back, until a combination of overcast sky and uncooperative route direction started making the car hesitate at the slightest throttle input.
So it'd definitely give a little MPG boost by taking a load off the alternator, in addition to keeping the battery topped up like you said. I was tempted to epoxy a cheap flexible one permanently on the trunk-lid. With the trunk-mounted battery it'd be trivial.
Or a significantly more expensive solar roof could add meaningful highway mileage per year. You both largely offset its cost via less charging and have the option for a low speed crawl to a charging station.
> IMO solar roofs are useful at the low end for ~400$
So I agree with this, but I don't believe that would be an option, at least without some DIY aspect.
It’s a combination of price discrimination and the overhead of having multiple different specs being manufactured independently of whatever the actual differences are.
> at least without some DIY aspect.
Solar car battery chargers already exist for less than 30$. I’m assuming the overhead of including it into the cars design and modifying body panels etc significantly increases costs. But it’s the kind of thing Subaru could add to every car for diversification without significantly impacting final price.
A clean, car roof sized solar panel in direct sunlight all day would be good enough to offset parasitic drain with maybe enough left over to charge a phone or two but not much else. Not worth the cost (or the variance given you’re not always going to park in direct sunlight for 8+ hours).
The recent solar Prius has a small roof and gets a few miles of range per day. Things get more interesting on a van/full sized SUV with a far larger roof.
It’s a lot more interesting on the ~8m2 roof of a van / full sized SUV than a ~1.5m2 center roof of a car.
It really seems like EVs should have easily replaceable batteries, so that in situations like that you can just have roadside service bring you a charged battery and swap it out. Or for that matter, charging stations could pre-charge batteries, and you pay to swap your drained battery for a charged one.
(For context my car uses maybe ~1.5 - 4.0 times as much power when pulling the various sizes of U-haul cargo trailers)
I'm sure OEMs don't want to warranty 3rd party equipment connecting to their vehicles and making charge/discharge, cooling, securing heavy packs, etc. reliable.
The next biggest issue with swappable batteries is responsibility. If all of the batteries are shared, who pays for a new battery when a battery reaches its end of life? This problem will have to be solved at some point anyway since nobody likes paying $15K+ when their vehicle battery reaches end of life. It would make much more sense to amortize this cost over the life of the vehicle. It would be easy to do that with higher fees of battery swaps, but people don't normally like higher upfront costs even if it works out to the same in the end.
Tesla stopped supporting it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_(company)
they were probably 25 years too early
Edit: link to jumpstarting in manual: https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_au/GUID-3567D5F...
Tesla is a smart phone with wheels that can't make calls. It's great while it works but it is as dangerous as it can be once things go wrong. This car must be banned. It scarred me enough to keep me away from other EVs too which put all the controls in a screen. There is no excuse for EVs to have everything electrically controlled.
I have a rivian and the 12v battery died on it while I had it plugged in charging at home. In the manual I found the emergency trunk release (access from underneath the car), and then there was a manual release for the charging port inside the frunk.
My gas cars have died with some electrical problem before, out in the boonies where there was no one to help. But that was back when all my cars had a key, so I could at least open the door with physical key.
I know what it is for an ICE (and I have a jump-starter-battery always in the trunk, with usb ports it doubles as a phone charger if you’re somewhere without power), but for an EV, I’d guess you either have enough battery charge for it to run, or you need to charge, right?
And if the 12V system is down, you can’t drive the car (can’t close the contactor that connects the 120V batteries to the system).
So, in theory, you could jump the 12V system so you can engage the 120V system.
Tesla in the early days sometimes ran down the 12v and it wasn't that uncommon, there were problems with runs of batteries yielding poor ones; I think they had messed up software that wasn't charging the 12v enough, but they made changes to address that long ago. On my second ev, a rivian, I just had to have my 12 battery replaced. They said sometimes the 12v batteries just die on them.
When I went to use the car after a couple days, the battery was drained. This happened on multiple occasions with different vehicles parked in the same garage.
My best guess is Zipcar has cellular comms to phone home, which enter some weird “always trying to connect” state when cut off from cellular signal underground.
Zipcar’s response was to ban me from renting on their platform ever again for too many disabled vehicles.
However EVs (and hybrids) do tend to have pretty small 12V batteries and I think some of them have switched off of lead-acid: they only need the 12V to boot up the electronics, not to power a starter engine.
The only reason for Tesla to support right to repair is to increase regulatory burden on competitors, stunt innovation and raise costs for their competition. Shame on this anticompetitive behaviour.
Instead the industry is looking at the EV transition as a way to increase costs and decrease customer freedom. This is absolutely artificial and in no way mandated by the technology.
A similar case in computing is what happened with mobile and tablets where a change in form factor allowed lock down to be smuggled in without people asking too many questions. A Mac is now a big overgrown tablet in terms of its CPU and innards but you can install your own OS on a Mac but not an iPad. Why? No technical reason at all.
Right to repair is good but it’s actually less than what we need. We need a huge rebirth of DIY technology and less centralized supplier ecosystems. This may require some regulation but it also requires consumers to stop being so passive and prioritizing shininess and laziness over every single other thing. The “millennial minimalism” era needs to end both as an aesthetic and a framework for consumer-producer relations. (The two are related.)
The EV I want is a simple super reliable easily repairable one.
I personally went for the Nissan Leaf in lieu of this because it’s basically a Nissan Versa with a motor and batteries where the engine and gas tank go. Not good for road trips but a nice city car and decently repairable. (I have an older ICE for road trips that I don’t drive much otherwise.)
But the step down in complexity also makes it easier to become a manufacturer, and as battery costs come down this is likely to happen.
At which point a startup with no other way to distinguish themselves can start selling highly repairable electric cars. Customers figure out that these have a lower ownership cost (whether or not they do the repairs themselves) and start preferring them. The incumbents then follow suit or lose the market.
The main reason this doesn't happen for phones is that the market is so consolidated. The main SoCs are made by only a small handful of companies who don't publish documentation, and producing a competitive one is capital-intensive because of the constraints of the form factor. But even there it may not be permanent -- what's going to happen to phones once there is a fully-documented RISC-V SoC on the market that has tolerable performance and power consumption?
Same logic.
And these functions are in many cases quite simple. You replace the controller for the door locks. It operates a solenoid that locks and unlocks the doors. Maybe they no longer function by calling the call center to have them unlock your car, but maybe you don't want that anyway. They still function if you press a button on your key fob.
No, it takes two.
Seriously, I've read that some EV makers require that two persons be present when working on the HV system, the second one on watch with a pull-up hook in case the first one seizes up touching some 400 or 800 V DC part.