Tesla drivers can now disable remote access in privacy win | Hacker News Reader

Tesla drivers can now disable remote access in privacy win

cleanenergyrevolution.co

112 pointsronron469369 comments

This is a feature for Tesla repair - Tesla has always been able to remotely start your car without your keys. Adding in a toggle to disable it is new, and appears to be in the A/B testing stage currently.

I wonder if there was an “incident” we aren’t aware of that prompted this, like the snafu with Tesla employees sharing videos.

Every root capability will be abused in time. Either by malice or by (human or technical) exploitation

You either own your car and the connectivity to it, or you don’t.

Your driving data and history should be yours alone and not in a cloud available to third parties directly or indirectly

Tesla is unique in that they do improve the vehicles over software.

But those notifications could be sent to a phone to allow.

Tesla is not unique by any means. Cars nowadays are cellphones on wheels. Software updates are common. What is not common is Tesla's yolo attitude - in the car industry.

Sadly, this is true, and is why I won't buy any newish cars.

A nice perk of 3g going away is that you can buy new-ish cars that won’t be able to connect to the cellular network anyhow. Toyota for example didn’t update some of their models to 4g until 2019.

This is the big brain level of thinking that we need! Is there a way to see which cars use 3g?

Just search car name + 3g, discontinuation of SOS, etc. Here’s an example from Toyota that lists all the good years: https://www.toyota.com/audio-multimedia/support/3g-faq/

This, but also Tesla won several bogus high-profile cases with the data they siphon off the vehicles. Hard position.

Can you just rip out all internet connectivity from the Tesla and will it still work?

It does work without internet connectivity, yes.

Does it work without connectivity in perpetuity? Or does it have some kind of “needs to be connected every month” kind of setup?

It will work, you just won’t get any updates. It won’t refuse to drive.

You can just take out the SIM card

Which is buried behind the dash. It's not a "just" thing like you say.

The antennas are in the side mirrors and can be easily disconnected.

Every day we stray further from having things while going towards renting them. We no longer own music CDs we want to listen to, have DVDs to watch anytime we want, now cars are rented to us, despite paying huge amounts of money for them.

I still have old computer, I can put a Warcraft 2 CD into it and play the game. New games are dependant on servers and will cease to work and exist at some point of time

However, I suspect this will not prevent the car from connecting to tesla. In other words, the car will still request software updates, and I'll bet some local operations will still talk to tesla servers. I would imagine reset to factory settings probably requires your credentials to be verified with tesla by connecting.

Now if I could only turn off the wifi AP my wall connector creates (tesla ev charger in my garage)

This doesn't read like something that actually "disables remote access", but something that tells Tesla "please don't allow your personnel to remotely send commands to my car".

There is something amusingly ironic about Tesla being able to add this feature remotely: they can also change or remove it completely at any time.

This brings up a number of concerns.

1. EOL - I'm wondering how "vintage" and "obsolete" models will be handled. Let's suppose parts go NLA, it would be curious to see if mobile apps would still work, which parts can be changed, and what feature(s) would stop working.

2. Tesla's ability to disappear or introduce features and changes in behavior over time

3. Ability or inability to stop, pause, or revert software updates

4. E2EE

5. Encryption of on-board data at rest

6. Encryption of phoned home data at rest

7. Telemetry data on-board

8. Telemetry data phoned home

Perhaps there ought to be a r2r requirement of open source schematics, bill of materials (BOMs), and firmware for vehicles no later than when parts become NLA.

Let's say you're at Tesla service and there are 100 cars parked there. You need to find the next one to service. This setting is for finding cars in a parking lot.

It has nothing to do with privacy.

I mean, it literally says what it is in the dialog that's posted.

Or they could just number the parking spaces, or any other number of simple solutions that don't involve violating people's privacy.

Why should Tesla's (or anyone else's) convenience come at the cost of my privacy?

If you take a self-parking/-summoning ride to a dealership service department where they shuffle cars every few minutes, it's reasonable to leave keys or their equivalent. If the equivalent is a geofenced, limited duration, remote control credential generated only by an owner-initiated positive control process, then that's fine too.

With my explicit consent for each access they can do whatever they like. A button to issue a virtual key, for instance, would work great.

Tesla summon is a laughable party trick owners try once and then never use again out of embarrassment, fear or frustration. After dealing with disconnect issues, it driving slower than a Turtle, or a surprisingly close call.

Another half baked feature they threw into the wild and never came back around to doing anything useful with for years.

I've owned a Tesla for three years and I often use the summon feature to fix a sub-optimal parking job, scoot the car forward so I can use the trunk, or drive the car out of a puddle that has accumulated during a rain storm. In that time it has never had "disconnect issues", nor has it gotten close to hitting anything. My only gripe is that it's kinda slow.

And if you don't like the feature you can just... not use it. It's not like the Tesla app bugs you if you don't summon.

I should be more precise in my rant.

You are using "summon" which is the feature to move forward/back a few feet. This is not a groundbreaking or unique feature to only Tesla, and I'm sure it works fine for your narrow use case.

The feature I was ranting about was called "smart summon" and was vaporware. Remember the car was going to navigate driving across a crowded Target parking lot to pick you up from the front in the rain? Still in beta 4 years later. Apparently doesn't even work on vision cars?

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-9A8A9E7...

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/23/20929438/tesla-smart-sum...

People used to talk about Jobs and his reality distortion field, but legal would Apple legal clearly had more sway than Tesla's, as Musks abuse of the English language and state of reality is orders of magnitude more absurd.

Yeah, internet-connected software never does anything other than what a user-facing dialog box says...

Yes, I don't see anything particularly special about it to warrant this headline, but I do want to see the (i) info dialog.

Anyone have a Tesla with this setting? :]

The info dialog is the screenshot on the left in the embedded tweet.

https://twitter.com/_bennettm_/status/1720287612664217758

Somehow every other car dealer in the world already has a solution to this problem and it doesn't involve the manufacturer having basically unrestricted root access to my car lmao.

GM has had the same type of root access to its cars since around 2009. Police can use it to stop cars in high speed chases and it can be used to track stolen (behind on payments...) cars.

If it works when the car isn't at Tesla service, then it potentially has something to do with privacy.

Working turn signals have something to do with privacy as well.

The purpose of turn signals is specifically to make your intentions NOT private.

What a ludicrous comparison.

Thanks for pointing out the obvious! What other literary devices might I have employed?

TIL that it was impossible to find cars before wifi.

If only there was some sort of unique identifier clearly displayed on every car

A metal plate affixed to the car in a highly visible location may help this problem.

Such a tough problem. I can see why they need to have a specific app feature to solve this.

It’s incredible that literally every single other car manufacturer manages to do this without that feature. I mean, if only cars were legally required to display some sort of plate with a unique identifier on them.

They do it badly. I’ve waited multiple times for other dealerships to find my car or find my keys. One time they lost the keys because the mechanic had taken them home in his pocket.

I’ve had my Tesla looked at twice. The first time I took it in and told them I was here, they didn’t need the key or ask where it was parked. The second time they came to the house, I just walked to work and left it in an accessible place and they did the rest.

Pickup/dropoff is very easy too. A simple phone call before and we were able to just pull into the service lot and just leave. They will find it. Then during pickup we just went after hours and grabbed it from the lot. No dealing with anyone or keys or locked gates or anything.

I don’t really want other people knowing where my car is most of the time. That’s a convenience I can live without.

Obviously my anecdote doesn't trump your anecdote, but I've had 4 different cars (different brands each time) and a few motorcycles so far (all the same brand but w/e) and have had them serviced at multiple dealerships. In the UK you have to have an "MOT"[1] issued by a dealership every year after the vehicle is over a certain age. So in total I've probably had a vehicle serviced about 20 times across everything from top end fancy dealerships where they give you an espresso and an office to work in while you wait[2] to sketchy places where you feel you probably don't want to touch anything because you'll be covered with germs and/or grease. I've literally never had a problem with my keys or me or the dealer finding the vehicle before after or during.

Again: this just doesn't seem like a problem that even exists let alone is serious enough to warrant giving an entire organisation permanent unfettered access to my vehicle or its location.

[1] Roadworthiness certificate

[2] Yes that's a thing it seems

Only had 2 newish cars where I’ve used the dealerships, previous cars I just used a local garage.

I’m UK based. Hyundai lost my key. Nissan were just generally useless all round and I’d have to wait ages for anything, including key retrieval.

The woman at Nissan argued with me when my car broke down that I wasn’t due a courtesy car. The RAC driver said I was and when I called the Nissan line they gave me one.

Upon picking my car up I scored the woman down on the feedback sheet. When she asked why I said it’s because she said I wasn’t due a courtesy car and I would have been hundreds out of pocket had I taken her word for it. She then proceeded to argue with me that I wasn’t due a courtesy car despite having had one for 2 weeks.

And you know that how? Do you have access to the source code?

Great, now I can cancel my order of a faraday cage double garage.

Does this setting actually do anything? Or is it just cosmetic?

Just because the UI designer typed that text doesn't mean the coder (and management) implemented it that way. Text in a UI isn't a contract. It's hard to believe Tesla would permanently disable that capability.

> Tesla likely made the change in response to concerns about customer consent and data protection.

This isn't journalism, it's just fabrication. Journalism, and all critical thought, requires evidence.