Renault will remotely lock down electric cars | Hacker News Reader

Renault will remotely lock down electric cars

blogs.fsfe.org

63 pointspraptak28 comments

I feel like this is a bit overblown. If I stop paying lease payments for my car, it will get repossessed, and rightly so. If it's not my car, then I don't have some special rights that say I should be able to do whatever I want with it without paying the owner.

The "evil government" scenario is maybe a tiny bit more compelling, but really if the government is trying to quash protests then I think we have bigger problems. It doesn't matter whether you control your car if the government controls the roadways. I'm picturing the following scenario:

Hacker: Haha! We have hacked around your evil non-free car software, thus preventing you from locking down the battery charging system! Now we can all drive to our protests again!

Evil Government: Okay, we'll put up a roadblock.

Hacker: ...oh.

> If I stop paying lease payments for my car, it will get repossessed

That's a somewhat different situation. The Zoe is a $20000 car not a rental, you do own the useless husk after your car has been remotely bricked because you didn't renew your battery-license.

In fact "license" is really what it feels like, and the Oracle-kind. With the Zoe it looks like your $20k don't actually buy a car they buy the right to a license, then you pay a license (the battery rental) on top of that, and if you don't pay for license renewal you end up with an expensive and uncomfortable shed.

Plus you're beholden to Renault for both use of the car (battery contract, which is per-driven-distance and does have overage costs) and its sale (you have to transfer the battery contract to the next owner).

But the license comes with free hours of support, yay! (free replacement of the battery, and roadside assistance)

Actually, it's $14,000. The Leaf, for example, is in the low 30s, which is made by the same company and anyone is free to buy instead.

All you are doing is shifting the risk for the most costly and fragile part of the car to the manufacturer. Everyone leases Leafs because no one wants to shoulder the risk of a bad $12,000 battery, but then if you scratch a door panel, you have to answer for that in two years. Financing $13,000 plus $100 a month for a battery is probably about the same price per month as the average lease.

That explains it. So the battery is the most expensive and fragile part of the car and requires a lot of maintenance the owner doesn't want to deal with... so the manufacturer says "we'll own and take care of the battery stuff, you just own everything around the battery".

I see where they're coming from, but it's a very odd solution. Owning only part of a car is darned weird, and feels like a hackish workaround to the problems of clumsy warranties and leases.

> by the same company

nitpick: Nissan Motor Company, Limited and Renault S.A. are not the same company, they cross-own shares and have intimate technology agreements, and Ghosn is the executive head of both at once.

> Actually, it's $14,000.

Where from? Using the official storefronts it's £14000 in the UK (~$22000), 21500€ in Belgium and Spain, 20780€ in Austria, 21850€ in Italy and 20600€ in Germany.

The one country where it's significantly lower is France where it's 14500€... including a 6300€ "ecological rebate" from the government (for vehicles under 20g CO2/km)

Cars without access to official batteries will probably create a market for Zoe batteries from third parties.

Note that Evil Governments can much more easily flick the switch to cars than maintain roadblocks.

Take a look at Syria, or Egypt. Egypt actually did shut down the internet[1] during unrest. The Syrian government has tried to suppress an uprising, but has not been successful in doing so. It take a lot more resources to actually hold and maintain an effective roadblock than it does to just flick a switch. Imagine how much easier it would have been for them if they could just flick the switch and shut down all of the rebel's cars.

This is not some abstract hypothetical point, there are actually cases out there today with oppressive governments who would have incentive to use this technology nefariously.

But beyond that, there are more mundane concerns as well. After the subprime loan crisis, dealers started including remote disablers in cars, so they could remotely repo cars if the owners defaulted. However, a disgruntled former employee has used those disablers to disable hundreds of cars that had them[2].

[1]: http://www.renesys.com/2011/01/egypt-leaves-the-internet/

[2]: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/hacker-bricks-cars/

You've ignored the "evil hacker" scenario in which someone who doesn't like you tricks the software into locking down your car. It wouldn't be difficult, as long as their encryption is set up improperly, which it almost always is.

This isn't the first car that can be remotely disabled.

Yup. We'll have an overblown followup the first time a car is incorrectly e-repossessed. Errors like that happen whether the company need to push a button on a web app to send a kill signal or push a button on a web app to send a ticket to a real-live repoman.

Honestly, controlling for all other factors, I'd probably prefer an electronic repo man to a real one. (That said, I only ever pay for cars in cash, so I wouldn't be in this situation.)

This will be even scarier when there are no alternatives left, and the only options will be physical objects that abuse personal data.

I think it will take true pioneers in other fields to extend the open source movement beyond software. With rapid prototyping and manufacturing techniques exploding, how much longer until I can submit a pull request for an open source car?

At the moment it's really difficult to print battery chemistry.

You probably need real nanotech to print a spring or other item that requires complex metallurgy. I wonder about things like tires, or even seat covers.

So it'll be a while.

Maybe it isn't that far off: http://vimeo.com/51702339

"Imprint Energy aims to reshape the battery landscape. Currently available battery technologies limit the pace of improvement in design and functionality of portable electronic devices. Imprint Energy will address these shortcomings with its breakthrough zinc-based rechargeable battery technology, Zinc Poly™. Zinc Poly™ battery technology removes longstanding limitations on the rechargeability of zinc-based batteries and enables the production of ultrathin, flexible, high energy density rechargeable batteries for significantly lower cost and without the design limitations or safety concerns of other battery technologies."

I think they say the batteries can be printed on modified textile printing equipment. I contacted them recently because I would love to use this tech if it lives up to their claims. They wouldn't give me any sort of details like how much energy is stored in one of the square inch patches they are showing though.

You can 3d print springs on even the cheapest hobbyist 3d printers these days [1]. Some 3d printed springs exceed the performance of traditional designs of the same weight [2].

Battery chemistry is indeed a different kettle of fish however.

[1] http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:39963 [2] http://www.rapidreadytech.com/2012/04/3d-printed-spring-exce...

My next car will be an electric car. My next car will not be a Renault.

Shouldn't the invisible hand take care of this? No one is forcing you to buy a Renault.

The invisible hand is not a law, but an article of faith.

Non-SSL mirror: http://blogs.fsfe.org.nyud.net/gerloff/2013/10/31/renault-wi...

Why would someone want a non-ssl version?

The nyud mirror doesn't work with ssl. The "Non-SSL" warns people of this.

SSL tends to be significantly slower on satellite internet connections.

I don't see this an issue from the rental point of view but considering the average enterprise's ability to properly secure anything from hacking I'd beconcerned about this being hacked so I wouldn't want one of these.

I think the battery-on-lease makes sense, because (I've heard somewhere) they are planning on swapping batteries instead of recharging them in their official charging stations.

Unfortunately battery swapping is dead. It was an interesting concept, but after the spectacular failure of their Israel based partner Better Place Renault made it very clear that battery swapping is no longer a valid option.

To make that work with "owned" batteries, I would have to buy dozen batteries and pay to ship them thoughout my typical driving routes...

I can't wait for the first car cracktros and all the neat tricks the scene programmers will pull with car computers.

Not so different from Tesla's software-capped (and remote-unlockable-for-a-fee) battery capacity:

http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/01/tesla-model-s-axes-40kwh-...

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