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DRM To Be Used In Renault Electric Cars
mahiskali writes with this interesting news via the EFF's Deep Links "The new Renault Zoe comes with a 'feature' that absolutely nobody wants. Instead of selling consumers a complete car that they can use, repair, and upgrade as they see fit, Renault has opted to lock purchasers into a rental contract with a battery manufacturer and enforce that contract with digital rights management (DRM) restrictions that can remotely prevent the battery from charging at all. This coming on the heels of the recent Trans-Pacific Partnership IP Rights Chapter leak certainly makes you wonder how much of that device (car?) you really own. Perhaps Merriam-Webster can simply change the definition of ownership."
are a good reason why again?
Perhaps this has something to do with preventing people from using the battery longer than is safe. Because we know that when things catch fire or stop working the immediate remedy is to sue.
Ownership: 1. N. "The state or condition of being liable to an early termination fee in the event of returning, selling, or otherwise losing custody of an object."
2. (obsc./archaic) N. "Possessing the right of use or disposition of an object as one sees fit."
Renault is renting rather than selling. Non story, in spite of the alarmist posting.
How long do you think it will take for someone to hack it and allow them to use whatever battery?
Look how long the much ballyhooed Bluray DRM took to get cracked.
Not to mention I wasn't aware Renault still made cars.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
This is obnoxious but not entirely new. My 2005 volvo has a 'feature' where the power steering pump can only be changed by volvo as the software 'needs an update' before the car will start again. Can't even have another garage do it, you need the volvo computers.
I guess it is just a way to ensure the dealership garages stay in business.
Where you can pay as much or more to only rent something in place of owning it. So now you toil your life away and eventually have absolutely nothing to show for it in the end.
It started with designed obsolescence and engineered failure, this is just the evolution of that strategy.
I would think that people buying cars with newer technology (Hybrids. Electric) would also tend to be people who do more research in the car, the dealer, the company, the warranty, etc.
I would assume that customers with that knowledge will just look elsewhere.
Looks like I still can't download a car... but I sure as hell will be pirating one!
I read the article. And Renault said that locking the battery from being recharged would only be used in very rare circumstances.
So that's all right, then...
Isn't it...?
...I can use medicine longer than is safe (expired) and kill myself and a lot of people....
The 'expired' date on medicines (and food) does NOT give a time after which they are unsafe to use.
Please concentrate, because this is slightly non-intuitive. The manufactures lobbied, not to provide this, but to provide a time UP TO WHICH it had been tested to be safe.
Now, those two times may be very similar for cases where an item spoils quickly - a cake or bread, for instance. But in many cases medicines (or food) can last essentially unchanged for many decades. In those cases a manufacturer will NOT test for several decades and try to find the maximum shelf life, but will test for, say, 5 years. That's a reasonable length of time, and he will be very happy if after 5 years a warehouse has to throw away perfectly good items which would have lasted another 15 years, and buy some new produce from him again.
If you are using something with an outdated shelf-life, consider the chemistry. For instance, a sealed jar of sodium bicarbonate isn't going to go 'off' even if it's 100 years old...
What I heard is that Renault realized that the cost of the battery is one of the main problems in electric car adoption, both because it is expensive and because it is unclear how its value will depreciate over time. Therefore, instead of letting people buy the car with the battery, they sell the car much cheaper without a battery and the battery can be leased. At least here it is clear the battery is not sold, unlike many products with DRM.
I haven't looked into this further, but a possible reason for refusing to recharge would be if someone stopped paying the lease of the battery but didn't return it. Or if the battery pack got stolen from the person who leased it.
Of course some people don't like the idea of any kind of kill switch existing at all, which I can understand. It is a sign of distrust and it is also a potential mode of failure (both technical and administrative). But making the battery a rental was done for a good reason here, not just out of corporate greed or control freaking.
...our anti-DRM car analogies!
It's warehouse owner's or manager's job to order as much items as he really needs. If they expire after lying on the shelves for whole 5 years, than he can blame no one but himself for making an ultimately stupid order. That's how free market and capitalism works.
Of course you are right that some corporations try to lobby for bad laws, but your example is not the case.
The other new feature that they are not marketing out loud, is the new BitTorrent client.
On one hand, I can't disagree that encryption in automotive control systems is very important.... critical even. On the other hand, to potentially make cars more expensive to adjust, repair or update is an attack on the consumer and should not be tolerated. Copyright is abused far too often as the real cause and intent would not be allowed by most legislators.
The Chevy Volt comes with a 150,000 mile, 10 year warranty on the battery. GM started with 100,000 miles with the original Volt, 8 years, but then upgraded the battery technology in later models.
So this is not a technology problem.
But I don't know if it was Citroen or Renault that my father did not want to buy, because one of them used non-standard screws and and so on, so if he wanted to work on his car, he had to buy an expensive set of tools from that specific car manufacturer. That was more than 30 years ago.
Not sure why this is hard.... If you don't want a DRM car, don't buy one.
The 'expired' date on medicines (and food) does NOT give a time after which they are unsafe to use.
True story: I had a box of fungicide in my shed, and my wife wanted to throw it out because it was expired. I finally convinced her that it was unlikely that fungicide would rot.
Finally! Car analogies will make sense to Joe-Public because they will have lived through them.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
I have that argument with my wife all the time over dry ingredient (flour, baking soda, sugar, salt), once she claimed our dish detergent had gone bad, and yet she insist on keeping spinach in the plastic container in the fridge until it's just a puddle of green ooze and gets mad at me if I throw it away when it starts to turn.
The 'expired' date on medicines (and food) does NOT give a time after which they are unsafe to use.
Please concentrate, because this is slightly non-intuitive. The manufactures lobbied, not to provide this, but to provide a time UP TO WHICH it had been tested to be safe.
Now, those two times may be very similar for cases where an item spoils quickly - a cake or bread, for instance. But in many cases medicines (or food) can last essentially unchanged for many decades. In those cases a manufacturer will NOT test for several decades and try to find the maximum shelf life, but will test for, say, 5 years. That's a reasonable length of time, and he will be very happy if after 5 years a warehouse has to throw away perfectly good items which would have lasted another 15 years, and buy some new produce from him again.
If you are using something with an outdated shelf-life, consider the chemistry. For instance, a sealed jar of sodium bicarbonate isn't going to go 'off' even if it's 100 years old...
The US military has a program to test how long medicine is still effective after expiration. Since they typically stockpile significant amounts, it is expensive to throw out perfectly good, but past date, medicine. Not only do they need to buy more but they need to then ship it to warehouses around the work.
Not surprisingly, some of it from a PR perspective, i.e.e "We're giving our troops outdated medicine;" but also because it represents a revenue loss for suppliers. If ^H^H When the data leaks to the general populace their will be a push to take advantage of it; further cutting revenue as well as opening up manufacturers to lawsuits.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
and they can disable it at any time, as owners are they liable for any damage it may cause? So when my Zoe leaves me for someone else and Renault fails to disable the charging and said new person is at fault in a serious accident, how long will it take for someone to argue Renault was at least partially at fault since they fails dot take action in a timely manner?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
it's a proprietary battery pack in an *electric car*. until there is a STANDARD which all battery packs in electric vehicles follow, i see no harm in a manufacturer requiring the use of only battery packs they approve. when such a standard does come to exist, those battery packs would then fall under magnuson-moss and other laws in the u.s. that prohibit manufacturers from requiring the use of their own replacement parts (to keep with the car theme.... air and oil filters fall under that category). if renault did the same to a standard 12v battery in a petro-powered automobile, then yea.. bitch cry complain because that would be wrong... this isn't.... not yet.
Don't buy Renault.
Hope is the currency of fools
I own a 1980 Triumph TR-8. No ABS, anti-lock, traction control, air bags, EFI (it's carbureted), bluetooth, or GPS; therefore, no computers. The most modern thing in it is the stereo, a Clarion from 1993. It's even got manual door locks and windows. Analog clock. Mechanical speedo, tach and odometer.
I'd like to see them try to apply DRM to it.
Sometimes, being a partial Luddite can be a good thing.
Oh, yeah, it's a real kick to drive....
They'll just go screaming to government and receive big bailout. Plus some laws that will force everyone to purchase their crap. This is how modern business works - it too far from how communism operated in the old days.
Soap products, or rather, liquid soap products can get a bit moldy. Fungus can propagate in it. If left unopened it has a shelf life of a decade or more.
Flour can deteriorate quickly when stored in humid conditions. Sugar will get lumpy but won't get moldy ever.
Salt will last until the sun dies, no matter how it gets stored.
So the antibiotic I got that was a refrigerated liquid with a 1 week expiration, that'd be fine left out in the sun on the counter for 6 months?
Learn to love Alaska
Father: See that, son! That's a picture of Renault.
Son: Renault? Who were they?
Father: Who? Renault?
Son: Yeah.
Father: It was a car company. They went out of business screwing their customers over.
Great idea.
when the car is in going by a shanty full of people with spears and stones, it will suddenly shut down and say "please register your vehicle or it will be unable to proceed. please insert benjamins on the tape player or I start playing hannah montana at top volume on your ass"
But empty pith that panders to the clueless is really just stock in trade, isn't it?
There are programs that are PROVABLY safe and bug free.
Moreover, bugs and safe are not the same thing, another mistake you're making in your efforts to be trite.
Lastly, the bug density in open source is several times lower than closed source, hence a much much lower bug count per line. And hence more bug free.
This vehicle has detected an unauthorized passenger. Initiating baby seat ejection sequence.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
You buy the car, lease the battery. Why the snark about changing the definition of ownership?
If you don't like the lease the battery arrangement, get a different car. Renault even has other EVs to offer.
It's pretty absurd to say that this changes the definition of ownership when the part affect is a part you didn't actually buy.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
If you're taking functionality out of a car, don't be surprised when people are willing to pay less for it. So whatever increase in profits you expect to make from this, subtract that. And account for bad PR too. "Family DIES when their car shuts down in the middle of the autobahn." You're going to have to spend a lot on PR to compensate for that. Make sure you subtract that from your expected profit as well. And subtract developing this too.
Now, Renault, look at your spreadsheet after you've adjusted it. Does it still seem like a good idea? I'd be surprised, but I could be wrong.
How did everyone miss this?
The ZOE has a swappable battery. There are or will be stations where one can drive up and swap the discharged battery for a different charged battery. This is why the battery is leased and not sold. The infrastructure to do this swapping and the spare batteries that must be kept at the swap stations need to be paid for somehow. The lease is how it is paid for.
Lets look at a couple of scenarios;
1. Purchase battery
Worst case scenario. A user charges the battery until it degrades to an unacceptable point and then goes to a swap station and swaps it. The problem is that the swap station will now only get fees when the swap is done and the owner could be shocked at how high the battery fee is (It could be thousands of dollars if there is a problem with the battery). It is very difficult to run a business when revenue can fluctuate widely
2. Lease battery
The revenue stream is known for the company so they can budget how may batteries to buy and stock. It is a easy to budget for a customer as they know the monthly charge for having a reliable swappable battery. The downside is that there needs to be a way of ensuring that the owner pays the monthly fee. The ability to turn of charging is one way to do that. It would be a huge issue to attempt to repossess batteries from people who stop paying the lease.
It comes down to this; because the battery is swappable it is not your battery. It might be an idea to outright sell batteries to people who will never swap them but that makes it difficult to finance swap station if everyone who can swap does not pay for it. Maybe after they get enough vehicles on the road to finance the swap station they may allow outright sale of batteries.
So you are saying my vitamins may not be less effective if they are past their expiry date?
Fuck you.
The Zoe is an electric only car that is marketed at European "company lease" users. Actual drivers don't "own" the cars, nor do their employers. To keep costs nice and predictable, Renault had to do this. Even the few private "owners" of these cars got scared of battery replacement costs of several hybrids we've had for the last ten years or so in Europe, but lease companies have started demanding warranties for the full duration from manufacturers to even consider the cars in their programs.
The fact that a manufacturer can remotely shut down your car using GPRS/3G is scary and not something you'd want. However, given the financial model and the amount of things that can go wrong in such an "experimental vehicle" it may be for the best. Failing throttles and brakes and no way to shut down the car is not what you want. Maybe Renaults *will* catch on fire spontaneously, who knows?
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
1959 Belair vs a 2009 Malibu in a modern IIHS crash test shows exactly, and in graphic detail, why modern crumple zones and air bags are WAY better than than having more raw weight and a steering column collapsing your chest cavity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xtxd27jlZ_g
1 Dachshund + 1 Dachshunds = A Paradox.
Will that law need to be updated to stop BS like this from locking out 3rd party shops from working on cars or even the do it your self people?
Uh, you clearly don't bake. I will grant you that salt, sugar, and baking soda are pretty stable. However, flour will absolutely go bad (in about 6 months, depending on the type of flour). Baking powder (a dry ingredient you didn't mention) also lasts only about 6 months.
Renault has thus been eliminated from my list of candidates for my new electric car.
Thanks Renault for making it easier.
the real irony being that is how that antibiotic was originally discovered.
True story: I had a box of fungicide in my shed, and my wife wanted to throw it out because it was expired. I finally convinced her that it was unlikely that fungicide would rot
She's right. It might kill some fungi.
Perhaps Merriam-Webster can simply change the definition of ownership.
With definitions like that, Merriam-Webster can literally do anything. Get lost, go jump, sod off ... anything.
I'm working my way through a bag of wheatmeal flour over two years old, tastes fine and I'm not dead yet. it has been in an opened paper bag (closed only by folding the lip down) for most of it's life, only last month did I tip it into a plastic container to check for critters. none found. also I'm sure my baking powder is far far older than 6 months, I haven't baked in about a year, I'm sure it'll be fine also.
A lot of motor vehicle leases come with the option to purchase the vehicle outright at a discount in the last month of the lease.
Won't it be glorious to return to the past where everything is owned by the King and we're all just leasing from him
I believe that's called "property tax".
I was appalled at the ineffectiveness of some "green" cars at things that matter to me, once I started independent research, ownership and maintenance calculations with simple T.C.O. ratios, like miles/dollar, range/charge-time-fuel, procedures/year, user/dealer procedures, cabin temp change/minute, cargo door size/cargo volume, etc. For my 150-mile round-trip Wash D.C. commute, I started out looking at hybrids, including the Volt, looked at Smart. I came to the same conclusion, get a conventional-engined Yaris. It's not "celebrity-green" but rather "simple green" and a beautifully functional, easy to maintain car for a consultant that occasionally needs to carry cargo and slip into tight downtown parking and tight traffic and avoid a lot of ownership/dealership hassles.
I've found plain flour to generally be fine quite a long time after it's recommended use by date, Self Raising flour on the other hand can fail to behave quite as you expect and result in flat cakes.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
That is interesting, I cant say I've ever used self raising flour, don't think I will now, sounds like DRM built in.
'May not' is not the same as 'Does not'. For food you may be right, but for medicine, especially liquid medicine, I think you may be giving bad advice.
Thank goodness that manufacturer left the US a long time ago. Already manufacturers of vehicles have programmed headlights and other systems that make local mom and pop shops unable to service your cars, Volvo and BMW come to mind as the two worst. Now Renault will only offer a rental, but in some cases if somebody is just using a vehicle it may not be so bad if Service is included in the Rental price. If not, I'd just drop this French turd in the nearest river.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Recently I looked at buying a Nissan Leaf, which is a pretty sweet ride for an electric car. I discovered a few things.
1) The Leaf just about never needs service. Change the battery pack every two or four years, and that is it. Regular inspections of tyres and suspension components as usual, but these are very relable and can be done by any mechanic.
2) Nissan has some nagware shit that makes you take your leaf back to Nissan to be reassured. For this the dealership must buy an expensive piece of specalized kit from Nissan and will then charge you, the car owner, for the workship equivilent of clicking the "Okay" button.
Reading between the lines: Dealerships don't actually make any money by selling cars (the Mazda dealership I worked at for six months sure didn't). Just about all their profitability comes from warentee work (charged back to the manufacturer, thus getting a bigger slice of the sales profits), or regular scheduled services (which are mostly oil changes done by apprentices). Electric cars have far fewer parts which are far more reliable. Switching to electric cars will neatly drive a stake through the heart of the business model of auto dealerships. I assume this Renault bullshit is for exactly the same reasons as the Nissian Leaf bullshit.
In the maelstrom of the chaos at the center of my mind, I taste the salt of sadness as I feel my soul unwind.
Surely DRM, by convention, is used to describe the enforcement of intellectual property rights, not physical ownership rights (or any other right)?
My car already contains a "DRM" system under this loose (and useless) definition as the keyless entry system enforces my property ownership rights by means of a digital system.
I own a camper van whose underlying truck is a Mercedes. Fine craft, with among others a fuel-based heater that can preheat the motor (and the rest) before ignition when weather is cold.
Some day, years ago, a guy in Mercedes told me I could activate the heater even without switching the contact, just for heating the "van" side (and myself) automatically at night for instance. Boy was I interested. Setup just had to be modified, and this was very easy.
Only, at one point in time, the guy told me he was now waiting for Mercedes Germany Central to approve the software setup change, which had to be *signed* by them before being accepted by my truck's computer.
The change took 10 mn plus some hours before Germany Central accepted and numerically signed it.
So, what Renault does is in part what Mercedes have done for years. That's only the bit about refusing battery loading that's new, and I see this much more related to the presently enormous cost of the batteries (that imposes renting, which in turn moves responsibility from you to the battery owner, who in turn definitely wants them not to overpass some boundaries after which his own insurance company won't follow)
The day batteries are cheap enough we'll just buy them to the first auto maker that will sell them, and Renault will quickly follow with a Zoe-2 model ;-)
And, mind you, that day may not be so far away: I already own an electrical bicycle with a 800W motor plugged to a 17A-36V battery, that gives me some 60 Km autonomy *in mountains*. It just costed me twice more than a normal bicycle, and this I can afford.
Herve S.
you expected anything less?
Who produced cars which didn't need an ignition key (RF smartcard) and then tried to stomp all over everyone who pointed out the security of the devices was substandard.
Never mind, the French Govt will bail them out again when they go bankrupt.
(Renault are the 20st century Lucas(*) when it comes to car electrical systems.)
(*) Prince of darkness.
Simple point, the reason - or at least one reason - they might lease the batteries is because it makes it much easier to do a hot swap system. It takes hours to fully charge a car battery but one way around this is to remove the battery and replace it with another that has already been charged -say using a an automated mechanical system.
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
The Renault Zoe is an ELECTRIC CAR!
Any references to ICE cars totally misses the point. These cars have a leased battery. They are ensuring their asset (the battery pack) is protected from misuse and abuse. There has been too many electric car fires from uneducated know-it-alls making alterations.
The Nissan Leaf has been well and truly hacked. Check out the "Leaf Spy" app in Google play...