Slashdot Mirror
The Man Who Jailbreaks Teslas (fastcompany.com)
harrymcc writes: Normally, a totaled Tesla is worth so little that they sell for peanuts at salvage auctions. But Berkeley, California engineer Phil Sadow buys trashed Tesla cars and gets them up and running again -- a feat which has required him to figure out how to root their software so he can run diagnostics normally unavailable to a tinkerer such as himself. Over at Fast Company, Daniel Terdiman tells the story of Sadow's work, which Tesla is apparently nonplussed about but has not tried to prevent. Slashdot reader Ingineerix also submitted the story, sharing an excerpt from the report: In a cramped warehouse in an industrial neighborhood in Berkeley, California, a Tesla Model 3 is ready to go. It's powered up, its display screen is on, and it's pumping out data. But there are some strange error messages. For one, the passenger door window is uncalibrated. For another, the autopilot electronic control unit is missing. These would be troubling signals for most Tesla owners. For Phil Sadow, though, they make perfect sense. After all, his Model 3 is lacking some very important components: its windows, its wheels, and the entire body frame. For the last three years, Sadow, a 49-year-old electrical engineer who also goes by the moniker Ingineer, has been rebuilding and selling salvaged Teslas. He's also taught a global community of fellow enthusiasts to do the same, charging an hourly rate as a consultant on other tinkerers' repair projects. All told, he says, he's rebuilt -- or helped other people rebuild -- almost 400 vehicles over the last three years.
right to repair need to give 3rd party's the codes and tools to work on cars + no black lists can be used.
Fuck that, take the damn computers out of the vehicles.
Do you want to be a victim of Maximum Overdrive? Maybe. But I don't.
right to repair joe_dragon shit posts need to give us all the account credentials
I don't know how this story got to 'not tried to prevent'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I wonder what deal tesla made with insurance companies and how much they pay out to owners. If it's totaled, do they follow a published depreciation schedule for the payout and:, do owners get screwed? I can't imagine they get much..think of the liability. Why do people buy these cars that are always-spying on you?
I could do without a lot of them including Antilock Braking and Electronic Traction Control which work dismally in ice and snow. But I think you'll have trouble finding many people who want to replace Engine Control Units with Carburetors..
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
...For all kinds of harassment and legal actions from Tesla. Inventors and tinkerers are the scum of the Earth to any tech company.
Aftermarket ECUs are available, but the automakers made sure they aren't street legal.
And it's still a computer, so it wouldn't at all be "taking the computers out of the cars".
There are over 400 re-built Teslas in the world? Doesn't that, like, exceed the number they've actually managed to ship?
Hear, hear!!
And if they did, we could be shade tree mechanics once again.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
ABS works amazingly well. Other than being on a track, why would you disable it?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
when are we getting a custom ROM? I'd love one with a WWI fighter interface, with the "autopilot" visualizing its failures as mid-air rammings.
Most right to repair laws state OEM's must be able to supply the same tools, information, schematics, parts... to 3rd parties as to their dealers.
Now, how many Tesla dealers are their again?
If Tesla goes bankrupt, how much value will these cars have, without any authorized repairs, updates, new parts, or warranty providers?
If Tesla is sensible, they'll break their neck looking the other way on this. Let the guy take all the risk. If his efforts pay off, a whole new market will open up for them. Wrecked, rooted Teslas won't be snapped up by people who can afford a new one. They'll be grabbed off by folks who want to go top-drawer electric but couldn't afford to, and maybe eventually for fleets.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
To be fair, if Tesla goes bankrupt, that means somebody will buy what gets liquidated. There will be a lucrative market for that entity, even if no further Tesla vehicles are produced.
Aftermarket ECUs are available, but the automakers made sure they aren't street legal.
They are perfectly street legal in many states. You can even pass many state emissions tests while running them. Auto makers do not have much control over that as much as they would love to. I believe they tried to block third-party repair and got slapped down with right-to-repair or something of the sort. The most they can tell me is that my warranty is void because I replaced my ECU with an aftermarket ECU that they know nothing about and I think they should certainly have the right to do that if I replace the ECU with something like Haltech/Motec/Fueltech or any of the number of options available.
I'd be concerned about the integrity of those batteries after an accident. A salvage title ICE gas tank can easily be replaced, it's not so easy to get replacement Tesla battery.
It depends on the ABS. I had a cheap system in my old car and hit a pothole as I was approaching an intersection on a dry sunny day. The ABS thought the car was slipping, because the wheel turned more than the others, and at the same time the car ahead stopped unexpectedly. The ABS came on for a full 2-3 seconds and my stopping distance was probably double dry pavement. This almost caused an accident in otherwise great conditions.
Same goes for traction control. If it's a quality system that controls the input torque to each wheel then it's actually great in snow or ice. But if it's a bargain system that applies the ABS to each wheel to regain control then it's garbage and a decent driver can do far better with it disabled. The WRX I drive now has such a garbage system that there is even a stock button to disable it.
Under the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act, they can only void specific parts of the warranty -- and even then, the impetus is on the manufacturer to prove that the alteration caused the defect being claimed under warranty.
The narrative that goes "If you touch it, your warranty is gone" is simply a falsehood and has been for quite a long time. This way of thinking needs to stop.
Your Haltech/Motec/Fueltec might be blamed for burnt exhaust valves, and GM/whoever would probably have an easy time denying a claim for replacement of those valves under warranty by proving it was the modification that caused the defect.
But your third-party ECU has nothing to do with the sunroof's warranted operation. Your big brake upgrade has nothing to do with your engine's warranty. Your upgraded radiator has nothing to do with the stock water pump shitting the bed -- they owe you a water pump unless they can prove that your improved radiator (and whatever other changes) somehow managed to nuke a simple water pump.
Kid-proof tablet..
Given the density and number of cells that the vehicle contains (and their value), i strongly suspect that a 'totalled' Tesla, one which this guy stood a chance of getting back on the road, would be worth anything close to 'peanuts'. The worth of the cells alone would make it of extraordinary value.
There is one Tesla dealer. And they owe 3rd parties the same tools diagnostics and tech manuals that one dealer has.
Ingineerix aka Phil Sadow YouTube page has videos going back 2 weeks. Is Sadow paying media outlets to get his name known? Rich Rebuilds is probably the most popular Tesla repair person.
With this guy rebuilding, he knows them inside out. He should R&D secondary equipment that he can sell to others. Faster motors; better seats; luggage racks ; cooler/heater for the frunks; ideally, they would even go into part manufacturing for Tesla.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ahhh yes, the old "it doesn't work in one scenario and therefore it's useless" line. Sir I hope you get run over by someone without ABS. The world could do with less of your style of thinking.
ABS and traction control both work really well in every car I've owned, even in cheap cars.
Also, every car with traction control has had a disable button for it, and it isn't because it's cheap, but because some people want to have fun with the car and spin the tires.
Also, you are a moron.
"ABS works amazingly well."
No, it does not. It purportedly works well on dry roads and OK on wet ones. Quite likely that's true.
It is, and auto makers agree, ineffective on dirt and gravel and makes directional control very difficult without improving braking distance.when trying to stop on snow/ice I've literally never had it kick in except when I didn't want it to as when stopping when descending a hill on a snow covered road.
As for Electronic Traction Control -- I don't know why, but it is notorious for cutting/reducing power to the wrong wheels at exactly the wrong time on slippery roads. At least you can turn it off on many cars and lot of experienced drivers do in snow country in Winter. But on a lot of cars, turning it off has to be done every trip. I don't know all that much about it as I've never driven an ETC/ECS car on a daily basis and I'm willing to believe that some versions may work better than others.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
https://youtu.be/4ReZScaUSW4
People seem to think that ABS and traction control are some magical balm, but as you and others have mentioned they aren't.
Thing #1? People that learned to drive without ABS and traction control, typically continue to drive better without them. Why? Because
Thing #2 .. ABS and traction control are very SIMPLE systems. Hello, this is /. people. Land of the technically skills supposedly. Go look at how ABS and traction control works. It isn't the car's ECU controlling them, which is already a very, very simple computer, but a closed system, typically and almost always a Bosch controller these days. Separate and again these days, on a CAN bus in all cars.
I've seen a Bosch ABS system on Audis, Subarus, and GMs. It's the standard, with differing levels of complexity in different modes. And a Bosch ABS/stability/traction control system is a VERY limited piece of hardware techinically.
https://www.bosch-engineering.de/en/us/einsatzgebiete_3/nutzfahrzeuge_3/sicherheit_16/stabilisierung_13/stabilisierung_3.html
It basically reads input from some sensors, be it wheel spin or motion, and then takes very simple action based upon them. It's not complex. It can't tell what it is driving on. It can't tell what's really happening. A smart phone from 2000 has more ram and computing power, and was 1000s of times faster.
And most importantly, it is NOT anything remotely resembling AI. It's as dumb as dirt. A modern washer has more processing power and sensors. (Yes, it does... spin sensors, temperature sensors, water sensors, weight sensors, vibration sensors, a modern washer has more processing and sensor capability than your ABS system).
These systems are built to be cheap, hardened against the elements, and do one thing. Read a few inputs, and decide a wheel is spinning, or the car is slipping, and do something about it.
If you've been trained without ABS, and driven for decades in snow/ice/gravel conditions for most of your life, you're going to be far far better than these simple systems. Far, far better.
And even under normal braking conditions, a person who knows how to threshold brake? Is far better too.
You can disagree -- that's fine. But the only place I see people disagreeing are those that don't understand how simple these systems are, or on car enthusiast forums with a collection of teenagers modding their cars. Nothing wrong with teenagers, but if you've only had a drivers license for 6 months, an expert you ain't.
ABS reduces the abilities for trained drivers (not experts, just those that are able to drive well without ABS) to avoid accidents, and gives unskilled drivers a better ability to avoid accidents than they would have if they just slammed on the brakes.
This offends many people. Making a car harder to drive if you know what you're doing, and very literally threatening people's lives as a result, so the least skilled can be safer.. is offensive.
ABS is so simple, so uncomplex, that almost anyone can do better with the smallest bit of training. Read post above, about how simple ABS is. Think about it. Stop believing in something, because you've had it all your life, and it's mandated.
Sure it is possible to make bad ABS or ETC, but my experience doesn't match yours. I have driven cars with no ABS on snow - go slow or go off-road occationally. Ok for a race where you have to be first to win, racers have to take their chances. Not ok for a commuter in a country with 4 months of snowy roads.
ABS on ice does not improve stopping distance, but it avoids the sliding. The steering wheel is useless if the front wheels locks. My experience is that one can simply stand on the brake with ABS, and still be able to steer the car. (Unless it is going so fast that steering alone is enough to cause sliding.) ABS makes it easier. An expert driver can match ABS performance on roads that are uniformly slippery. But 'average Joe' is not such an expert, and most people 'panic brake' when something really surprising happens. Then, ABS saves the day. And when the road is not uniform, i.e. two wheels on ice and two on asphalt - ABS rules, full brake power on one side and some on the other.
It is the same with electronic traction control. Anti-spin makes it simpler to go uphill on ice - the wheelspin is cut much earlier and you loose less speed than using manual control only. You can still avoid wheelspin manually, by driving so ETC doesn't trigger. ETC will also correct small slides by braking single wheels at the right moment. Slightly too much speed into an icy curve, ETC fixes it. Way too much speed into that curve, and you're doomed anyway. Where I live, you couldn't charge a premium for an ETC that needs to be turned off in icy conditions. Icy conditions are every winter, and is considered the only time anyone could have a real need for ETC. (Mud or gravel is easy, compared to ice!)
Has anyone mentioned Rich Rebuilds yet, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfV0_wbjG8KJADuZT2ct4SA
I quite agree with you. Been doing semi-automatic machines for a living, and I hate the semi part in them. Either give me the complete picture or don't bother at all. Needles to say, nothing ever worked perfectly, there're too many border cases to guess.
No, your a moron!
Might be difficult installing carburettors on a Telsa.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
A simple sensor on the suspension would have solved the crappy ABS from malfunctioning and increasing stopping distance, probably saved about $5 for all 4 wheels. You obviously know very little about cars, doubly so if you don't know the difference between applying torque with the drivetrain and using the brakes.
People seem to think that ABS and traction control are some magical balm, but as you and others have mentioned they aren't.
Not surprising, given how many automakers advertising campaigns can be paraphrased as "Buy this vehicle and you can ignore the laws of Physics!".
If your tires are sliding on a surface then your brakes are ineffective at that moment. Every car with ABS let me steer while the tires were sliding on snow. I do agree with bad traction control though. Around here there is no such thing as a flat road, everything is on a hill. In some places you need a running start and bad traction control keeps cutting engine power so you'll never make it up.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Agreed. Thanks for the clarification.
You're an idiot. ABS will stop you better in most cases than manually pumping brakes. It can modulate all four wheels independently and much faster than your foot. That's like saying modern airplanes are garbage because of fly by wire. Yeah you know better because you flew biplanes and who needs computers to fly a 777.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I don't think you understand how abs works, that's why you talk about cheap vs non cheap etc - which is pretty meaningless. Unless you confuse it with traction control systems. Although it right that on dry asphalt it breaks worse than someone who KNOWS how to break without it. But any abs is an asset for wet or frozen roads.
Can you please provide more information on this?
Personally, one of the key reasons I would not consider buying Tesla is that I have no way of keeping Tesla out of my car. If this rooting allows me to lock out Tesla, then I may take another look at buying one.
The morons had been crashing the Teslas.
The new Aluminium-Graphene batteries (G-Kings) are superior to the Li-ion batteries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Get out of here with your "trained driver" elitism - if you don't want it, pull the fucking fuse and deal with the light on your dash. The rest of us will be thankful it's present and operational in most cars. For every "trained" driver out there that ABS is a hindrance for, there is 10,000 "untrained" drivers that I'm glad have ABS, because it means they aren't going to run into me because they locked up their brakes like an idiot.
The statistics are clear - since the introduction and standardization of ABS systems, numbers of crashes per vehicle-mile driven have gone down, and the severity of crashes have also gone down because people have been able to reduce the speed of the crash more effectively through better braking.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Yes, for the highly inexperienced to "I don't think about it, or try to know my car" everyday driver production abs is better. But for anyone who actually knows how to drive, cheap abs systems suck and reduce performance. There have even been safety recalls for the worse ones. Don't take my word, here is someone who actually knows how to drive
ad hominem = useless argument.
You do realize that not all ABS is created equal, which is why a race car ABS system can cost near $10,000 from people like Bosch and the ABS on passenger vehicles is a factor of 10 less expensive.
Also your evaluation of ABS depends on your driving habits just as much as the environment you are exposed to. so anyone's personal anecdotes of ABS is amazing or ABS sucks is absolute BS because most people are talking about different types of systems in different cars under different environmental conditions with different driving styles.
Note: ive never used the ABS in my car because i drive extremely defensively and im pretty lucky to be able to avoid emergency braking scenarios. I guess it comes from appreciating the equation for kinetic energy.
PS: the disabling of traction control is not because people may want to have fun with their cars and spin the tires, it is for situations where traction control can inhibit the vehicle from getting unstuck in deep mud/snow or traveling on uneven terrain. this is because it can interfere with some driving techniques such as Brake-Throttle modulation where you use the brake and throttle pedal together to hit the sweet spot of applied torque to the wheels to get over/out of a situation.
It is, and auto makers agree, ineffective on dirt and gravel and makes directional control very difficult without improving braking distance.
That is only true for primitive systems. Any four-channel ABS which is working correctly will improve directional control on loose surfaces. Any system with ESP will do even better. My 1998 Audi A8 without ESP is smart enough to lock the brakes up for just a moment in order to build up some material in front of the wheels in order to improve stopping distance, and it stops very well on gravel.
Until recently, we had a 2000 Astro with 3-channel ABS. The ABS was wholly effective while going down a steep dirt+gravel driveway. Now we've got an '06 Sprinter with 4-channel ABS, which also has ABS which works great in those conditions.
when trying to stop on snow/ice I've literally never had it kick in except when I didn't want it to as when stopping when descending a hill on a snow covered road.
If you want your car to skew around in a circle instead of only slowing slightly but letting you continue to steer, you're either on a race track, or you are a total knob. I used to have a 1993 Impreza LS, which had 100hp/150ft-lb, a slush box... and four-channel ABS. I was driving in the snow and ice behind a pickup one day, and the guy in the pickup tried to steer into a driveway on the right hand side while he was going way, way too fast. Instead, his vehicle turned a neat 90 degrees, slide down the roadway some distance, and stopped. I was not following closely, but apparently I was following more closely than I should have been — lesson learned. The other lesson I learned was about the value of ABS. The car didn't slow down much, but I was able to steer neatly around him — onto the shoulder, then back onto the road. Since nobody had hit anything, I simply put my foot back onto the accelerator and continued on my merry way.
TL;DR: ABS is great, and you are off your nut
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Pretty much all spot on. If the best way to drive on slippery surfaces was to not slide the vehicle, dirt track racing like rally racing would be dramatically different.
It's a violation of the clean air act, as the aftermarket ECUs are viewed as "defeat devices". And yes, most states don't care, but California sure does.
Sounds like the problem isn't your ABS, but your tires (or your driving).
I drive an AWD KIA Sportage, which has both ABS and traction control ... in all but the really worst snow and ice, I have good braking and traction. With good winter tires (not crappy all-seasons) neither of those should work dismally on ice and snow.
There are very rare times when the ABS can lock up and you need to let off the brakes a little, but on those days, if you aren't already driving really slow and planning on a stopping distance being much longer .. well, you're probably driving like an idiot.
My experience is if you are finding ABS/ETC aren't working on snow and ice is that you need better tires, and you need to drive like you're on snow and ice and not trying to qualify for pole position.
Automatic updates wors amazingly well. Why would you want to disable it? To use a computer anology. For the average user that dosent know what they are doing, even if they lost to Facebook every day, automatic updates left on is by far the best. I'd imagine most users of slashdot would be pissed, and rightfully so to not be able to disable updates and/or selectively download them.
No, son, you're wrong. Get out of your soulless suburb and go enjoy driving. There are certainly cases where ABS is better than me. Gravel on a paved road is one such case. There are cases where ABS is absolutely worse: Driving on sand. Yes, my retarded teenager has ABS and traction control retrofitted on her car because she drives like a retarded teenager. However, she also drives with them off, on a closed course. The difference between you and her, though, is that she understands the technology and thinks more about driving then you do.
Disabling or modifying a manufacturer's auto safety equipment sounds like a perfect reason for insurance to refuse a claim.
This is not 100% accurate. My 2006 Toyota Highlander Hybrid AWD for example does not have a button to disable traction control. There is a startup sequence dance you can do with the ignition, shifter and accelerator to put the truck in diag mode and defeat TC, but you also loose the rear drive as well, and you have to shut the truck off to enter and exit the mode.
Easy to install, hard to make them an effective part of the system.
Drive a Model 3 Performance and tell me ABS/TC still suck. It gets out of the way enough to let you have a lot of fun with the car doing crazy stuff, but will still save your ass when things go sideways (literally in some cases!). I'll admit older systems did suck. But no matter how good a driver you are, your control over the braking system doesn't give you independent control of each wheel's brake force 50 times a second. Or in the case of a Tesla, front-rear torque balance. I haven't even experienced "track mode" yet, but if the reviews from seasoned race drivers are to be believed, it's a great system.
There are no "aftermarket" ECU's for a Tesla. (yet) Though I have made a controller to allow the use of Tesla components in other cars.
There are no Tesla "dealers". Tesla owns the whole ecosystem. This apparently is how they are able to get out of providing tools in Right-to-Repair states such as Mass.
Contact me, I can definitely keep Tesla out. (I am who the OP is about)
ABS works great as long as you aren't relying on locking the wheels to stop the car.
In snow, ABS kinda sucks, especially when there's very little traction. The correct braking technique is actually not triggering ABS at all - or, if you have an old car, just let the wheels lock up until they lock up, pumping the brakes as needed to steer. If the wheels lock up, they'll make a wedge of snow in front of them, helping to stop the vehicle.
ABS has been being shown to have a longer stopping distance in snow. I'm not talking just a little bit of snow that's already melting on the pavement, but on a few inches of snow on a road that already has packed snow because it's the middle of winter, ABS can really suck.
Source: Lived in Minnesota for almost all of my life.
Had a GM with an overly enthusiastic ABS once. If I wasn't going about 5mph, it tended to slide out into intersections in the middle of winter. And I'm not a fast or aggressive driver - I'm not in a hurry when I drive, and I don't speed. The vehicle had good tires that were well-reviewed for snow, and that I've used on other vehicles. The ABS just sucked. But I'd have complete steering control while my vehicle slid through a stop sign. :) I've driven vehicles built in every decade from the 1970s to today, and that one was one of the very scariest vehicles I've drove in winter.
Same vehicle that couldn't get up the hill to my old apartment in winter without turning off traction control.
Finally got rid of it because GM apparently didn't test this model in places where for several months, the pavement is never visible on the side streets because of the packed layer of snow and ice on top of it.
Dirty secret: ABS will always perform worse than a trained driver who can pump the brakes or even threshold brake. The reason ABS is so effective is most drivers are not trained, and pumping/threshold braking is a very complex skill to apply at a time when your brain has effectively "locked up" (i.e. panic situation). That's why ABS is so effective - the driver is trying to panic stop, and in a panic humans generally lose a lot of higher level thinking skills. So what will most humans do? Slam on the brakes, which is where ABS will shine since that's all they need. And thus, most normal drivers will benefit from ABS. Professional drivers don't need it since they can anticipate the problem and calmly execute the panic stop as if was another day on the roads0
Also, the button to disable ABS is not there because it's garbage. It's there because your car is likely used to perform stunts and there's a lot of things ABS interferes with that would be not normal driving, but sport driving. (Drifting, for example, requires wheel slippage so you must disable ABS if you want to do this). Or if you want to achieve maximum braking performance.
It is perfectly reasonable to consider Tesla itself to be the one and only dealer.
And yet idiots modded me down. If you buy the high end abs and tune it for racing, like rally racing, it actually can be better wth a professional. However the production abs in most cars is crap and anyone who can actually drive would do better without it. Same with traction control systems.
Professional drivers don't think in emergencies. You use muscle memory just like any other trained physical skill. If you don't already know what do do, and have done it 1000 times, thinking is likely to get you nowhere.
come on man did you peel the "warranty void if removed" sticker?
Ironic. You've completely missed the point of ABS - it has nothing to do with decreasing stopping distance. It's designed to allow the front wheels to keep turning so that the driver can steer the car.
Double ironic, there is no need for abs to activate on dry pavement when the wheels did not not slip. You clearly have no knowledge but are confident nonetheless. Cheap ass systems are terrible and can actually cause accidents, such as in the case I outlined or when one side of the car is on good road and the other slipping such as in snow or gravel - yes you can steer but you lose so much braking power it's often dangerous. There have been safety recalls for particularly bad ones that even idiots couldn't handle. Though given how ignorant people are, yes it helps the complete idiots.
It is perfectly reasonable to consider Tesla itself to be the one and only dealer.
In my state they do fit the legal definition of a dealership.
(GG) "Operating as a new motor vehicle dealership" means engaging in activities such as displaying, offering for sale, and selling new motor vehicles at retail, operating a service facility to perform repairs and maintenance on motor vehicles, offering for sale and selling motor vehicle parts at retail, and conducting all other acts that are usual and customary to the operation of a new motor vehicle dealership. For the purposes of this chapter only, possession of either a valid new motor vehicle dealer franchise agreement or a new motor vehicle dealers license, or both of these items, is not evidence that a person is operating as a new motor vehicle dealership.
http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/4517
But that last sentence threw me off a bit. So I looked it up at the federal level and am now even more confused.
https://www.dmv.org/buy-sell/car-dealers/
It still seems state specific on the exact rules, but seems to imply a company only becomes a legal car dealership once they obtain a dealership license, and only then does any of the dealership regulations apply.
Tesla seems to not have a dealership license in quite a few states, and that seems the entire reason they are banned from selling their cars there.
Since right to repair laws are also per state, it would seem these two would go hand in hand.
For states tesla has a dealership license in, and where the state also has right to repair laws, I'd think those laws should cover the one and only tesla dealership.
For states tesla has no dealership license in, I'd think any right to repair laws would actually not apply to them at all.
In my state we do have right to repair laws, but tesla does not have a dealership license.
So I don't think those laws would cover them here.
My reading of the last line was that simply possessing a franchise agreement or a license does not make you a dealer. In other words, it is doing the other parts that make you a dealer. Kind of like having a driver's license doesn't mean you are driving, but it is possible (but illegal) to drive without a license.
That is, you can't tell the officer I couldn't have been speeding, I don't have a driver's license and expect to be excused.
Feathering your gas pedal and brake pedals relative to road conditions eliminate the need for abs . If the driver can't do that reliably, it's a strong indicator that they lack a certain understanding of the physics of driving g, and so should not be encouraged to drive in the first place
Bullshit. There is a bunch of thinking involved. It's just in the moment of emergency , all stress disappears, time seems to slow down. in the eternities between moments I might simulate 2 or 3 different ways of doing it, before executing a physical procedure for stabalising the vehicle. All of it happening in a split second. If you don't panic you can ride your adrenaline to a sort of emotionless void. Without emotions in the way to sabotage your cognitive processes. Anyonee is capable of adjusting their perception of time, while boosted on adrenaline.
I'm glad your middle eastern monk thinking skills, surpassing Dr. Strange, exceed race car driving skills earned over decades of training reflexes. But for the normal humans, "simulating 2 or 3 ways of doing it" in the few tenths of seconds needed to act the right way just leads to an accident.
Just beware of what you're getting into. Read or look on youtube at what owners have had to put up with. Seems like stories where they will decide your car isn't under warranty because you bought it second hand or something, and after a 2 grand repair they leave your ass stranded out in the middle of no where because the charging station will no longer work for you. When I read or see stories like that, I'm gone probably for good. I wouldn't even take one if my neighbour gave it to me. They seem to lack basic understanding with how to deal with people because this is a people business. You want to have a good relationship with them. Treat them well and they could be tesla customers for life.
From what I've read and seen on youtube, no thanks. I'd buy a Volt.
I am led to believe you have only ever driven American type vehicles. I was driving a Traverse in the sand and it got "stuck" because of the crappy traction control. Turn off the traction control and miraculously, no longer stuck. I won't even go into how horrible the rest of the vehicle was.
Take a Subaru or a Mercedes (japanese or european, don't care, they are better) and drive it in the sand with traction control on. You will not get "stuck".
It is the same with brakes (breaks for all the alternative folks out there). Slam on the brakes in an American vehicle and eventually come to a stop. Slam on the brakes in a Subaru or Mercedes and your wheels will chirp before the ABS kicks in.
Essentially, if you are hitting traction control or ABS in a well designed (read non-american) vehicle, you have already fucked up and it is there to save you from yourself. The American vehicles all try to be better than you and end up getting in your way.
TL;DR, I was dead set against traction control and ABS until I saw that it could be implemented in a non-intrusive manner.
Even shorter TL;DR, don't buy American vehicles.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Read my comment to someone else in this article. Long story short, there are iterations of ABS which suck horribly and reduce your overall stopping ability.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
LOL. You are talking about non-American ABS. American ABS and traction control (Ford, GM, etc) all UNIVERSALLY suck. You should not be surprised by people who have driven exclusively American vehicles to be turned off by Traction Control and ABS. For them, it is an accident waiting to happen. For those of us who know enough to never buy an American vehicle, we get the benefits of traction control and ABS without worrying about how it will effect our ability to control the vehicle.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Well, maybe. Depends on how the sunroof is controlled.
I had a defective rear body module (controlled by the ECU/front body module) that went bad and randomly would rapidly unlock and relock the doors while the car was driving. I fixed it after a year or so, but not before three of the five power door locks failed with broken gears. The fourth failed a couple of months later. The replacement part for the fifth was still in a plastic bag in the back last I heard.
In a car where the ECU doubles as a body module or otherwise controls the body module, I could easily see a situation in which an ECU swap causes the voltage to the sunroof to rapidly get reversed, causing any number of failures from cracked gears to burned out diodes. It probably isn't likely, but it could happen.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Aftermarket ECUs don't control body stuff. They control engine stuff.
In this instance, the stock ECU would be retained for controlling body stuff (and disconnected from the engine stuff).
Kid-proof tablet..