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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.
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 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
Most cars will work if you replace the telematics antenna with a dummy load. Remember, they still need to be drivable in areas with no cell service.
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
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.
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.
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..
There is one Tesla dealer. And they owe 3rd parties the same tools diagnostics and tech manuals that one dealer has.
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.
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!)
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.'"
With this guy rebuilding, he knows them inside out.
Not really. He knows them outside in. There's a joke about a gynecologist rebuilding an engine... through the tailpipe. Not anatomically correct but still amusing. And that's basically what he's doing... prodding at it through its interfaces trying to figure out what's going on inside the box.
He should R&D secondary equipment that he can sell to others.
That R&D is expensive and requires facilities. This guy doesn't even have a proper shop.
Faster motors; better seats; luggage racks ; cooler/heater for the frunks;
Faster motors, no chance. Tesla's latest EV motor is literally the most advanced in the industry. The motor is closely coupled to the motor controller, and the two have to match, so he'd have to reinvent that as well. Better seats, any upholstery company can do this already. Luggage racks? That doesn't even interface with the vehicle. It's just metal. Ditto for a thermoelectric cooler you stuck in the frunk, just plug it into the 12V system.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
Contact me, I can definitely keep Tesla out. (I am who the OP is about)
I know you are trying to be funny, but that's only the number I've helped to get back on the road. Their salvage car blacklist is about 1400 cars now. Based on how many I have in that list, I'd say there are at least 4000 Salvage Teslas now.
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.