The Man Who Jailbreaks Teslas (fastcompany.com) 115
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 (Score:4, Informative)
right to repair need to give 3rd party's the codes and tools to work on cars + no black lists can be used.
Re: right to repair need to give 3rd party's the c (Score:5, Insightful)
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..
Re: right to repair need to give 3rd party's the c (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: right to repair need to give 3rd party's the c (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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
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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).
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Hear, hear!!
And if they did, we could be shade tree mechanics once again.....
Re: right to repair need to give 3rd party's the c (Score:5, Informative)
ABS works amazingly well. Other than being on a track, why would you disable it?
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Same goes for traction control. If it's a quality system that controls
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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 differen
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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.
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"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 f
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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
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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.
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Re: right to repair need to give 3rd party's the c (Score:5, Informative)
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!)
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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 h
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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.
Re: right to repair need to give 3rd party's the c (Score:4, Informative)
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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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 A
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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 folk
Re:right to repair need to give 3rd party's the co (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
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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.
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There is one Tesla dealer. And they owe 3rd parties the same tools diagnostics and tech manuals that one dealer has.
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It is perfectly reasonable to consider Tesla itself to be the one and only dealer.
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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.
Tesla has bricked salvage title cars, or tried to. (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know how this story got to 'not tried to prevent'.
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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.
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come on man did you peel the "warranty void if removed" sticker?
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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 bas
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Can you buy a new street legal car (US) that doesn't spy on you in 2018?
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The way the laws are going (especially in Europe), even the bargain basement crapboxes will be required to have these communication systems (the argument they are using is that the stuff that automatically contacts emergency services in an accident is good for saving lives)
Re:Insurance payout? (Score:4, Interesting)
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make yourself a 25ohm dummy load by paralleling 4 100ohm resistors that are heavy enough (1w each will give 4 total, when in parallel).
yeah, I said 25 ohms. I will only give the bastards half of what they deserve.
Re:What, wait? (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope Tesla gets it (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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There's also going to be a lot of mechanics who will have to get familiar with electric cars sooner or later. They might be low maintenance in a lot of ways, but that isn't the same thing as NO maintenance.
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Reading just the linked article, it sounds like Tesla are indeed heading down the road of "breaking their neck looking the other way". It sounds to me a very Tesla thing to do. They just needed a little prodding.
Salvage Tesla's Can be Dangerous (Score:2, Troll)
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.
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Do you clearly inform your passengers of the risks before you offer them a ride ?
Do your children have any choice of riding along with you or not, even when clearly informed of the risks ?
This seems to be a common thing among every libertarian-minded person I've ever met: They always seem to think that their own decisions, good or bad, will only have consequences for themselves, and nobody else.
I agree society shouldn't protect people against themselves, but it should protect everybody else from the likes o
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Re: Salvage Tesla's Can be Dangerous (Score:2)
They're safe till they're not.
Here's hoping your salvage titled Teslas never burst into flames with you in it.
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Re: Salvage Tesla's Can be Dangerous (Score:2)
Applied a little too much Eau De Musk this morning?
There's 300,000 Teslas on the road versus the 363 million gas powered cars. There's not enough data out yet to make such a claim.
Regardless, a non salvaged title used Tesla is infinitely better than your hacked together junk yard scrap.
I don't waste my time, money, or safety driving and repairing salvage title cars.
If you want to think yourself as cool and thrifty for doing so be my guest. The DIY crowd with out of warranty Teslas will thank you for it.
Othe
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Should consider secondary equipment (Score:2)
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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
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Rich Rebuilds (Score:1)
Has anyone mentioned Rich Rebuilds yet, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfV0_wbjG8KJADuZT2ct4SA
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TFA did.
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Rich was the first person I thought of when I clicked on the article's link. Awesome youtube channel and a real inspiration to us still living in the ICE-age. When I saw his gutted car, I couldn't imagine myself being able to put it all back together again.
Two thumbs-up for people doing this stuff. I'm very impressed!