• @[email protected]
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        911 months ago

        Tesla had this exact functionality with their original Model S’ … but like that company it wasn’t profitable (or it was just regular ol Tesla mismanagement) so they also stopped doing it.

    • @[email protected]
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      711 months ago

      Not all EVs use the same pack type and there are advantages and disadvantages to the different types that will continue to change as we progress the technology. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to have universal batteries as it would also limit the designs of the car if it were legislated.

      • @[email protected]
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        1211 months ago

        Universal batteries would be bad, but standardized batteries would be great. If a battery has certain dimensions and gives a certain output, and can regulate itself as to charge and discharge, it doesn’t matter what chemistry it uses or internal cells it has. We have had D, C, B, A, AA, AAA, etc., for years and manufacturers got along just fine within those specs. Removable batteries are already a thing with Gogoro scooters in Taiwan and I think at least one car brand in China.

        • @[email protected]
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          611 months ago

          I don’t know if the industry is mature enough for that. There are different voltages, max power outputs and sizes. A set a size and voltage defines nearly everything.

          Standard specs are great for something that is replaced frequently (alkaline batteries). It’s less needed for things that are replaced rarely.

        • @[email protected]
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          211 months ago

          Those are cells not packs. A cell based pack uses cells in a module that then are combined to create a pack. Standardizing is not as easy as people make it out to be.

    • @[email protected]
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      511 months ago

      I know a guy who started a company to do exactly this (in Europe only for now).

      So the battery swap idea is out there, and being acted upon.

    • @[email protected]
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      111 months ago

      They can recycle 99% of the battery. You can crush it, separate and reuse. It’s actually pretty cool. Don’t know why you’d want to swap batteries that last for over 300,000 miles and soon to probably last longer than the car itself.

  • @[email protected]
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    9111 months ago

    Cool! Now work on exploits for those paywalled features of BMW cars and Ford cars.

    If you pay for something it’s yours by right. You should be able to use the entire thing, because you physically have it now.

    • @FinnaJerkIt
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      311 months ago

      What’s pay walled in a Ford besides bluecruise, which is a service that’s constantly updated to add more roads and expand it’s usability?

  • @[email protected]
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    9011 months ago

    If all electric cars are just going to be subscription bullshit, I’m sorry, I won’t be driving electric.

    • @[email protected]
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      5011 months ago

      Even ICE manufacturers have been including hardware that software disabled for a while

      • @[email protected]
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        11 months ago

        Audi had been doing this for years and they even disable stuff if you sell your car to another private person. One of my friends bought a used Audi and everything was disabled so he installed a cracked version of the infotainment software and now the only thing that doesn’t work is the fingerprint unlock.

      • smallaubergine
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        1111 months ago

        I got an OBDeleven for my 2015 GTI so I could unlock stuff and customize. Enabled rolling down the windows with the key fob, being able to display the engine oil temp in the dash and also setting the accelerator pedal curve to linear.

        • 6daemonbag
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          511 months ago

          What I didn’t even know that was stuff you could even do

          • smallaubergine
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            511 months ago

            Kinda depends on the car. Volkswagen cars are pretty “hackable” with OBDeleven which is a wireless interface for the hilariously named “VAGCOM” protocol.

      • falkerie71
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        1111 months ago

        Subscribe to enable your BMW seat heater! They definitely require periodic software updates and is absolutely NOT a blatant money grab

      • @[email protected]
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        611 months ago

        There are some manufacturers that do not do this garbage, or at least not often. I’ve heard good things about Hyundai specifically.

        • @[email protected]
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          911 months ago

          For now they have customer goodwill to win back after nearly a decade of building cars that practically fell apart in a year or 2 in the late 00s and early 10s.

          They’ll catch up to the others in anti-consumer practices soon, but for now they’re a good choice if you don’t particularly care for performance or ride quality.

        • @[email protected]
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          111 months ago

          Tesla got rid of the heater subscription bullshit in 2021. Now, the only thing locked behind a paywall is internet related stuff (sentry over mobile, streaming media access, etc.), the performance boost, and FSD.

    • @[email protected]
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      3611 months ago

      Have you seen the automotive industry as of late? This isn’t a EV issue nor is it really new. We’ve had things like OnStar for years and the entire industry has started to chase the gaming industry’s microtransaction BS for a while now.

      https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscriptions-microtransactions-heated-seats-feature

      https://www.thedrive.com/news/43329/toyota-made-its-key-fob-remote-start-into-a-subscription-service

      The future looks like a potential live service hell scape for the auto industry EV or otherwise.

      • arefx
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        511 months ago

        Everything is being ruined. It feels like hyperbole but I’m not sure it is.

      • @[email protected]
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        311 months ago

        Yes, I know it’s industry wide. What I’m saying is that with EV being the future of cars I don’t want them all to be subscription based.

    • holo_nexus
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      2611 months ago

      It won’t just be electric cars, it’ll be all new model cars from manufacturing companies. At least until ICE is phased out.

      • @[email protected]
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        511 months ago

        More like, until the Chinese weasel their way into the US market with cheaper-than-used cars to undercut the legacy auto makers. 10 years or so, it’ll happen. And the big 3 will be begging for bailouts again. That is unless they smarten up and remember what made Ford what it is today.

        • @[email protected]
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          111 months ago

          You know what Ford stands for, don’t ya? It stands for ‘Fix it again, Tony’ hehehe.

        • @[email protected]
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          -1311 months ago

          The average lemming:

          • concerned about online privacy
          • strongly against digital surveillance
          • rides exclusively public transit where there is surveillance everywhere
          • @[email protected]
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            1111 months ago

            There’s cameras everywhere watching the road too if you really care that much and you better believe your car model and license plate is a much more reliable form of identifying information than a blurry face on a bus security camera.

          • TheSaneWriter
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            1111 months ago

            There are fundamental differences between physical and digital surveillance, namely when you are in a public space there is no expectation of privacy because there are other people there looking at you. When there are other people there that can actually see you, a camera also watching doesn’t make much of a difference.

            • @[email protected]
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              411 months ago

              it does

              people usually doesn’t remember you unless you do some weird shit but once recorded, it will stay for the rest of eternity

              • @[email protected]
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                411 months ago

                If you’re talking about standard security cameras usually the footage will get completely overwritten after afeew days unless there was an incident to prompt review of the footage-- and even then it usually gets deleted at some point. Its not like with social media data gathering where they’re collecting all that information in order to build a personal profile of everyone-- security cameras just exist to review incidents that happen in the public realm and there’s no real incentive for a public transit agency to track every single person that appears on their cameras.

          • Flying Squid
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            911 months ago

            By ‘surveillance,’ do you mean a bus security camera to make sure no one is stabbing the driver? Because I’m pretty sure most of us don’t have much of a problem with that. It’s comprehensive government surveillance that is the problem.

            • @[email protected]
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              -111 months ago

              Unfortunately, “camera to make sure no one stabs the driver” is the exact tool used by “comprehensive government surveillance”. It’s something we’re forced to accept.

              • Flying Squid
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                111 months ago

                I would like evidence that security cameras on buses are used by the government for comprehensive surveillance. I don’t even know how they would accomplish such a thing with a stationary camera in a bus.

          • @[email protected]
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            911 months ago

            There is surveillance everywhere outside, even having your own car doesn’t protect you from having your privacy encroached. That’s why I never go outside.

            • @[email protected]
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              011 months ago

              When does “you should minimize your physical footprint so that you are harder to profile by bad people” suddenly become “just stay inside at all times and never go out”?

              Even with digital privacy, nothing is 100% effective.

              • Cryptic Fawn
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                11 months ago

                When you decided to make an ignorant comment about public transportation.

                Obviously nothing is 100%. That’s a given and doesn’t need to be said.

      • wanderingmagus
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        411 months ago

        Sure there will, always. Fix it yourself jalopies aren’t going away. Get yourself a cheap-o used junker and mod it to be electric, if you can’t or won’t use ICE. DIY isn’t just 3d printers and FOSS. Or get a bicycle and mod it into an e-bike.

    • @[email protected]
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      211 months ago

      All these upgrades are one time payments for an upgrade, much like sales point dealer add-ons for conventional cars. However recently they did allow you to buy a monthly subscription to FSD. But the option to buy it outright was always there, and still remains.

  • @[email protected]
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    11 months ago

    Good. There should be no such thing as unserviced features that are physically present in a product and locked out against its owner. Not in cars or anything.

      • @[email protected]
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        211 months ago

        This isn’t sound - “software” is being used here as a physical description but in reality it’s still just a “face” for actual hardware which often do actually have on going costs

      • @[email protected]
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        11 months ago

        Because it’s abusive and blatant rent seeking.

        Look, if there’s an actual service feature that continually costs money to provide (eg.: a cell connection for distant remote start, GPS nav map updates, etc), charging a reasonable subscription fee for that is totally acceptable. But charging ongoing fees for fixed features like heated seats is 100% bullshit unless you’re going to include some sort of service benefits like free repairs (which I doubt they’re doing).

  • sprl
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    5311 months ago

    A subscription for hardware is such bullshit, I hope this trend dies.

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    4911 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Utilizing multiple connections to the power supply, BIOS SPI chip, and SVI2 bus, the researchers performed a voltage fault injection attack on the MCU-Z’s Platform Security Processor.

    “They allow an attacker to decrypt the encrypted NVMe storage and access private user data such as the phonebook, calendar entries, etc.”

    “Hacking the embedded car computer could allow users to unlock these features without paying,” the TU Berlin researchers add.

    In an email to Tom’s Hardware, one of the researchers clarified that not all Tesla software upgrades are accessible, so it remains to be seen if those premium options will also be ripe for picking.

    Another consequence is that the exploit can “extract an otherwise vehicle-unique hardware-bound RSA key used to authenticate and authorize a car in Tesla’s internal service network.”

    The TU Berlin team (consisting of PhD students Christian Werling, Niclas Kühnapfel, and Hans Niklas Jacob, along with security researcher Oleg Drokin) will present their findings next week (August 9) at the Blackhat conference in Las Vegas, where we hope to hear more about all the feature upgrades that are accessible.


    I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • @[email protected]
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      1511 months ago

      Right? Probably for attention grabbing, cause they do say the same flaw exists in zen2 and zen3, and the article is by no means slamming AMD for it. But the title does come off that way

    • @[email protected]
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      211 months ago

      Idk unpatcheable vulnerability for the core component of the system seems pretty negligent but what do I know

      Not like they make boat loads of profit and are definitely just cutting corners on aspects of staffing to save extra money up for when the planet inevitably burns down (due to the very same people)

      • @[email protected]
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        111 months ago

        The vulnerability is much more of an issue for Tesla('s profits) than the owners. It’s not a simple exploit and not the worst concern for average users of those chips. You have to have physical access to it in order to exploit it, as well as a system worth hacking (think, national security trying to prevent compromised personnel from physically using the exploit on their systems). I’m not worried about someone breaking into my house to physically hack my computer, just to find some memes and bullshit

        It still has to be addressed by both Intel and AMD, because that’s their whole industry. But recalls and such aren’t needed, because bugs can be exploited all over the place and this one isn’t a high level risk for the average end-user. It’s more of a concern for Intel/AMD reputation and the large industry users of their chips

  • @[email protected]
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    1311 months ago

    The title seems much more interesting than it is. I doubt most people have the ability to perform this type of exploit. It would be more interesting if a group would charge X to unlock it for you.

    • Roboticide
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      711 months ago

      I hope that becomes more common as these types of features become more prevalent across multiple OEMs. I’d pay a tech-savvy mechanic or a car-savvy hacker quite a bit for features that are already installed but locked behind some arbitrary paywall.

      I also just hope regulators put a stop to such behavior first, but I kind of doubt that will happen.

  • Kokesh
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    811 months ago

    I see MusX stopping people’s car in the middle of the highway when they found out.