Fisker may have been especially vulnerable to this (my understanding from some very brief searching is that core vehicle functionality required cloud check ins without fallback), but nothing about this is inherent to EVs (this is response to Weisenthal's tweet early in the article). An ICE vehicle could (and many manufacturers are increasingly pushing in this direction) have the exact same problems.
This is a much bigger problem that requires a bigger solution. I'm pretty intrigued by the mention at the end that several european manufacturers are collaborating on an opensource automotive software platform, although their track record on software isn't that encouraging.
How involved is the software in the car, any while driving features? I'd be a little bit afraid of getting in that car even with the best efforts of the community, maybe it's not really for driving, i'd be even more nervous to get in a car with no updates, but still.
More than anything I am nervous about having a car running priority code that can have mandatory updates pushed at any time that change the cars behavior -- not just throttle response and adjusting the emissions here, they could be updating thresholds for when the auto-pilot cancels and return to manual control, what level of cruise the car defaults to (GM BlueCruise IMO is terrible about this, it cancels hands free mode often, without any auditory alert) and so on.
I'd buy any Tesla, even the big truck, if it came with open source software! I don't want a car that's spyware like a phone. Let me be in control of it, let me mod it, let me own it.
See also this interesting slide deck about the GPLv3 and cars, I expect that regulations would mean you could not drive cars with modified software (similar to what happens with solar inverters):
Not exactly what you are asking for, but did you see that Rivian recently provided a way for owners to disable the vehicle's LTE connection? It's straight In Canada. In the US, you have to ask a dealer.
So a leasing company bought the source code for $2.5 million and then cut off owners after they refused an additional deal. What was the point, then? Is there anything rational about this market interaction?
Oh, not the owners of the company, the owners of the cars the company made.
Yeah the headline made me think "oh god they are trying to get away with their scam for the third time".
Fisker may have been especially vulnerable to this (my understanding from some very brief searching is that core vehicle functionality required cloud check ins without fallback), but nothing about this is inherent to EVs (this is response to Weisenthal's tweet early in the article). An ICE vehicle could (and many manufacturers are increasingly pushing in this direction) have the exact same problems.
This is a much bigger problem that requires a bigger solution. I'm pretty intrigued by the mention at the end that several european manufacturers are collaborating on an opensource automotive software platform, although their track record on software isn't that encouraging.
How involved is the software in the car, any while driving features? I'd be a little bit afraid of getting in that car even with the best efforts of the community, maybe it's not really for driving, i'd be even more nervous to get in a car with no updates, but still.
More than anything I am nervous about having a car running priority code that can have mandatory updates pushed at any time that change the cars behavior -- not just throttle response and adjusting the emissions here, they could be updating thresholds for when the auto-pilot cancels and return to manual control, what level of cruise the car defaults to (GM BlueCruise IMO is terrible about this, it cancels hands free mode often, without any auditory alert) and so on.
Give me a car without internet uplink any day!
I'd buy any Tesla, even the big truck, if it came with open source software! I don't want a car that's spyware like a phone. Let me be in control of it, let me mod it, let me own it.
Who's going to sell me one?
Tesla is full of open source software, including the Linux kernel. They probably are GPL violators though.
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2018/may/18/tesla-incomplete-... https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2019/oct/30/calling-all-tesla... https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/dec/21/tesla-no-source-c...
See also this interesting slide deck about the GPLv3 and cars, I expect that regulations would mean you could not drive cars with modified software (similar to what happens with solar inverters):
https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...
Not exactly what you are asking for, but did you see that Rivian recently provided a way for owners to disable the vehicle's LTE connection? It's straight In Canada. In the US, you have to ask a dealer.
> No more over-the-air updates. No more connected services. No more warranty.
LLM slop. Why does the author believe he is entitled to our attention if he cannot even bother to use his own words?
So a leasing company bought the source code for $2.5 million and then cut off owners after they refused an additional deal. What was the point, then? Is there anything rational about this market interaction?
Patent trolling
Leasing company probably thought they'd found some suckers to pay their (the leasing company's) cloud bills.
The leasing company leases these cars to Uber drivers in NYC, who presumably did not get cut off.