DMCA be damned. You can hack your Tesla

[LabSpokane]

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/537251/some-tesla-owners-pimp-their-rides-with-code/

All that's needed now is for Tesla to build electric farm implements.

[tom66]

Tesla aren't as open as they seem to be. This is just the API between the phone app and the Tesla servers. As far as the car itself, they are pretty closed.

There was a thread a while back on a Tesla fan forum where people had figured out how to access the internal ethernet network between the two displays. One guy managed to SSH into the drivers console and bring up Firefox via Xorg. Tesla told him to stop or they would void the entire car warranty (they were monitoring his access !) They were getting access to loads of useful data, like the raw battery energy available in kWh, but they stopped because no one wants a $100k brick.

[Sigmoid]

They can void the warranty sure, but I didn't quite get the whole DMCA thing about the farm implements either... There was a precedent about jailbreaking iPhones not being illegal at all - circumventing protection is NOT an offense if its goal is not to make illicit copies of someone's IP, but to make some device I own do what I want to do (like run custom code).

If they monitor the car over the Internet, then I wouldn't buy one even if I could spare $100k for a car I can't even take for a cross-continental trip for lack of charging stations. I've recently started considering phasing out of all my Apple stuff as well and moving to hand-built Linux.

[suicidaleggroll]

Yeah I'm not following the DMCA or electric farm implements comment either...accessing the comms between the phone app and the Tesla servers to log data about your own car isn't copyright infringement.

[LabSpokane]

Umm guys. It was a joking reference to the John Deere thread.

Tesla does seem to be taking a far more moderate stance.  Voiding a warranty for hacking the computer (totally understandable IMO) is a far cry from a $1M USD fine and five years in prison that could result.