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I saw this article earlier:
Tesla 'going bankrupt' is endpoint of protests, says local organizer
In the spirit of right to repair, self-hosting, giving a second life to old devices, and limiting data collection by car companies:
- What are some considerations?
- Are there any projects worth keeping an eye on?
An example that came to mind was Valetudo, which is a cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation. Some robot vacuums are easy to install this on, and others require more invasive modifications.
What I've found so far:
Something else that people don’t think about besides the backend server is the connectivity. A lot of these cars use LTE with eSIMs that can’t be replaced, and getting an internet package for it will be next to impossible since Tesla gets them at bulk rates. Once upon a time cars did allow “bring your own SIM cards” but not anymore. Also as cars get older the cell networks get shut down. Some companies did offer upgrades but that was few and far between. Most just said “sorry, you’re SOL”.
So even if you could hack your car, your car won’t have any way of talking to a custom endpoint.
And this is another reason why putting internet on cars is a bad idea
I mean, what’s the alternative? It’s not like it has to have internet. Anything internet connected is mainly quality of life:
Except maybe Teslas, damned if I know what they do. But they’re nice to have things that generally require realtime updates but the car functions just fine as a car without it.
Again though, they are all quality of life things. You don’t have to use it on most cars. Don’t want it, don’t pay for it and don’t use it. So just like giving people the choice of AA/CP, what’s wrong with giving them the choice of using those features?
Public transit/bikes are (or should be) a good alternative if you can't find normal, used, dumb cars anymore
That’s a non-sequeter. You started by saying that internet on cars were bad and then switched to “you should be using bikes”
Could a Tesla ever work if the cell network went down
I think I mentioned it in another post but Schwaticars are a bit different. Though I’d assume they’d have to have some basic functionality in the event of an outage. “Always on” hasn’t come to cars… yet
It would be funny if old cell network dependency bought down tesla. Just every car made in gets bricked in the Future