[HN Gopher] Tesla remotely unlocks Model 3 car, uses smart summo...
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Tesla remotely unlocks Model 3 car, uses smart summon to help repo
agent
Author : donohoe
Score : 265 points
Date : 2021-12-20 11:30 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tiremeetsroad.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tiremeetsroad.com)
| xyst wrote:
| Why does Tesla even care if the car owner is delinquent on the
| bank note? At the time of the sale, Tesla was paid in full by the
| bank.
|
| Is Tesla trying to become the underwriter of future loans, and
| this is their way of testing their automated repossession
| process?
| oxymoran wrote:
| They don't need to be the underwriter to affect the
| underwriting process. By enabling this feature, banks could be
| more willing to make loans to credit challenged people, thus
| rendering more Tesla's on the road.
| throw8932894 wrote:
| What is legality of making alternative firmware for Tesla? I
| guess they could argue with safety. Does the car loose road
| worthy certification, if its software is altered?
| taylorportman wrote:
| Definitely needs to be a thing. idk if it has been on HN yet
| but there is a opengarages.org site that has a nice ebook if
| anyone is interested.
| roastedpeacock wrote:
| Can't comment on certifications but aftermarket performance
| upgrades that are not from Tesla already exist through hardware
| modification with some attempt at the "cat and mouse" game of
| detection and evasion one might expect from such activities.
| Haven't hard of any lawyers getting involved though.
|
| I would assume if you do something dumb with the electronics or
| software you wold probably be found liable in terms of
| insurance.
| [deleted]
| hereforphone wrote:
| Do you want to lose your potential customer base? Because this is
| how you lose your potential customer base.
| dangus wrote:
| "Tesla hired him"
|
| Does this mean that Tesla is the owner of the loan?
|
| I'm skeptical that Tesla will be helping random banks get their
| money back like this, but it sounds like this is direct financing
| through Tesla.
|
| Also, keep in mind that this is just a tweet with a picture of a
| car on a trailer. This is absolutely not verified as true. Tesla
| nor the car's owner have verified or commented on this from what
| we can see in this article. Literally just some guy who says "a
| friend told me."
| nowherebeen wrote:
| Can't wait for someone to introduce a _dumb_ electronic car.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| A few years ago Netflix had a problem processing the payment for
| my subscription. They charged me again, also had problems,
| charged again. 3 times, every time the money left my account as
| the bank confirmed. A few days later, with no warning, they
| suspended my account while I was watching a movie.
|
| I don't like the power these companies have in relation with
| their customers. The customer has no power at all, in most cases.
| In my case I had to ask the bank to revert the charges and close
| my Netflix subscription, but it was just ~ $30-40 at stake, not a
| $50,000 car. How many times cars are repossessed without any
| fault of the customer?
| oxymoran wrote:
| Ya'll are overlooking the reasoning behind this for Tesla: this
| would make a bank more willing to give out a loan to nearly
| anyone, even with questionable credit, if the car assisted with
| its own repo. It's a play to get more Teslas on the road.
| the_optimist wrote:
| Only in the same sense as making any usability improvement.
| Making car loans in general is also "a play to sell more cars."
| There's no point to such interpretation.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Helpful mental model to help you overcome bias: imagine for a
| moment, that instead of Tesla, it was that company you hate doing
| this. You know, that privacy-invading company that's just the
| _worst_ - would you still feel the same?
| aasasd wrote:
| A bunch of years ago, when Tesla and Google's car were only just
| starting and it was fashionable to discuss the implications of
| self-driving cars, one dude wrote (approximately):
|
| > _People are discussing: if the car has to choose between
| running over a pedestrian and sacrificing the driver 's life,
| what should it choose? Well it's obvious: the driver pays for the
| car, so they wouldn't buy a car that kills them in case of an
| incident._
|
| I guess now that we're headed straight into cyberpunk, the
| driver's wish turns out to be not that important. The overriding
| concern is actually: what will make the company look better. If
| swerving into trees wins points for Tesla for saving pedestrians'
| lives, so be it.
| the8472 wrote:
| Those are irrelevant tangents. You don't win the game by being
| best at solving the trolley problem. You win the game by making
| a car that is good at not crashing.
| 015a wrote:
| I'm pretty strongly of the position that high levels of self-
| driving are impossible for artificial intelligences to attain,
| because they're built by corporations. Driving is VERY risky,
| and involves an irreducible assumption of both risk and
| liability on behalf of the driver. Humans are natural risk-
| takers. Corporations are not; and any artificial intelligence a
| corporation produces is always, at some level of meaningful
| abstraction, a projection of their own values.
| borkyborkbork wrote:
| I wouldn't describe Tesla as a corporation that is risk
| averse.
| Datenstrom wrote:
| From Tesla's release of their full self-driving beta and its
| performance in a recent CGP Grey video where it successfully
| navigates the most dangerous road in America[1] I think a lot
| of people are going to have to eat their hats on this stance
| very soon.
|
| I consider myself bullish on this tech, and I have worked
| closely with autonomous robotics, but I didn't expect it this
| soon.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6tgmGqXysM
| gonzoflip wrote:
| That is the most boring Tail of the Dragon driving vid I
| have ever seen.
| wolrah wrote:
| > where it successfully navigates the most dangerous road
| in America
|
| Twistiest, maybe. Most dangerous, not even close unless you
| or someone driving towards you do something dumb.
|
| Historically Autopilot's weak spots have been
| crappy/ambiguous road markings, low speed corners on high
| speed roads, and large vehicles stopped on/across the road.
| This video hit none of those points. The lane markings are
| clear, the posted limit is low, and large vehicles aren't
| even supposed to be there.
| maxdo wrote:
| your historical observations are irrelevant for FSD beta.
| It's a new system, it works amazing without markings on
| the road at all.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Twistiest, maybe. Most dangerous, not even close_
|
| It's just CGP Grey, not NHTSA. Hyperbole is to be
| expected.
|
| I know he's a darling among the chattering tech class,
| but it's been several years since he jumped the shark
| from "insightful, carefully researched, and well thought
| out" to "just another vlogger doing and saying what is
| needed to get views."
| lm28469 wrote:
| Lmao, their tech is faaaar away from anything remotely
| usable in real life. Sure it can follow a double yellow in
| the middle of the woods, I could do that when I was 10, as
| soon as you put it in city traffic it's game over in 15
| seconds.
|
| We will not have fully autonomous vehicles in our street
| until we ban human driven vehicles and completely rework
| our infrastructure, aka probably not in our lifetime.
|
| Look at that video, it's comically bad: https://www.reddit.
| com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/rgiu8m/the_fu...
| leereeves wrote:
| That actually didn't look like much of a challenge. All the
| Tesla had to do was drive slowly and stay in its lane on
| curves.
|
| There were no obstacles that Teslas have had trouble with
| in the past, like stopped firetrucks, ending lanes, or
| people changing tires.
| bombcar wrote:
| Whilst impressive, that's also a "pretty good setup" for
| the Tesla - the yellow line is well marked as is the white
| line; and the Tesla isn't speeding.
| somerandomqaguy wrote:
| I'm really not sure how that is at all challenging for
| computer vision to handle. Conditions like these are
| probably more along the lines to challenge self driving
| tech:
|
| - British Columbia Highway 5 (Coquihalla Highway) Daytime:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIF79ZlWcOI
|
| - The Coquihalla Highway at night:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM3BPOLVoUg
|
| - Alberta Highway 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re-
| Ap5fboi8
| hellomyguys wrote:
| Following a well-marked winding road is not a difficult
| challenge for self-driving cars. Driving in a city, with
| bus lanes, light rail, bikers, and pedestrians is much
| harder.
| root_axis wrote:
| I own a Tesla and it's the best car I've ever owned.
| However, the FSD software is garbage, I'd sooner trust a
| drunk human over the Tesla FSD any day of the week.
| aasasd wrote:
| BTW, if anyone wants to experience the boredom of 18 km of
| turns among the trees, without actually going to NC/TN--
| there are custom circuits of Deals Gap/Tail of the Dragon
| for rFactor, Assetto Corsa and perhaps other sims.
| (Possibly 'Grand Prix Legends' was the first one to get the
| mod.)
| defaultprimate wrote:
| While I agree with you 100%. High level self driving is
| impossible on a technical level too imo, there's too many
| aspects of human perception, processing, and intuition that
| aren't possible to emulate or account for in, what machine
| learning really boils down to, a statistical model. There
| will always be novel situations that you can't simply math
| your way out of that a human could navigate effortlessly.
| shagie wrote:
| Cory Doctorow wrote a collection of short stories (or a
| single short stories with a variety of smaller chapters -
| depending on how you look at it) called Car Wars -
| https://craphound.com/news/2016/11/23/car-wars-a-
| dystopian-s...
|
| It was originally hosted
| http://this.deakin.edu.au/culture/car-wars though is no
| longer available there. https://web.archive.org/web/2017010
| 5065118/http://this.deaki... has it.
|
| As much as the idea of full self driving is nice in theory,
| living in the northern midwest and having times in the
| winter where the traditional rules of driving go out the
| window when there's a question of "drive in the middle of
| what might be the road or find the ditch."
|
| I'd like to see driver assist and some augmented reality
| for driving. Things like "driver's seat with bumps on the
| back to assist in awareness of 360deg objects around the
| car". But self driving? I'm not sure I trust it yet or will
| for another decade or two. Developing software, I've seen
| how the sausage gets made - that doesn't inspire
| confidence.
| defaultprimate wrote:
| I'm gonna check these stories out!
|
| I'm with you on the seeing the sausage made. I work in
| software development and algorithm research (though in a
| completely unrelated, but much better funded and cutting
| edge field) and the idea that we're anywhere close to
| truly level 3 autonomous driving, let alone 4 or 5, is
| laughable.
|
| I love technology enhanced features, like radar cruise
| control, lane detection, etc. But only as extra sensory
| input for the driver, not replacement.
| [deleted]
| sschueller wrote:
| Will Mercedes or another brand clone a key for the repo man
| without a court order?
| scottlilly wrote:
| Yes.
|
| I was a repo man in the 1980s. When we'd get the repossession
| paperwork from the bank, we'd also get a copy of the car's
| title. We'd take that paperwork into a dealership and they
| would cut us duplicate keys.
| maxdo wrote:
| to every person writing here "is this the future we will be
| living in"? So do you want legal owners hire people who will spy
| on you, ask family members where is the car, etc...
|
| After they'll find the car their life will be more complicated ,
| they need to make a key. Coordinate if this is the right car. If
| car is locked/has custom security, lots of noise in neighborhood
| due to alarm, so basically everyone around your block is stressed
| because you didn't pay.
|
| And that's fees people who pay the bills will cover. Do you think
| this kind of services are cheap? If they can't return the car,
| that will be also split between future lease agreement. They will
| be included one way or another in your loan/monthly payments.
|
| Doing so , they basically decreasing the price of such event at
| least 5x.
| [deleted]
| causi wrote:
| Should this be illegal? No, probably not. Is this the future I
| want to live in? Also no.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| It's already the future you live in.
|
| Repo agents, for decades, will roll up on a vehicle and hook it
| up to a tow truck and take off. People go out of their way to
| hide their vehicles, or block them in with other vehicles, when
| they haven't paid their loan and know their vehicle is now
| eligible for repossession.
|
| This just makes it safer for the repo agents, because they can
| recover the vehicle faster and don't have to risk some nutjob
| running out of a house/apartment/office with a bat/gun/knife
| trying to confront them because someone was like "Dave,
| someone's hooking your car up to a tow truck".
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Is this the future I want to live in? Also no.
|
| No need to fret the future my friend. The future is now. This
| dystopian future people keep fearing is happening now. It is
| the present reality.
| gretch wrote:
| No it's really not. This is hyperbole.
|
| Things are literally better now than ever before. More access
| to food, healthcare, and literacy on average for everyone in
| the world. More protection of basic human rights on average
| for everyone in the world.
|
| If now is the dystopian future, when in the past would you
| like to time travel to? Before or after polio vaccine? Gay
| rights? Before/after Abolition of slavery (in select
| countries)?
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's must be sad for people to go through life with no
| ability to appreciate comedy whether it is good or bad. To
| think everything is so draconian in that it must be exactly
| how _you_ want it to be is just further proof that it 's
| darker than you want to believe.
| gretch wrote:
| I appreciate comedy, you're just not funny.
|
| You think comedy is just saying things that are false?
|
| Oh look, I'll just say the opposite of everything - haha
| wit!
| stevewodil wrote:
| Seriously, they chase down normal cars for repossession I don't
| feel strongly that this is all that different than it getting
| towed from your driveway.
|
| Would I be really annoyed if it was my car? Yeah, but at the
| same time it's up for repo either way.
|
| We already knew that Tesla HQ can control the cars for service
| and such
| greenshackle2 wrote:
| Not only that, some lots that sell to high risk buyers (e.g.
| buy here pay here) already install GPS devices on their cars:
|
| https://passtimegps.com/industries/bhph/
| [deleted]
| ahoka wrote:
| Yes, it should be. You pay extra in your fees to cover the
| possible loss of the entity giving you a loan, but they want
| the extra and not having to deal with the possible loss. They
| should just suck it up TBH.
| _Microft wrote:
| > Is this the future I want to live in?
|
| For me neither. As much as I admire Musk for being the driving
| force behind the progress that his companies are making for
| electric mobility and especially space launch but a guy who
| fetishizes a dystopian cyberpunk future and works on hooking up
| brains to computers might have slightly different vision for
| the future than you and me.
| bluedino wrote:
| This is nothing compared to the tactics a "buy here, pay here"
| car lot will use.
| [deleted]
| teawrecks wrote:
| "They mentioned once FSD is better, they'll probably just have
| the cars drive themselves back to Tesla in this situation.
| Technology is amazing."
|
| That's the happiest I've heard someone be about their friend's
| job being automated away :D
| aneutron wrote:
| While this is an "interesting" story, I'd love to get some
| verification on it.
|
| It sounds plausible, but almost illegal ? I'm in EU so don't know
| how really things work over there, but I would assume Tesla would
| need a judicial order siding with the bank to be able to do this
| ? I mean it's probably not the wild west over there. Or is it ?
| mFixman wrote:
| This is a report based on a Facebook post by a random person
| telling a story about her repo friend who once told her that
| Tesla could help him get control of the car.
|
| Until someone reports this happening first hand, I'm going to
| assume that either a lot of details are missing or that the
| story is straight-up fake.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| There are far too many articles or tweets or stories they get
| traction with zero attempt at verification. I do not
| understand why people upvote it.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| We do not have Repo in EU like they do in the US.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Are you sure about that? I thought repossession of collateral
| from a defaulted loan is a basic part of cultures with both
| common and code law.
|
| https://www.frenchentree.com/french-property/law/so-you-
| cant...
|
| What happens if you don't pay your mortgage where you live?
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Then you have to go through some government entity for
| repossession etc. But for sure we don't have it where some
| tow truck driver comes to your property pulling out the
| car.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| Usually, in the end, it's a government agent coming to you
| and repossessing things, not an employee of a random
| company.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| This doesn't fall under the remit of the EU.
| chippiewill wrote:
| I think the mention of a bank is misleading. I think in this
| case the owner organised finance with Tesla directly. When he
| failed to pay Tesla on time they repo'd the car themselves.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Tesla loans are through a bank, but I think they use their
| own financing arm for leases, so perhaps this was a
| delinquent lease.
| mijoharas wrote:
| Ahhhhh. This does make a lot more sense.
| aneutron wrote:
| That would make much more sense.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I suppose it really depends on exact legal contract. Is the
| financing that is loan against the vehicle and it is owned by
| the user. Or is it essentially rented.
|
| And in first case even with court order there is good question
| about other creditors...
| aneutron wrote:
| While potentially completely unrelated, I've seen how
| "cowboy-like" the whole bounty hunters situation is over
| there, so it honestly and unfortunately wouldn't surprise me
| as much if it were the case with the creditors ...
| jcims wrote:
| (probably wrong statement follows) In the US, title to the
| vehicle usually remains in the hands of the creditor until
| it's paid off.
| yardie wrote:
| Th title is in the owners name with a note of a bank lien
| on it. When you sell the car the bank lien is settled first
| and then the transfer can begin. In most cases you can't
| register the car without the title and you cant drive the
| car without it being registered.
| jcims wrote:
| Interesting. It must be recorded at the county or
| something then? I haven't seen a title for a vehicle in
| quite some time.
| yardie wrote:
| My state it's all electronic now. I have a paper title
| for my records but the it's just a fascimile of the
| digital original. To complete the sale I'd need to bring
| it into the tax collectors office where they update the
| digital record and print a new paper title for the next
| owner or do it at a dealership.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Yeah, it's weird how a random Facebook post with no evidence is
| the basis for this story. It's one thing if your aunt believes
| it. It's another if some content farm posts it as fact. It's
| quite embarrassing to see such an article on the front page
| here though.
|
| It's probably possible, and dealerships usually work with repo
| men/banks, but the point is, the article certainly did nothing
| to verify anything.
| zajio1am wrote:
| > I'm in EU so don't know how really things work over there,
| but I would assume Tesla would need a judicial order siding
| with the bank to be able to do this ?
|
| If a car was used as collateral for a loan, then bank would
| need a judicial order. But common way to buy a new car is
| leasing, where the car is owned by the leasing company during
| the period of the contract. If the contract says that lease is
| terminated when payments are not done, then i do not see why
| would leasing company need judicial order, when it is legal
| owner of the car (unless there is a specific legislation
| related to such kind of leases).
| matwood wrote:
| It's not even that interesting. Owner doesn't pay bill on an
| item being used as collateral. Said item is repossessed.
|
| I hope the repo person realizes the future will need that type
| of job less and less.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Nope, it won't. Ask anyone who ever lent money and they'll
| tell you that lending is actually the easiest part, now
| getting repaid is where most of the work goes into. Heck, you
| probably yourself can remember an acquaintance of yours who
| once borrowed figurative $20 from you and never returned
| them.
| ghusto wrote:
| I think the surprise or even incredulity people over here in
| the EU have is not to do with "You don't pay for your stuff,
| we take the stuff back" (I think we're all familiar with the
| concept of paying for things), it's to do with how the seller
| remotely took actions on the item.
|
| It's a bit like not keeping up your mortgage repayments, and
| the bank remotely locking you out (or in?) your house --
| except it's a bit worse, because the mortgage provider
| wouldn't have to use GPS to track where you and your house
| are. Perhaps that's not a shocking idea in the USA, but I
| think it is in the EU. I'm not for or against, just
| explaining where the shock factor is coming from here.
|
| Now for my own opinion: The header here shouldn't be "Make
| sure you keep up your repayments", it should be "Don't buy
| stupid shit you don't need, can't afford, and is controlled
| by someone else".
| msh wrote:
| A lot of law enforcement is privatized in the USA so a lot of
| things that would be very illegal in most EU countries is ok
| there (fx bounty hunters)
| adventured wrote:
| Bounty hunters are uncommon in the US and very little of the
| law enforcement system is privatized in the US. It's in fact
| rare compared to the number of government law enforcement
| officers we have (local cops, county cops, state cops,
| federal cops, prison & jail cops, specialized, etc).
|
| Having eg a private security guy working at your grocery
| store is not privatized law enforcement. That's the
| equivalent of a bar bouncer watching the property, not the
| equivalent of law enforcement and they don't have the legal
| powers of law enforcement either.
| msh wrote:
| You are probably right when I say a lot, it was thought of
| as relatively to most of the EU.
|
| But the fact that bounty hunters and "repo" like in the
| article exists makes it a lot to me.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| In the US this is legal. Banks are authorized to repossess
| property if you're late on a payment^. Private companies are
| allowed to participate in repossession as long as they don't
| break any other laws. Tesla didn't break into the owner's house
| to steal their passwords or keys, they didn't assault the
| owner. All they did was take his car. They verified that they
| were taking the correct car. Since the repossession was being
| carried out on behalf of a bank, there was no theft. This is
| completely legal. If you don't want a car company to assist a
| bank with repossession, don't get a car with remote access
| features- which pretty much means an old car.
|
| ^There are rules on how late you have to be though- it's not
| like they are taking your car after you're 1 day late for the
| first time. The required amount of lateness depends on the
| state. And they are only allowed to take property that was used
| to secure the loan. In the case of a car loan that is usually
| the car itself.
| aneutron wrote:
| Thanks very much for the answer. I assumed that it would have
| to go through the judiciary, but I am surprised to see it's
| not the case.
|
| It does make sense, especially if it's not abusive (e.g. one
| month behind equals reposession)
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| It doesn't go through the judiciary (e.g., it would if it
| were an an apartment and you stopped paying rent), but the
| owner signs a loan note that specifies that the loan is in
| default after missing N payments (usually after 3 months).
| Once in default, the bank _can_ repossess the vehicle, but
| they 'd rather not since their business is lending money
| and anything else is a money-losing distraction. So they
| will usually try to find a way for you to keep the car (and
| keep making payments). They usually only repo if they can't
| contact the debtor or they can't come to an agreement.
|
| Repossession of any kind (car, house, etc...) is typically
| an option of last resort for the bank after the debtor
| refuses to work with them or enter into other agreements
| that could help. They _really_ just want to keep collecting
| payments from you.
| adventured wrote:
| The other big thing at play here, is that car lenders get
| about 1/3 of the expected loan value if they repo the
| vehicle. Most of them don't want to do it unless they have
| to, it's usually far more profitable if the consumer
| continues making payments.
|
| The court typically only gets involved if the lender has
| reason to believe you might do something malicious and can
| convince the court to execute an immediate right to seize
| the vehicle (quickly after default). A court can also order
| a person to return the vehicle, if they've managed to
| successfully evade the repossession action by hiding it.
| This is a good thing so long as it's reasonably balance (ie
| the consumer doesn't get their vehicle repo'd on day one of
| being late), so our court system isn't filled up with car
| loans.
| mijoharas wrote:
| > Private companies are allowed to participate in
| repossession as long as they don't break any other laws.
|
| Why do they do this? Did the bank pay Tesla to do so? (I'm
| sure there must be some incentive system here).
| tssva wrote:
| The incentive is that the banks remain willing to finance
| the purchase of Tesla vehicles.
| jmkni wrote:
| I remember watching a Defcon talk years ago by Barnaby Jack (RIP)
| who warned of this exact scenario, but in a medical sense.
|
| ie. you take out a loan to pay for some sort of medical implant,
| you miss your payments, and they can turn it off.
|
| I can't find the exact video, if anyone has I'd love a link!
| latortuga wrote:
| There's a movie with exactly this plot, Repo Man I think it's
| called.
| bszupnick wrote:
| Repo! The Genetic Opera
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repo!_The_Genetic_Opera
| rvz wrote:
| Unsurprising and seen here: [0] A text book definition of a
| backdoor.
|
| It is still not your car. It is still Tesla's.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26512855
| knorker wrote:
| No, if you don't pay for it then it's the bank's car.
|
| It's like saying "the super stole my TV!!" when actually the
| super just let the police in with a search warrant, and they
| took the TV you stole down to the station.
| rvz wrote:
| Tesla still has remote access to the cars its has sold and
| can unlock them if the authorities request them to do so. If
| that is not a backdoor I don't know what is.
|
| Evidently, the car isn't yours, even though you have paid for
| it. Tesla still owns it.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| They do this with any key fob for any make and model these
| days.
| knorker wrote:
| I didn't say there was no backdoor.
|
| Every locksmith in the world has the ability to bypass your
| lock (exaggeration). That doesn't make them the owner.
| rvz wrote:
| > I didn't say there was no backdoor.
|
| You didn't need to and given that was already avoided
| here; it now has been admitted. Thus, it is by definition
| a 'backdoor' then especially a directly _' remote'_ one.
| It doesn't matter who it is, we just know that Tesla and
| many others have this ability directly; no locksmith
| needed or whatever.
|
| So the future is connected cars where not even you can
| fully control your own car and it is still 'owned' and
| can be externally controlled in the hands of the
| manufacturer, just like our phones. Since they are
| already giving out OTA updates to it.
|
| Dreadful.
| knorker wrote:
| Tesla owners like this backdoor ability. Indeed, some
| people consistently unlock their car with their phone
| (via the cloud), I hear.
|
| In this case though some people are objecting to who the
| "owner" is. And I think that the people objecting are
| wrong. And (I assume) so does the law.
|
| Your car is not protected from the bank or the government
| by its keys, but by the law.
|
| Same as your house. If you lose your house legally,
| you'll lose your house physically.
|
| The fact that the bank (indirectly) called Tesla instead
| of a locksmith is to me irrelevant in this case.
|
| Now, in the abstract, is it uncomfortable that the car
| manufacturer can unlock your car? Sure. But we knew that
| they could. How else could your phone do it.
|
| I hate to break it to you, but your telco can tap your
| phoneline. The bus can track your public transport
| movement. I can follow you on the street. Your power
| company can effectively track when you're away on
| vacation.
|
| This case was not abuse. And it doesn't even have to be
| cloud-connected to enable this kind of owner-depriving
| abuse. As soon as cars got their first microchip they
| could have gotten firmware that would brick the car
| unless it went to an authorized dealer twice a year for
| "reset".
|
| I'm not saying there aren't dangers, but this case isn't
| it.
| jcims wrote:
| Ford Pass has the same capability. With self park it could even
| back out of a spot.
| gregoriol wrote:
| Knowing that Musk had the project to let your car drive as an
| automatic taxi without you, this is not surprising. We will have
| to get used to cars doing stuff without their driver.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| When reading the tweet, I get the feeling that it is satire (kind
| of like the Onion).
|
| I am not aware that Tesla is directly financing the vehicles, so
| why would they hire a repo person to go repossess it? In
| addition, given the OTA update capabilities of Tesla, they could
| probably just remotely disable the car, and not have to worry
| about the expense of liability of a repo agent. In addition, the
| picture is weird, as if you had such full control of the car, why
| would you need to put a "boot" on the car to immobilize it, since
| it would make driving it back to Tesla harder.
|
| I am calling satire on the tweet, until further proof.
| cheschire wrote:
| Indeed, Tesla's own lending page seems to point to banks as
| lenders, not Tesla or a Tesla finance company. Perhaps I'm
| misunderstanding though, I've never looked deeply into this
| before.
|
| https://www.tesla.com/support/lending#additional-support
| Quindecillion wrote:
| Has anyone "jailbroke" a Telsa to remove this type of stuff?
| _fat_santa wrote:
| It's two sides to the same coin. The stuff that makes this
| possible is the same stuff that makes all the futuristic tech
| on a Tesla possible. So you could theoretically jailbreak it
| (Rich Rebuilds probably figured it out by now) disabling the
| stuff that would allow this to happen would also disable half
| the futuristic features on your car.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| > disabling the stuff that would allow this to happen would
| also disable half the futuristic features on your car.
|
| Why?
|
| When you jailbreak an iPhone you don't loose features.
| darknavi wrote:
| No but you (most of the time) lose the ability to get
| software updates which are a pretty significant feature of
| Teslas.
|
| I also wouldn't be surprised if Tesla locked out your sim
| if they found you to be abusing it so you'd have to try to
| get a new one (not sure how that works with eSims).
| prmoustache wrote:
| As a bicycle and old motorcycles user I am gobsmacked that so
| much people accept that the vehicule they are using is connected
| or regularly phone home to the manufacturer. I guess if you share
| all your life on facebook and instagram, why shouldn't you also
| give away all your errands to any third party.
|
| Is there at least a license agreement you are showned at and have
| to agree to upon delivery? Can you operate those vehicules
| offline by choice?
| maxdo wrote:
| Why would I want so? I want to warm up/cool the car before i
| get into it, listen for the music without plugging my phone
| every time , have a decent gps that is free, notify me about
| traffic, tell me if the charging station i'm going to is busy,
| alert me if someone is breaking in into my car. Heck I can even
| check the camera's from my App so I don't need to run if this
| is false alarm. I can even say something to this person to
| scare him away before he/she broke the glass.
|
| Thank you but no. Tesla sales are skyrocketing because people
| want smart car that makes their life easier, safer. Legacy car
| makers also trying to keep up with trend.
|
| It's a typical misconception. You were young back in the days
| the car didn't have all this amazing features. Not having this
| features doesn't this car magical just because of your
| sentiments about you been young. Driving a dumb car will not
| make you younger either.
|
| I'll surprise you, most of tesla owners pay extra money
| ($10/mo) to have a better connectivity. Not the other way
| around.
| steelframe wrote:
| For me it's about control. I'm fine with having whiz-bang
| features on my equipment, so long as I am the final authority
| on anything and everything about them.
|
| About a year ago I took my fancy EV on a ferry. I kept it on
| and ran the air conditioner because it was hot outside.
| Partway through the crossing I guess the suspension sensors
| interpreted the boat rocking as "something is seriously
| screwed up," and it locked the brakes and wouldn't release
| them when it was time to disembark. I had to sit there in my
| fancy EV looking like an idiot while everyone filtered around
| me and I took another trip across the water with cones around
| the car.
|
| When I frantically called the dealership in the middle of all
| that, they said, "Sorry, your car has decided that it isn't
| safe to drive. You'll have to get it towed in so we can take
| a look at it. Oh, and since you're on a ferry, our roadside
| assistance won't help you. Good luck!" When I asked the ferry
| staff what I should do, they replied, "Uh, usually we just
| ask the owner to shift into neutral, and we push the car
| off." Only the car decided for me that this wasn't a
| possibility, and the brakes remained engaged with no way for
| me to disengage them.
|
| The next thing I did after I finally got back home was
| research which cars I could still buy today with manual
| transmission and an emergency brake attached to a lever and a
| cable. It's not at all about holding onto my youth. It's
| about being the final authority over my own goddamned
| property.
| maxdo wrote:
| it's a problem of your car brand, not the EV's. My EV still
| has neutral. Let me guess, you probably choose a legacy
| brand EV car, that has no culture on how to buy
| electronics, because you know I can trust this brand better
| since they are so long on the market. The same automatic
| problem could be on the car with manual transmission
| nowadays. Since they all required emergency braking and
| many other items are mandatory e.g nothing to do with EV
| itself.
| prmoustache wrote:
| These kinds of features could, and should be optionnally
| usable by connecting your car to an open source self hosted
| server.
|
| There is no need to send everything to the manufacturer and a
| way to avoid that should be mandatory.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Imagine you live in Texas, there is a massive power failure
| that also affects cellular towers and the car you need to use
| to save your live does not work because it is so smart
| online, but too dumb or not working at all offline. Then pay
| extra 10$ for that.
| akvadrako wrote:
| I'm not sure how your bicycle usage is relevant. Many new
| electric bikes also have GPS + SIM tracking.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Well all my bikes are "muscular bikes" for one thing, and I
| build most of them out of spare parts. And I haven't jumped
| on the electronic shifting band wagon either. I don't
| necessarily see all these technos as bad but I spend enough
| time in front of my computer and I want my bikes to stay part
| of the analog world.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >Many new electric bikes also have GPS + SIM tracking.
|
| A few.
| authed wrote:
| From 2014: Ford Exec: 'We Know Everyone Who Breaks The Law'
| Thanks To Our GPS In Your Car
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/ford-exec-gps-2014-1
|
| I too wish that there would be an easy way to disconnect my car
| (it is of zero use to me).
| nogridbag wrote:
| It may be preferable to have some automated system that fines
| you for excessive speeding versus the alternative: police
| with guns. At least in the United States.
| jcadam wrote:
| Speed cameras do that, and without my own car spying on me.
| driverdan wrote:
| Take the SIM card out. Or better yet, don't buy a car that
| tracks you.
| authed wrote:
| > Take the SIM card out
|
| my phone can communicate without a sim card (at least with
| 911)... and I have no clue if my car has a sim card or if
| it needs one.
|
| > don't buy a car that tracks you
|
| For that, you probably need to buy a car that is at least
| 20 years old?
| masklinn wrote:
| Good luck finding a modern car without a built-in SIM.
|
| In Europe, eCall (automated emergency call) has been
| mandatory since 2018.
| somehnguy wrote:
| >Or better yet, don't buy a car that tracks you.
|
| I don't like this type of advice as everyday technology
| gets more evil. It's shifting the blame to the consumer
| instead of the makers of the evil, and it's nearly
| impossible to follow. I'm a software developer/tech nerd
| and couldn't tell you which cars do and don't track you,
| and we expect the average purchaser to know..? It's not
| like the window sticker will say 'hey this car tracks you',
| that detail will be in the middle of a 30 page dense legal
| speak document that almost nobody reads.
|
| It's very similar to when a large food conglomerate does
| something terrible and people try to boycott. I'm
| completely aware of the terrible things food company x did
| and try to be at least somewhat informed with my
| purchasing, but food company x has 50 subsidiaries who have
| 50 subsidiaries, etc. I don't know about you but when I go
| shopping I don't have all day to google on my phone if the
| specific product I'm looking at is 4 levels down from evil
| company x. And I have a relatively large amount of free
| time in my life at the moment - it's a completely hopeless
| endeavor for someone with kids or other responsibilities
| that significantly cut down on their idle time.
|
| If only our government would step in and you know...stop
| companies from getting away with evil things.
| grishka wrote:
| Also, what happens if you remove the SIM card or the cellular
| antenna?
| rndgermandude wrote:
| There was a story of some rental car that couldn't be
| unlocked again on some remote parking lot, because it was out
| of range. The customer did nothing wrong. They ended up
| having to tow the car in the end, if I remember correctly.
|
| With actual possession of vehicles going down, in favor of
| leases (or leases-to-buy) and short term rentals/"ride-
| sharing", and with ever more permanent monitoring, the future
| seems to go into a direction where you're required to have a
| constantly available data connection in your car back to the
| car company or lease company, and they will be able to
| remotely disable access if you don't pay up. And they will
| probably consider loss of such connection as "tampering" and
| disable the cars until it gets online again.
| grishka wrote:
| There's a difference between owning something or renting
| it. When you rent something, there's a contract you sign
| that specifies what you can and can't do. You generally
| expect the owner to have the technical capability to
| enforce the contract in case you breach it. But when you
| own it, then no one else should retain any sort of control
| over it, period. It's yours only. (You obviously don't own
| something if you got it on a loan, not until you paid it
| off.)
| rndgermandude wrote:
| > But when you own it, then no one else should retain any
| sort of control over it, period.
|
| Right. But there is another issue especially with
| vehicles... You need insurance to operate them on public
| road. And insurers like to monitor things now that the
| tech is available/becomes available...
|
| And the current US government wants your car to monitor
| your "impairness" as well[0] and brick itself if it
| considers you impaired.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29427068
| auslegung wrote:
| Agreed, but with DMCA (and probably other laws) our
| concept of ownership is gone. Any music one buys that has
| DMCA, isn't owned it's just rented, and yet most people
| don't realize that. So there's a precedence for thinking
| we own something when in practice we just rent it. I can
| see that happening with cars. For example the law that
| was just passed that new cars will have to come with
| alcohol detectors https://www.washingtonpost.com/transpor
| tation/2019/10/16/bil.... Whether we think this would be
| good or not, it's eroding our concept of ownership.
| grishka wrote:
| I'm specifically talking about the old-school, physical
| kind of ownership. Whether one could "own" infinitely
| copyable information at all is highly debatable.
|
| > For example the law that was just passed that new cars
| will have to come with alcohol detectors
|
| On the one hand, this is a welcome innovation because one
| is free to do whatever they want as long as that doesn't
| endanger others and drunk driving does endanger others
| quite a lot. On the other, if you own your car, what's to
| stop you from bypassing the detector like some people
| would bypass the seatbelt beeping thing?
| heartbeats wrote:
| > that has DMCA
|
| Do you mean DRM?
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| I suspect that's what the OP meant. (I'm also not sure
| anyone sells digital music files with DRM anymore --
| books and movies, yes, but not _music._ But I think it 's
| kind of become cemented as the go-to example in a lot of
| people's minds.)
| lnsru wrote:
| All the data is stored in the car and next time during
| regular service it gets transferred to the manufacturer using
| wired connection? Have no proof for that, but it sounds very
| reasonable and technically doable to me.
| beervirus wrote:
| I mean I already bring my phone with me on those errands. My
| location isn't exactly a secret.
|
| It sucks, and I hate it. But the car isn't any additional
| problem.
| natch wrote:
| I'm not sure what would break if it was offline.
|
| I do know you can drive the car while the computer is rebooting
| (when it's rebooting the screen is completely black and you
| have to gauge your speed by comparison to other cars the road),
| so in theory it seems you don't need the computer for basic
| driving, which would suggest maybe what you say is also
| possible, if there's a setting for it.
|
| I haven't checked because I like the benefits of being
| connected -- starting and stopping a charge remotely, seeing
| the state of charge while it's charging somewhere far away,
| opening / closing windows, unlocking the car, flashing lights
| or honking horn to locate car, preheating, and coming soon,
| seeing car's location on a map when it's being driven by
| someone else, viewing live dash cam (sentry) footage while the
| car is parked remotely, etc. etc.
|
| I mean I do see your point but I've listed some of the
| benefits, and life is full of tradeoffs. I'm not saying that
| the takeoffs that work for me would ever in a million years
| work for you.
|
| It would also be great if all of the above could be done
| through a neutral third party or through one's own server. But
| as a startup that was struggling at the beginning, that
| probably wasn't the low hanging fruit for Tesla to work on, and
| there are benefits for Tesla to having the connection be to
| Tesla. And some of those benefits accrue indirectly back to
| consumers through safer cars, better accountability for
| accidents, and better data for future self driving software.
| eulers_secret wrote:
| > seeing car's location on a map when it's being driven by
| someone else, viewing live dash cam (sentry) footage while
| the car is parked remotely...
|
| I'm concerned these features in specific may be used by
| abusive spouses to track and control their partners (or
| extract revenge upon them). It's honestly pretty grim when
| you can't even use the "shared" (abuser likely would be the
| sole 'owner' on the title) vehicles to escape an abusive
| situation. Any upside of this kind of feature is very must
| overshadowed by the abuses enabled.
|
| Additionally, I'm sad that if I do something stupid in a
| parking lot (say I fall and hurt myself) that the video can
| be recorded by any number of vehicles and posted to
| facebook/youtube/etc for yucks. Nothing can be done about it,
| there's no way to stop it. I hate it, though, and I hate that
| people are excited for these terrible slipshod "features"
| that won't help them as much as they hurt others.
| enominezerum wrote:
| At least with the tracking, thieves are now using Apple Air
| tags to track and plan carjackings. With a Tesla, so much
| focus being on the app and connectivity, it is more likely
| that a person would be aware of this tracking or at least
| the capability of it. FWIW my wife knew about the location
| finding, she just had never actually followed me driving
| around.
|
| She found out when I used it coordinate a birthday surprise
| at our place, I could tell when she left her office and was
| about 30 minutes away.
| natch wrote:
| Agree about the abuse / tracking thing. Again, tradeoffs.
| Keep in mind these cars get updated over time and it can
| get better.
|
| Management of driver profiles is still a work in progress
| for example. Some things work great and some features
| simply aren't there yet. For example I have issues with
| music handoff between two different drivers on one family
| Spotify account (where each driver has their own Spotify
| account using their own distinct email). They could easily
| make it so that it knows by phone proximity which driver is
| in the car, and play only their music, but they haven't
| gotten to this yet.
|
| Anyway, in addition to stuff like music profile
| improvements, I'd expect privacy options to get better too.
|
| The parking lot thing, I don't see the harm really until
| the day when the likes of Google has a car gathering these
| recordings.
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| I am not really surprised people don't care, they mostly want
| technology for either status or convenience and I don't think I
| can blame them for the latter
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| The main issue here I guess, is Tesla assisting the bailiffs.
| Bailiffs (here in the UK) have certain legal rights to enter and
| repossess your house and/or remove property you haven't fully
| paid for. They are granted this right via a case-by-case court
| order.
|
| If Telsa are also granted the rights within the court order to
| assist the bailiffs, then presumably it would be a fully legal
| action.
|
| At the end of the day, you sign a contract wherein you agree to
| keep up payments on an item, and if you don't the item will be
| repossessed. If you don't like those terms, don't get stuff on
| payment plans.
| Retric wrote:
| Most US car dealerships will make a new key for someone
| repossessing a car. As Tesla is the dealership this seems like
| the exact same situation, the only difference is someone with
| the key can now remote summon the car.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I could see that if they are holding the financing. If the
| car is financed by a third party, I cannot imagine why the
| dealer would want or care to get involved.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > someone with the key can now remote summon the car
|
| Cars with remote summons features today basically just crawl
| forward a few metres to help you get out of a parking spot.
| They aren't self-driving across town to a repossession lot,
| if that's what you're thinking.
| flutas wrote:
| > Cars with remote summons features today basically just
| crawl forward a few metres to help you get out of a parking
| spot.
|
| Smart summon on a M3 (what the article is talking about)
| can back out and navigate parking lots... although horribly
| and slowly. But it's not just a straight line.
| captainredbeard wrote:
| > Smart summon on a M3
|
| M3 = BMW M3
|
| Model 3 = what you're talking bout
| w0m wrote:
| You can do dumb summon (straight forward/backword) with
| the key; not smart summon. The description in the article
| is consistent with what you could do with the key; likely
| article author misunderstanding the feature (easy
| mistake).
| spike021 wrote:
| One time someone did this in a Costco parking lot from 2
| rows away from me and my parked car. It pulled out of its
| spot 3 spaces away from my car, started doing a u-turn
| that would've had it hit my car in order to drive
| _through_ the row of parking spots. I was standing in
| front of my car wondering where the eff the driver was
| (obviously it was smart summon but in the heat of the
| moment...). Lots of families go to Costco, I could 've
| easily had a small child with me next to my car and we
| would've been about 8 or so feet from being hit by a car
| that apparently had no idea I was there.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| The worst part about this for me is that the Costco
| parking lot is already a cluster without having to add in
| the "show off my car to my brother in law" game to the
| mix.
|
| I avoid Costco like the plague because the experience is
| always bad for my mental health. I'd rather pay a few
| extra bucks to avoid oblivious giant cart drivers, having
| to show multiple forms of ID , having my receipt
| validated before I can leave, having to figure out how to
| transport stuff to and from car, etc. Plus, there is no
| consistency in the non-grocery inventory. You're forced
| into the "we _have_ to buy these pans today because we
| never know when they'll be available again!"
| psychological trap.
|
| It's just a very inconvenient shopping experience in my
| opinion. But I know I'm the only person in America who
| feels this way.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I wouldn't disagree with your experience complaint, but
| Costco exists precisely because it doesn't care about the
| "shopping experience". If you go to Costco, you forgo the
| right to complain about the "shopping experience" because
| you are explicitly choosing something with a bad one in
| exchange for very cheap goods.
|
| Walmart and Target: slightly better experience, slightly
| more expensive.
|
| Supermarkets and Malls: better experience, more expensive
|
| So I guess, you aren't the only person in America, but
| people make the choice to accept the burden for the price
| savings.
| sizzle wrote:
| Walmart parking lots are equally busy and hard to
| navigate in my experience
| CrazyStat wrote:
| Odd, I've always considered Costco to have one of the
| best shopping experiences. Stuff on the shelves, I go
| find what I want and check out.
|
| I generally hate supermarkets and malls. Annoying music,
| questionable `sales` pushed on aisle end caps and
| elsewhere, etc. Not the experience I'm after.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| My problem is that when a driver hits a small child they
| go to jail. Are there any consequences for Tesla when
| they get it wrong? A small dent in share prices that day
| doesn't cut it for me.
| sjooo wrote:
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Yes, if they were ruled at fault, just like any other
| company.
|
| If the operator was ruled at fault, they would receive
| consequences.
|
| Are you insinuating that Tesla operates on a higher level
| than the law and is receiving special privileges vs other
| automakers, or are you saying all automakers should be
| more accountable? What event are you pointing to they
| should be more accountable for? Or is this all just a
| vague hypothetical?
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| What if instead of hitting a child the car took control
| killed about 300 people? And what if it wasn't in parking
| lot summons but regular driving assistance? And maybe it
| wasn't a car but an airplane?
|
| Are you sure there would be any material consequences for
| the board and leadership?
| Retric wrote:
| Boing recently face real financial consequences from the
| 737 Max defect.
|
| Holding companies to the same standards as members of the
| general public runs into an issue of how large an impact
| they have. A Surgeon is going to make mistakes that kill
| people, but just because people are imperfect doesn't
| mean effectively banning surgery via sending every
| surgeon to prison after their first mistake is
| appropriate. Roll up to a single hospital and mistakes
| are inevitably common, roll up to a hospital network and
| serious mistakes happen every day. The only way
| organizations at that scale can operate is with quite a
| bit of slack.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| The financial consequences are nothing for the company,
| even less for those responsible. For accountability there
| need to be personal consequences for cases of extreme and
| wilful negligence for cases like Boeings.
|
| I'm not advocating for life in prison for the top brass,
| but some prison time surely.
|
| Unless we just start issuing fines and warnings to the
| regular people to deal with manslaughter of criminal
| negligence.
| skellera wrote:
| While I'm not saying summon is a great feature, it would
| not have hit the things you're mentioning.
|
| Its major flaw is thin upright things like small trees or
| poles (although this may be better on vision only cars,
| I'm not sure). If it sees a person or child in its path,
| it's just going to stop.
| Izkata wrote:
| From someone who automatic doors wouldn't react to as a
| thin teenager, this isn't very reassuring.
| angry-sw-dev wrote:
| > While I'm not saying summon is a great feature, it
| would not have hit the things you're mentioning.
|
| ...and auto pilot won't drive into giant barriers in the
| middle of well-marked, and mapped, highway divide either,
| right?
| spike021 wrote:
| Considering the wall of parked cars it was attempting to
| do a u-turn into, I'd say you're wrong.
| achenatx wrote:
| when someone in a car hits a child they do not go to jail
| ctdonath wrote:
| A first step. Won't be long before the car goes to the
| repossession lot itself.
|
| Tesla is evolving country music: not only will your girl
| leave you, so will your truck.
| dylan604 wrote:
| To further this, what are the parameters before
| requesting the RTB option? If the car is currently
| driving (assuming the "owner" is currently using the
| car), will it reroute with them in as an involuntary
| passenger? Before attempting to RTB, will it determine
| the route and distance necessary and determine the amount
| of charge required and then verify there's enough? Will
| the car need to be in park for a minimum amount of time
| first? What if it's parked and I'm loading my small child
| into a car seat when the RTB order is issued? Will it
| start driving away with my kid? What if the car is
| currently plugged in when the RTB is ordered? Will it rip
| out the charging cable and cause further damage to the
| car or my house? Who will be responsible for that damage?
|
| Soooo many questions.
| angry-sw-dev wrote:
| It's reasonable to assume an open door will prevent
| movement...
|
| ...being plugged in to a charger (that doesn't have some
| sort of automated disconnect) would also be disable.
|
| The question is valid though after you've put the kid in
| and you're on 30 second excursion to push the shopping
| carriage back... what if the car is recalled? Seems like
| a potential disaster and tragedy.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| I'm hopeful that by the time cars can be automatically
| repossessed without a human operator they'll have set up
| a network of on-demand rentals and I won't have to worry
| about car ownership and all the nonsense it entails.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Do you actually prefer the subscription hell we are in
| now with companies like Adobe deciding we can no longer
| actually own any software and have to continuously rent
| it?
|
| Google actually seems like they will be first to full
| self driving. My biggest fear is that they continue to
| have zero interest in being an actual car company and
| keep all their Waymo tech locked behind their taxis and
| Lyfts are replaced by Waymos with no reduction in price,
| just a loss job for the person who would normally drive
| the Lyft. Other companies follow suit and the self
| driving car dream is ruined to make C suite executives
| richer.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| > Do you actually prefer the subscription hell we are in
| now with companies like Adobe deciding we can no longer
| actually own any software and have to continuously rent
| it?
|
| No, I don't prefer software subscriptions with monthly
| fees. I don't find the "maintenance" required for
| software annoying or onerous. However, I really don't
| like car maintenance. Waiting for an oil change, tire
| replacement or rotation, or really any repair is the
| worst part of car ownership and I could die happy never
| having to do any of that again. I don't place a lot of
| value on ownership in general because of maintenance or
| storage burdens.
|
| I do like pay-as-you-go for most of the stuff I use, for
| whatever it's worth. Food, electricity, gas, that sort of
| thing. I use cabs when I go on vacation and look for
| opportunities to travel by bus, train, or plane instead
| of driving. A self-serve on-demand auto rental service
| would be ideal, for me.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Don't the higher end car brands in your area do
| pickup/return service? BMW picks my car up from the
| office parking garage, changes oil or tires and returns
| it before the end of the day. All I have to do is pick a
| day in their online portal and leave the keys at he
| reception desk.
|
| I very much prefer owning a car over renting because I
| can leave things in the car. Like child seats, but also
| extra clothes, diapers, a phone charger, some snacks etc.
| qubitcoder wrote:
| I'm with you on detesting car maintenance when owning a
| vehicle.
|
| To be fair, most of those maintenance options do go away
| with fully-electric vehicles. For example, you could
| lease a Tesla Model 3/Y. The process is impressively
| streamlined: pay $100 using Touch ID and Apple Pay, then
| select a pick-up date on the calendar. Now you have a
| vehicle with basically no maintenance, apart from topping
| up wiper fluid. All managed with an intuitive and highly-
| polished mobile app. In 3 years, repeat process.
|
| My intention isn't to advertise for Tesla. I'm just
| pointing out that options exist nowadays for people who
| dislike the entire hassle of vehicle ownership (dealing
| with dealerships, negotiation, financing, scheduled &
| unscheduled maintenance, etc.)
| josefx wrote:
| Usually rental anything is a lot more costly in the long
| run than outright ownership. So someone getting his Tesla
| repossessed probably wont be any better of trying to rent
| one. Thought my biggest problem with large scale car
| rentals are times like rush hour where nearly everyone
| needs a car at the same time, so there either has to be a
| giant capacity or you have to rely on most people still
| having their own car.
| oconnor663 wrote:
| Ha. Though my guess is, once self-driving is reliable
| enough to do that, the economics of car ownership are
| going to flip completely. It won't make sense anymore to
| have a car that spends most of its time sitting unused in
| your garage.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| That is only going to happen for most people if the
| economics of car rentals are VEEEEEERRY reasonable. I am
| not willing to wait 10 minutes for an available vehicle
| every time I need to go somewhere. People who are
| dreaming of a day of full automation need to take this
| into account, because while I don't know how long the
| average trip by car is, I suspect that it's somewhere in
| the 15-20 minute range, which is impossible to match even
| with a fully autonomous driving scheme that can ignore
| things like stop lights and stop signs.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Uber now is rarely 10 minutes or more. Usually <5 if
| you're in a major city.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It depends how easily they can be cleaned of others'
| odors and messes, and how often they need to get cleaned.
|
| Presumably if the rate of mess is low enough and there
| are extra cars, you would just request a new one. Then
| they punish the person who left the mess or odor,
| disincentivizing them from doing it again. Probably need
| cameras monitoring the inside of the car.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's not so much messes. Rentals, including short-term
| ones, are a thing today. But rather there's a lot of
| value to many people to have the car that they want when
| they want it, leaving certain belongings in the car,
| having the car equipped for their purposes whether child
| seats or roof racks, etc.
|
| While I honestly don't expect door to door self driving
| in most places for decades, a lot of people who don't use
| cars much probably underestimate the degree to which many
| people customize their vehicles. And even if they sit a
| lot of the time, most of the cost is often in miles, not
| time.
| db65edfc7996 wrote:
| In a world where car ownership is limited, I can imagine
| that the car interiors would be changed drastically.
| Something like a subway car with hard plastic seats and
| easily sanitized surfaces.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| People keep saying this, but I don't get it. The majority
| of your possessions spend most of their time sitting
| idle. Even if I just look at the higher value ones: my
| riding lawnmower gets used for a couple of hours every
| few weeks, my garden tractor/snowblower even less
| frequently, then I've got a trailer, a truck,
| miscellaneous tools, etc.
|
| I could rent every single one of these, but don't because
| the economics don't make sense, and the use model would
| otherwise lead to a lot of inconvenience.
| angry-sw-dev wrote:
| The lynchpin in these arguments is that you'll somehow be
| able to summon a vehicle on a moments notice and all your
| usage will still be less expensive than personal
| ownership. The cost will be low because no humans are
| involved...
|
| Except it didn't work for ZipCar or the rental agencies
| that have added hourly options -- sure it's not bad, but
| is it really pushing people out of car ownership? No...
|
| Ride sharing similarly hasn't worked to push people out
| of car ownership either -- it's just killed traditional
| taxi services by compensating drivers less and
| eliminating the flag down monopoly some cities have
| maintained (a taxi medallion in Boston/NYC used to be
| worth hundreds of thousands... no one wants them now)
|
| All these share options work for low use scenarios like
| the city dweller who wants a weekly trip to a shopping
| center, but for the daily commuter/driver it won't ever
| make sense... and it'll never make sense for those that
| need to keep things in their car like child seats,
| diapers, a walker, tools, etc...
|
| Bike/Scooter shares haven't eliminated personal ownership
| either because of the scarcity issue at peak times.
| ghaff wrote:
| My observation in that all of these things (plus delivery
| services, Amazon, etc.) can make a difference at the
| margins. If someone doesn't have a daily commute (or has
| a reasonable transit or bicycle/walk option) and
| otherwise isn't transporting themselves, other family
| members, home improvement stuff, etc. on a daily or near-
| daily basis, collectively they may let a household do
| without a car (or at least a second car).
|
| A couple I know in SF don't have a car but they seem to
| make a lot of use of cars in some form or other pretty
| regularly.
| spicybright wrote:
| Not to mention, do you really trust 20 strangers to treat
| your possessions as well as you do?
|
| Have these people never been in the back of a taxi, or
| any kind of public transit?
| tomc1985 wrote:
| It's the same crap preached by the cloud infrastructure
| folks trying to get everyone on a rental/sharecropping
| model. Ah those sweet rents
| romwell wrote:
| Imagine, now, that self-driving combined with Uber pool,
| so that people who need to get from and to the same
| destinations at the same time (as is typical for
| commutes) would be able to share the ride.
|
| Imagine then making those vehicles larger to enable not
| only a decrease in traffic, but an increase in housing
| density, local infrastructure in walking distance, and
| economic growth.
|
| Imagine if we then realized we could _charge_ that
| elongated car _as it 's driving_ if we put electric lines
| above streets.
|
| Oh, and why not increase rolling efficiency while we're
| at that, and make the task of self-driving simpler by
| embedding signaling infrastructure into the road itself.
|
| You just imagined buses, trolley buses, and streetcars
| respectively.
|
| Which is what makes the most sense, and will continue
| making the most sense for vehicles that don't sit in your
| garage most of the time.
|
| There's more to car ownership than being able to get from
| A to B in principle.
|
| Once you add immediate availability, individual vehicle
| preferences, _having your stuff in the car already_ , the
| ability to _keep your stuff there_ once you arrive at
| your destination, never having to think about small, but
| normal usage damage (especially if you have kids), or,
| conversely, having the vehicle just as clean as you want
| it...
|
| ...you will see that garages aren 't going anywhere any
| time soon, self-driving cars or not.
|
| And that we'd be wise to develop actual public transport
| infrastructure for the people who really _do_ only care
| about getting from A to B, with some acceptable wait
| time. It 's a win-win for everyone.
|
| My pessimistic prognosis is that the development of the
| self-driving car will make the taxis slightly cheaper,
| but instead of paying your Uber driver, you're going to
| be paying engineers, maintenance, and cleaning staff.
| fallingknife wrote:
| The fact that Uber is so popular even though it is more
| than 10x the price of a bus shows exactly how much people
| want to ride buses.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| An Uber (or personal car) also has the advantage of being
| able to take an alternate route. I used to work on the
| west side of Capitol Hill in Seattle and lived on the
| east side of the hill. Any time something like Hempfest
| or Pride was going on, it literally became faster to walk
| home than take the bus. If I was driving I could have
| taken an alternate route and gotten home in a fairly
| reasonable amount of time.
| ljm wrote:
| Imagine how different the US would be if it was Big
| Public Transportation that lobbied to have towns and
| cities designed around them, rather than the car
| industry. Walking, cycling, buses, trams, trains, etc.
| etc. You'd still have cars but they wouldn't be a basic
| need for survival like they're often treated as, because
| you can't get anywhere without one.
|
| Because it was basically 100 years ago when the car
| industry sought to dismantle that infrastructure, and
| succeeded.
| asdff wrote:
| To be fair it wasn't some conspiracy. The reason why
| people began using the car 100 years ago was that the car
| was becoming widely available and it was super convenient
| even in the days when roads were caked in horse manure.
| Even in the peak of the streetcar era, the private car
| was the best way around town, and as more people bought
| more cars, it continued to dominate as the streetcar
| would be bogged down in traffic just like a bus today.
| Intercity passenger rail also didn't stand much of a
| chance against the convenience and speed of the jet age.
| ljm wrote:
| There was _a_ conspiracy, or at least Wikipedia refers to
| it as such: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_
| streetcar_consp....
|
| That is to say, there's enough there to suggest that this
| wasn't the free market answering solely to consumer
| demand.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Regardless of whether or not there was a conspiracy, I
| think the last 100 years of private vehicle ownership in
| the US have shown that solely due to the convenience, it
| would have happened anyway.
| the8472 wrote:
| A bad equilibrium is still an equilibrium. That is not
| evidence that there aren't better ones.
| ljm wrote:
| I don't think that follows, because you have to prove
| that car ownership would have increased the same way
| without any intervention by car manufacturers. You're
| treating it as a foregone conclusion.
|
| If you follow the same 100 year trajectory in other
| countries, then you will see an uptick in car ownership
| for sure, and infrastructure adapts to support this
| (highways/freeways/motorways), but it's not nearly as
| drastic as it is stateside.
|
| Of course, the US is a large place and even its states
| are larger than other countries. And it hasn't existed in
| its modern form for more than a couple of centuries
| whereas the civil infra on the other continents has been
| around for at least a full millennium and most likely
| longer than that (e.g. Roman roads in the UK that would
| date back well over 1000 years). So the US got the luxury
| of a blank slate and, well... see what you got from that.
|
| At the same time...car manufacturers had the perfect
| opportunity to seize so they could sell more cars and
| thus have civil infrastructure designed around the fact
| that everyone has a car. If someone at that point in time
| had more money than Henry Ford they could have dumped it
| into trams and trains and the landscape would have been
| significantly changed.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Imagine calling a self-driving taxi that doesn't know
| someone puked on the back seat.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Every body says this but how many of us are going to want
| randos treating our vehicles like shit because its a
| rental?
| earleybird wrote:
| Vehicles are more than a transport service; they are
| also, for example, a place to keep your stuff while you
| run errands.
| dylan604 wrote:
| What if your dog is in the truck? Can you then go after
| them for kidnapping?
| dentemple wrote:
| Dogs aren't considered people (in the US), so it would be
| considered stolen property _at best_ if this were an
| actual thing.
|
| Likely, they'll pass the animal on to a shelter and give
| you the info as to where to pick them up. It wouldn't be
| considered "stealing".
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| This depends entirely on how quickly they get to the
| vehicle, but given the money involved, I'm sure they will
| just lobby to have the death of the dog pinned on the
| owner.
| dylan604 wrote:
| To this point, after crossing the state line from Nevada
| into California, there are highway signs that state the
| fines for littering and abadoning an animal on the side
| of the highway. The fine for littering is significantly
| higher than animal abandonment.
| jchw wrote:
| I don't usually vote up comments that are mostly humorous
| on HN, but there's always an exception.
|
| To me the problem isn't that they might, but that they
| can. I guess the fault is technically on the person who
| rented something under terrible terms, but the problem to
| me is that over time terrible terms seem to win out over
| reasonable ones.
|
| Not to mention, if Tesla is capable of doing this for
| rentals, I have to assume they are capable of doing it
| for any Tesla. Which is not great.
| voakbasda wrote:
| The house always wins. Contract terms almost always give
| favor the issuer.
| Moru wrote:
| Or that any hacker that gets into Teslas system will have
| a field day.
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| Mass theft, bricking, or actual crashing potential. It's
| a Futurama episode/ Sword of Damocles waiting to happen.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Right. Compromise the right credentials, and you can
| order a high percentage of parked Teslas to start backing
| up.
|
| That probably won't make them cause damage immediately --
| I assume there's a set of sensors that will apply brakes
| rather than hit a wall or a detected car -- but there's a
| lot of chaos to apply that way.
|
| I wonder if Tesla's EULA immunizes them against such
| breaches.
| usefulcat wrote:
| > over time terrible terms seem to win out over
| reasonable ones
|
| Tyranny of the marketplace, I guess. If most people are
| not bothered by the terrible terms, then the selection of
| items with non-terrible terms will be correspondingly
| small.
|
| Case in point: I'd like to buy a TV (even at a higher
| price) that does not have ads all over the interface.
| From what I can tell, as of right now there are
| approximately a handful of such TVs, not counting older
| models that probably aren't produced any more. And of
| course out of that handful, most are not very good in
| other respects..
|
| I don't know how to solve that apart from regulation,
| which is often a very poor solution.
| stalfosknight wrote:
| My solution is to never setup wifi or provide ethernet to
| my TVs. They can't vomit ads all over the screen or track
| what you're watching if they can't get online.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Buy industrial signage displays. You'll be paying a
| significant premium but it's basically the only way to
| get a high quality non-smart tv these days.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| The "main issue" is that Tesla is even _able_ to assist the
| bailiffs in this manner.
|
| If a remote party can, by design, lock you out of your car and
| take control of it without your consent, do you even really own
| the vehicle in the first place?
|
| Others have argued "well, you don't own the car, the bank
| does", but unless Tesla is somehow unable to do this with cars
| _not_ owned by a lienholder, that 's kinda beside the point as
| far as I'm concerned.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| In the UK that would be interference with goods (a tort) or
| taking a vehicle without the owner's consent (a criminal
| offense).
|
| Still in the UK, although I suspect that holds more
| generally, when you buy something using a loan you own it.
| What you bought may be a security for the loan but that's
| different. Leasing a car or using a lease/purchase scheme is
| also different since leasing means you rent but don't own.
| zionic wrote:
| I agree with you, but he same is true for physical keys. A
| car dealership can create a working key to steal/repossess
| your car in much the same way.
|
| We really need to move to strong crypto.
| Thrymr wrote:
| If you don't own the car outright, why would an entity with
| a lien on the vehicle not also have access to such "strong
| crypto" legally? This is an issued with a secured loan,
| presumably in a crypto world the repossession would be
| allowed by "smart contract" if the borrower defaulted.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| In my mind there's a significant difference between a
| dealership using their knowledge of the car to assist with
| repossession, and a manufacturer demonstrating that you
| never really had control of your own car in the first
| place.
|
| It just feels like a betrayal. Your car is loyal to the
| manufacturer, not to you. It will act in a manner directly
| opposed to your best interests as the owner if company that
| sold it to you orders it. I understand that's true for most
| software these days, but that doesn't make me any happier
| about it, and it really feels worse when the software in
| question is inextricably tied to and in control of an
| expensive piece of physical hardware that you purchased.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| As stated in other places here, if you have leased or
| financed your car, YOU DON'T OWN IT. You pay for the
| right to use it on a monthly basis.
|
| That is why there are legal contracts. This is just
| automated repossession.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > That is why there are legal contracts. This is just
| automated repossession.
|
| There is value in adding friction to enforcing
| law/contracts: I don't know if FSD-repo crosses the line
| for me, but I know automating enforcement is bad for
| society.
|
| What if everytime Tesla cameras detect the car speeding,
| or has crossed double-lines, it helpfully charges the
| fine to the linked credit card? After all, its just
| automated ticketing, right?
| donio wrote:
| Directive 4: [Classified]
| josephcsible wrote:
| We want things to be "loyal" to their owners. But the key
| point in this story is that if you don't pay for your
| car, then you're not the owner of it.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| I'd have no issue with the lienholder having ultimate
| control of car until the loan is paid off. As I said in
| my initial comment, that's completely beside the point.
|
| The problem here is that Model 3s are apparently "loyal"
| to their _manufacturer_ rather than the owner, regardless
| of who that owner is (whether that be a lienholder, the
| car 's "user", or anyone else that's not Tesla).
|
| That Tesla used that misplaced loyalty to give the car
| back to the lienholder in this case is irrelevant to my
| point.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Are you okay with manufacturers helping with
| repossessions by cutting new physical keys for non-
| connected cars? If so, how is this any different?
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| See my comment 4 levels up from this one.
|
| "I know what this person's key was when I sold him the
| car. Here, have a copy."
|
| VS.
|
| "I have full control of this person's car, even though
| I'm not the owner. Here, let me remotely disable it for
| you."
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Yes, you really own the vehicle, and that is why if Tesla
| intentionally just bricks/locks you out of your car because
| they feel like it, you would sue them and almost certainly
| win in court.
| mikeryan wrote:
| In the US a financed car is "owned" by the bank until fully
| paid off - which most of the time is a subsidiary of the
| manufacturer.
|
| A lot of Teslas are also just leased.
| dangerbird2 wrote:
| It's not owned by the bank until you foreclose, after which
| it's most certainly owned by the bank.
|
| As an aside, how often is it for the manufacturer/dealer to
| own the bank that issues auto loans. I got mine from
| Capital One, and I assumed most auto loans outside of the
| sketchy loanshark used car dealers were issued by the big
| national banks
| nomel wrote:
| Why is this comment being downvoted? It appears to be
| correct.
| mikeryan wrote:
| In most states the financing bank owns the title to the
| car and is the "Legal Owner" as opposed to the
| "Registered Owner" who is the one who is buying the car.
|
| The used market is likely different but for new cars from
| Dealerships, GM Financial, Toyota Financial, Ford Credit
| etc are Billion Dollar subsidiaries.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Is that true? In my state the financing bank has a lien
| recorded on on the title, but they are not the owner.
| Maybe that is the exception?
|
| Edit: reading some other comments ... I'm talking about
| the traditional financed purchase of a car, not a lease.
| Agree that for a leased car (which is quite common now
| though I've never done it), the ownership stays with the
| leasing entity.
| mikeryan wrote:
| No this is for financed cars.
|
| When you live in a title-holding state, the title will be
| issued to the registered owner/operator of the car,
| regardless of lien holder. Though your lien holder will
| receive a separate document verifying their connection to
| the loan, you will be in possession of the title itself.
|
| There are only nine title-holding states: Kentucky,
| Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New
| York, Oklahoma, Wisconsin. _In the other 41 states,
| titles are issued to the lien holder of your vehicle
| until the loan is fully paid off._
|
| From: https://www.rategenius.com/resources/titles/#:~:tex
| t=There%2....
| giobox wrote:
| It used to be quite common; at various times in its
| history you can make the argument Ford sold cars at a
| loss to help Ford Credit sell profitable car loans. Even
| today, Ford Credit (loans/leases etc) is responsible for
| about 50% of Ford's annual profits:
|
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Motor_Credit_Company
|
| There have been quite a few years Ford made more profit
| as a "bank" than they did from making and selling the
| cars. If you get a new Ford from a dealer and request
| finance/lease options, its pretty typical for Ford Credit
| to provide the backing.
| mdoms wrote:
| Did you really not read the last sentence of the comment
| you responded to?
| giobox wrote:
| This is by no means limited to Tesla, and is true of almost
| every new car sold now.
|
| As an example, almost every new Ford sold in the USA since
| 2019 has standard 5G/GPS remote connectivity; even the
| cheapest entry level cars at Ford like the new Maverick can
| remotely over 5G unlock doors and remote start the engine
| (just like the 'owner' can in the Ford pass app, now standard
| spec on virtually all Fords.). The manufacturers of course
| love the extra usage metrics and can also over the air sell
| upgrades like 5G hotspot access and so forth. Many cars now
| have 5G/GPS receiver for metrics even if no connectivity or
| nav features whatsoever exposed to user.
|
| My point is; aside from the use of "summon", this kind of
| locate, remote unlock and start by manufacturer is available
| on almost all new cars sold today, no matter how cheap - the
| 5G remote access tech has become increasingly ubiquitous.
| This is not something unique to the way Tesla creates it cars
| at all, especially in 2021.
|
| > https://www.ford.com/support/how-tos/fordpass/fordpass-
| remot...
| Joker_vD wrote:
| > If Telsa are also granted the rights within the court order
| to assist the bailiffs
|
| From what limited knowledge of law enforcement I have (and it's
| very little, I admit), it's reversed: everyone by default is
| legally obliged to assist a law officer, on their request, to
| enforce the law and order; there are some limits beyond which
| explicit court orders are required, but those limits are rather
| broad.
| junon wrote:
| This is an assumption based on current events and climate
| toward LEOs and is very far from the truth. There _are_ very
| clear boundaries for assisting with law enforcement. Warrants
| are not magical documents that allow anything to happen.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > everyone by default is legally obliged to assist a law
| officer,
|
| Are bailiffs law officers in that sense?
| staticassertion wrote:
| I agree, though I think that ideally companies are advocates
| for their customers. For example, companies have to turn
| information over to courts, but they can push back on some, and
| publish transparency reports for others. Yes, they have to
| comply with the law, but imo a company has an obligation to
| advocate for their customers.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| Well, technically, the bank owns the car till you pay it off.
| So, maybe they are advocating for their customers?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| In nine states, this is not legally accurate.
|
| In those states, you have the title and the bank has a lien
| on the title.
| teh_klev wrote:
| In the UK there's a couple of ways this works:
|
| 1. Unsecured loan - if you have the credit facility
| available then you can borrow an unsecured amount of money
| and purchase a car. Neither the seller nor the bank have
| any ownership interest in the car. The loan isn't secured
| on the car. You are free to sell the car on and transfer
| its title to anyone else. If you default on the loan then
| different proceedings may take place to recover the money
| owed, but that may not necessarily include re-possessing
| the car (if it's valued under GBP3000.00). The loan company
| can come after any of your assets.
|
| 2. Hire Purchase - the seller lends you through a credit
| company the price of the car (and interest). The seller
| transfers the title of the to the credit company. You do
| not become the "owner" of the car, instead you rent it
| until such time the total amount of the loan is paid off.
| You don't have any right to sell or transfer ownership of
| the car. If you do the unfortunate buyer of the car may
| wake up one morning to find that it's been repossessed.
| This is why as a buyer performing HPI checks for any
| outstanding hire purchase or secured loans on the car are
| fairly important.
|
| There are also other schemes such as leasing which make it
| more obvious that if you don't keep up with the payments
| then the seller or finance company can come along and
| repossess the car.
| joncrocks wrote:
| This depends on the jurisdiction and the agreement you've
| entered into.
|
| In general:
|
| Lease - Finance company owns the asset, you are obliged to
| service the payments. You may have an option to transfer
| title at the end of the period (depending on jurisdiction).
|
| Loan - You own the asset, secured against the asset.
|
| (There are some UK/US-specfic product types due to
| difference in things like tax law)
|
| Leasing (in general) is popular as it has tax-advantages
| for smaller businesses/individuals around depreciation,
| which can lead to good pricing for end lessee.
|
| (source: Made software for the asset finance industry for a
| decade or so in the UK/EU + US)
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| At the time of repossession - You no longer own the
| asset. It's not like they send the repossession guy out
| the first time you miss a payment. Repossession happens
| after the bank has taken you to court (Admittedly,
| through an expedited process, because this type of claim
| is so so common), and the repo guy is _acting as an agent
| of the court_.
|
| This is the law. It is working as intended. It's also
| moral - If you enter into a contract to buy something on
| credit, you should uphold your end of the contract.
| Specific instances have been wrong, and we can argue the
| merits of this particular case, but car manufacturers
| assisting the new owners of assets that have been
| repossessed in securing their asset is at worst morally
| neutral.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| The bank uses title of vehicle as collateral. You own the
| vehicle but allow repossession for failing to clear the
| debt. But just because the car is repossessed doesn't clear
| the debt unless the vehicle covers the debt wholly. Bank
| will sue for the difference.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The UK has some tricky loan contract law which allows a
| lender to do this, _unless_ the purchaser challenges it
| in court it using a very specific procedure - which of
| course most of the population doesn 't know about.
|
| Many people are surprised by this. They assume
| repossession means the loan is paid off - until they
| discover they've lost their car and are still on the hook
| for more or less the current market value.
| simonh wrote:
| I don't think that's quite right, you own the vehicle
| legally and you owe the bank the loan. However as soon as a
| repossession takes place the legal title to the vehicle
| does change.
| zo1 wrote:
| It's not universal. Some places have specific regulations
| that govern this and so they specifically carve out a
| weird "ownership but non-ownership" scenario. E.g.
| mortgages here in South Africa. Other places yes it's in
| your name but you put it up as collateral on the loan
| itself, etc etc etc.
|
| Bottom line, the government just makes it obscure and
| difficult to determine the real dynamics between the two
| parties, and the weird interaction it may have with
| existing laws governing theft/ownership.
| tiahura wrote:
| ""ownership but non-ownership" scenario. E.g. mortgages
| here in South Africa."
|
| Some states in the US also handle mortgages like this.
| themitigating wrote:
| If you finance a car through a bank the bank owns the
| car, they have the title (US).
| FireBeyond wrote:
| In nine states, this is not the case. The buyer has
| possession of the title (or electronic), and the bank has
| a lien on the vehicle.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| Only if it's a lease, if you have a standard loan YOU are
| the titled owner and the bank is a lien holder on the
| title.
| falcolas wrote:
| No (or rather, I have never seen this where I live in the
| US), they have a lien on the title. You still have the
| title.
|
| Source: Trying to get a bank to remove the lien after
| it's fully paid off can be a real source of frustration.
| kube-system wrote:
| You will be listed as the owner on the title but it is
| not uncommon for the bank to physically hold the title.
|
| The way all of this works varies by state though. Some
| states issue a title electronically when the lien is
| released.
| zdragnar wrote:
| That varies by state. Where I live, the financing
| institution with the lien keeps the title until it is
| paid off.
|
| Kinda nice when you trade in a car you still owe a bit of
| money on, as you don't really need to bring anything with
| you other than the key and your drivers license; the
| dealer does all the work getting it cleared and
| transferred.
| maxerickson wrote:
| My credit union has a lien on my car. The title is in my
| name.
|
| I guess it's different mostly in name though, they still
| have strong rights to the vehicle.
| paul_f wrote:
| The finance company becomes the owner once payments stop.
| Telsa is therefore helping the legal owner of the car. I
| don't have a problem with this.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Isn't it reversed: that the repossession takes place
| because the legal title to the vehicle changed, due to
| the contract being broken by lack of payment?
| simonh wrote:
| Correct. I meant when the repossession order is issued.
| jemfinch wrote:
| This isn't how it works in the US. In the US, the car is
| titled to the bank until the loan is paid in full, then
| the bank transfers the title to you.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| That isn't correct. The car is titled to you, the bank is
| added as a lien holder in a separate part of the title.
| Happy to show proof if desired.
| simonh wrote:
| Ah, my apologies. I'm a Brit.
| refurb wrote:
| Is that state specific? I recall some banks holding liens
| against titles instead?
|
| I recall buying a used car where the bank lien had to be
| removed prior to transfer.
| foobarian wrote:
| It could be we're not distinguishing lease vs. finance in
| these threads. In my experience in Massachusetts, lease
| titles were in a holding company's name, while financed
| vehicles were in my own.
|
| P.S. Looking around a bit there is a lot of variation on
| how this works depending on locale. So I guess lease vs.
| finance is just another way things can differ out there.
| refurb wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised it varies a lot. Just vehicle
| registration varies. In California the plate stays with
| the car, but in other states new plates are issue and old
| plates move to the original owners new car.
|
| No doubt it would be fascinating to see how each state
| does it. I only have experience with a few.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| If the car was titled to the bank, they would have to be
| involved and would be listed in the registration process
| with the state getting plates, etc.
|
| You are the owner, they simply have a lien on the vehicle
| which is noted on the title. Once you pay off the loan,
| they send you information to get the lien removed and a
| clean title.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| You don't own the vehicle if you have a loan, the bank
| has the title. The title holder is the owner. The best
| part about paying off a financed car, to me anyway, is
| the day the title shows up in the mail and you actually
| own your car.
| kube-system wrote:
| > You don't own the vehicle if you have a loan, the bank
| has the title. The title holder is the owner.
|
| No, the listed owner on the title is the owner, no matter
| who has possession of the title.
| jhgb wrote:
| "Loan" sounds so generic to me that what you're saying
| may or may not be true in different places.
| tialaramex wrote:
| I'm sure that somewhere has crazy rules but the general
| idea of a secured loan is the lender can easily take your
| security if you don't pay the debt. If not for that it
| isn't secured, is it?
|
| Car loans are secured on a car. If you want to just
| borrow money with no security you can get a (likely far
| more expensive) unsecured loan if the bank judges this to
| be a good risk, or take an overdraft on a current account
| or use a credit card, all unsecured debt.
| jhgb wrote:
| Collaterals don't require ownership by bank where I live.
| Loaned cars are owned by their loaners (but leased cars
| aren't, although they may transfer ownership to the
| leaser after a period of time, depending on the terms of
| the lease). Not sure how these things work in the UK,
| though.
| netcan wrote:
| To take a contradicting pov... I think this sort of
| expectation/ideal has done us more harm than helped.
|
| As advocates, companies are fickle and unreliable.
|
| Presenting as advocates, companies always stress how aligned
| their interests are with customers'. We'll, that's true until
| it isn't. Once it isn't, it flips.
|
| That's useless. Better to keep in mind that companies aren't
| your advocates. They're your salesman.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| The principle-agent problem is not just limited to
| companies. Everything you've written applies to people in
| general. Advocacy in and and of itself is a fickle
| enterprise.
| staticassertion wrote:
| I agree that relying on companies to be advocates out of
| good will is not a good strategy.
| netcan wrote:
| Yes, but I also think that betting on aligned interests
| isn't great either... beyond the short term.
|
| A Google, FB or Tesla just isn't structurally built for
| that.
| simonh wrote:
| Tesla were helping the legal owner of one of their vehicles
| take possession of it. If you were the legal owner, wouldn't
| you want that?
| staticassertion wrote:
| The legal owner and the Tesla customer don't have to be the
| same person.
| 323 wrote:
| The police should also have the capability of remotely stopping a
| running away car. Hopefully this feature will be standardized.
| gonzoflip wrote:
| I completely disagree, I cherish my personal freedom and will
| not be buying any connected vehicle for as long as possible
| because of that.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| Every new car has GPS tracking and cellular antennas in them
| and has for almost a decade.
| gonzoflip wrote:
| I sincerely doubt that my fiesta has either of those
| things, and it is a 2017. Yep, just as I thought it does
| not have ford's cellular or gps systems in it.
|
| I also have a 2004 f-250 that will likely outlive me, and
| it is completely tracking free.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| You mean OnStar's "Stolen Vehicle Slowdown" feature?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Jesus no. The potential for abuse is just way too high. We
| can't even trust cops to not stalk random women [1] or to not
| beat up their family [2] - giving them even _more_
| possibilities to conduct crimes is not a good thing. Not to
| mention: what the police can exploit, so can attackers.
|
| [1]: https://psmag.com/news/stalker-cop-police-protection-
| danger-...
|
| [2]: https://sites.temple.edu/klugman/2020/07/20/do-40-of-
| police-...
| defaultprimate wrote:
| I agree that this capability should never, ever be in the
| hands of the state, but don't extrapolate isolated instances
| and debunked statistics about the police as truths. Your own
| article demonstrates one of the major flaws of the domestic
| violence statistic, but doesn't discuss the most egregious
| methodological flaw: the criteria used for domestic violence,
| which includes shouting in the cited study.
|
| Cops are sourced from the general population, so incidence
| rates need to be compared to the general population, and
| you'll find that police have significantly lower "negative"
| behaviors compared to the general population in virtually all
| aspects. That doesn't mean they should be allowed to remotely
| disable your car though.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Cops are sourced from the general population
|
| They are notably not. Usually, immigrants are drastically
| under-represented compared to general population (at least
| in Germany, you have to hold German or European citizenship
| to join the police force).
|
| > so incidence rates need to be compared to the general
| population
|
| Oh hell no. Police officers act on behalf of the government
| and with powers that are both _far_ greater than those of
| ordinary people and not immediately appealable. As a result
| of that, police officers in Germany are actually held to
| extremely high standards by law (SS34 BeamtStG -
| https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/beamtstg/__34.html) and
| receive at the very least two years of training.
|
| I won't say our police are perfect (because they aren't,
| they still are a bunch of bullies), but they are orders of
| magnitude better than the trigger happy, barely educated
| (seriously, 360 hours of training?! - https://www.nola.com/
| news/crime_police/article_9dd5d48b-2152...) _morons_ that
| make up the US police force.
| defaultprimate wrote:
| My point still stands. The fact that police exhibit
| extremely low detrimental behavior rates compared to the
| general population illustrates that they are held to much
| higher standards.
|
| Police in the US have far higher post secondary education
| rates than the general population. Over half have a
| bachelor's and over 80% have at least an associate's. And
| that's overall. Many states and larger localities
| _require_ post secondary education, particularly in
| urban, higher crime areas.
|
| >but they are orders of magnitude better than the trigger
| happy...
|
| Can you prove it? Tens of millions of police interactions
| a year and less than a thousand deaths is pretty damn
| good and not at all indicative of the narrative you're
| spewing, especially when you account for how much
| violence the police experience at the hands of criminals.
| Sounds to me like you've bought into a narrative
| completely unsupported by data.
| izacus wrote:
| So at what point will Teslas also start snitching on their own
| owners and other drivers for driving too fast, being in the wrong
| place at the time a crime happened and reporting copyrighted
| music played in the wrong country?
|
| Is there already a design doc for that somewhere in Teslas
| ticketing system?
| mellavora wrote:
| well, they are planning on offering their own car insurance
| program.
|
| Funny thing is, the initial sell of Tesla was 'high
| performance', the kind of driving which tends to encourage
| high-risk behaviours.
|
| so now it is "you can buy this great car with all this high-
| performance stuff, but we'll know every time you use it and
| dock you on insurance rates to compensate"
| test6554 wrote:
| Once all cars are self-driving, I doubt they will exceed the
| speed limit by much. But perhaps speed limits will increase in
| some places.
| izacus wrote:
| Well, the autopilot cameras can easily report OTHER drivers
| not driving correctly.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| To be honest I would quite like it if cars couldn't speed
| whilst passing my house.
| unbanned wrote:
| Just checked, there's ability to phone home given particular
| driving conditions for safety.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Your smartphone does that just fine and has been done so for
| years now.
| greatpatton wrote:
| Not much into US law, but can someone tell us what is happening
| if you had personal possession of value in your car?
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| The same as would happen in any other repo case. The repo agent
| bags them, writes an inventory of them, and must return them on
| request. Different states have different laws on the conditions
| on that. Most don't allow any fees to be charged for this, but
| generally you have to go get them, they won't be brought to
| you.
|
| Huge amounts of stuff is never returned, either because the
| repo guys were careless/stole it, because retrieving is
| hard/inconvenient for someone who no longer has a car, or
| because the owners just don't care.
| LightG wrote:
| This is my problem with it.
|
| Not that payments shouldn't be kept up to date. But that it
| moves decision making on the issue to a corporate entity a
| million miles away and you can bet there won't be any
| accounting for personal situations, or admin errors, or
| anything else. Your car will just be gone.
|
| Sorry, f@ck tesla on this.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| No, there are consumer protection laws in most, if not all,
| states that require a period of notification and discussion
| prior to repossession. When a car is repossessed it should
| never be a surprise to the "owner."
| LightG wrote:
| With respect, I've seen the suprise element happen too
| often for it to be considered rare (possibly different
| country, different legalities, but still, it's a global
| company.
|
| Mail goes to the wrong address, e-mail ends up in spam
| (looking at you, Google), a pin code is lost, meaning you
| need time to identify yourself or etc etc etc and you're
| basically lucky or not as to you you're dealing with as to
| how it gets resolved.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| I agree that I should not have used the word "never" in
| my comment. Thanks for pointing that out. Perhaps
| "unlikely" would be better. You are correct that
| sometimes stuff just happens, but after volunteering with
| a financial counseling program, I do think most people
| know when they have stopped making payments and most
| banks make lots of calls and send several letters before
| they go grab the property. There are exceptions of
| course, such as third tier used car dealerships which
| push the laws to the limit to make the repossession
| happen as quickly as possible. Sadly, people with the
| most fragile financial situations are much more likely to
| deal with the most predatory lenders.
|
| Many people living on the edge financially are so
| stressed that they have trouble prioritizing things in
| what would seem to be a logical choice to someone on the
| outside. What is often not understood is that honest (and
| early) conversations with lenders can frequently lead to
| adjusted terms to help people get through a difficult
| period. Without that conversation, they lose
| transportation access which leads to reduction in job
| opportunities, and then the whole thing starts to spiral.
| Very difficult.
| alkonaut wrote:
| If this wasn't preceded by months of angry letters explaining
| when and why the security would be repossessed, then yes.
| Shitty. However, if the owner _was_ made aware that the
| vehicle would be reposessed, then obviously there isn 't much
| else the lender can do. The owner has (hopefully) already
| dodged several opportunities to simply drop the vehicle off.
| fallingknife wrote:
| If lenders had to take "personal situations" into account no
| loans would be made. Anyone can come up with a sob story.
| adventured wrote:
| That's the purpose of allowing sob stories by people that
| advocate for that approach. The real idea is to choke the
| system to death and crash it de facto.
|
| That's how you get insane squatting laws where you can't
| remove people that are illegally occupying your property
| (house, apartment, etc) for years. The process becomes
| badly choked in the sob story process which the squatter
| takes advantage of.
|
| And very obviously all that would happen if you allowed the
| sob story process to become common in auto loans, is a huge
| backlog of people would become delinquent and abuse it,
| knowing they can drag out the consequences for a very long
| time.
| teh_klev wrote:
| > Your car will just be gone
|
| If the loan is secured on the car then it's not "your car"
| until the loan is paid.
|
| But sure you're right, mistakes can be made and being able to
| switch off your car remotely is somewhat dystopian even if
| you're 100% in the clear.
| belltaco wrote:
| Are you saying it's better to take loans from the local
| mafia.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Is this only news "because Tesla"? User jcims mentioned Ford's
| having the same feature. Probably GM's do, too. For years, I've
| seen occasional news stories about car dealers adding similar
| features to vehicles which they sell to buyers with sketchy
| credit.
| ethagknight wrote:
| I feel pretty confident that GM's Onstar is primarily a service
| oriented for GMAC/ally so they can locate and limit speeds and
| unlock vehicles they hold title to but have not received
| payment for. Oh and sure they give you a big blue button to
| punch in case you have a flat tire, for peace of mind. They
| advertised the speed limiter capability "in case of a vehicle
| theft" and repo situation (driving a vehicle not paid for)
| isn't too far removed from theft
| iRobbery wrote:
| So how does this change "Possession Is Nine-Tenths of the Law" :)
| five-tenths? :)
| fxtentacle wrote:
| The advantage of autonomous cars is that they can resist their
| owner. That enables big cost savings for everyone (insurance,
| manufacturer, rental, leasing, repo). Well, everyone except for
| the "owner".
| themitigating wrote:
| You don't own the car that's financed until you pay it off
| fxtentacle wrote:
| In some countries, you do. The contract for borrowing the
| money and the contract for purchasing the car are then
| separable.
| martin8412 wrote:
| Here you do. A lien is placed on the car, so any debt follows
| the car in the case of transfer of ownership.
|
| That said, repossession of things are not a thing here
| either.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Who is legally the owner when a car is repossessed?
|
| I'd say autonomous vehicles are pro-social machines. They will,
| in general, act to follow the rules established, ideally more
| often than a "dumb" car operated by a human.
|
| Given how many traffic accidents are human caused, that's sort
| of the point of the entire exercise.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I would argue that before it is successfully repossessed, the
| old person is still the owner. They'd also be the one liable
| if something goes wrong. So we have disconnected the
| liabilities of ownership from the advantages of ownership. In
| the past, this type of disconnect has led to companies
| exploiting it for profit.
| themitigating wrote:
| If you financed the car the bank owns it. It's not an
| opinion.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Depends on your specific contract if you're borrowing it
| from the bank until it's paid off or if the car is
| collateral but otherwise fully yours.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > So we have disconnected the liabilities of ownership from
| the advantages of ownership. In the past, this type of
| disconnect has led to companies exploiting it for profit.
|
| You are 100% right, but that is the circumstance with loans
| to purchase cars independent of whether the car is
| autonomous. Banks do make a ton of money on the interest
| from car loans and they are, indeed, not liable for service
| or maintenance of the vehicle.
|
| When repossession occurs, the person in possession of the
| car is not the owner anymore. That's why the repo man is
| allowed, legally, to take the car. They are transporting it
| to the rightful owner's place of choice.
| knorker wrote:
| I would not argue against it being yours before
| reposession. But whose car is it after a legal repossession
| has started?
|
| I would argue that once the repossession clause in the
| contract has been activated (criteria has been met and bank
| decides to exercise the right) then from that decision
| forwards the bank is now the owner.
|
| Possession is not 9/10 of the law if a contract says
| control reverts to bank under a condition that's clearly
| been violated.
|
| This is not a game where if just hide for X time then
| contracts expire. It's not a game of tag, where "it doesn't
| count" until a reposession has been completed "fairly". You
| don't need to give someone a fair chance to avoid the
| consequences in a contract.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Possession is separate from ownership, those are well-
| defined concepts with very distinct meaning, and
| repossession (as the name hints) is explicitly about
| possession, not ownership. The moment of successful
| repossession does not change ownership. It may be that the
| ownership has already changed (and was a reason for
| repossession), it may be that it's "just" a collateral and
| the ownership will either never change and the car will be
| returned when the payments are made, or that the ownership
| will change some time after repossession after it's settled
| that the car will not be returned and the repossessed car
| is sold as collateral when liquidating the debt.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| This is the future we chose. I hope everyone here that owns a
| Tesla is proud of that future.
| travisporter wrote:
| I had a medical bill for a small amount like $60 sent to
| collections because they didn't have the right address. Never
| called or emailed me. Judging by the comments here, the
| healthcare co would be well within its rights to pickpocket me.
| beeboop wrote:
| Garnishing wages is very much a real thing.
| my_usernam3 wrote:
| Ugh I just had the same exact experience... right as I'm trying
| to get a mortgage. I wish they would have just pickpocketed me
| and not try to murder my credit over like $100.
| soared wrote:
| What was the outcome? I am currently in the same situation.
| wbc wrote:
| he declared bankruptcy
| travisporter wrote:
| I finally got my mail from the new renter and called and
| chewed them out. Had to pay the original bill.
|
| Edit I chewed out the billing dept not the renter lol
| notreallyserio wrote:
| With insufficient information we must always defer to the
| corporation or the government. Might makes right.
| LightG wrote:
| Holy sh!t ... reason 47 to not buy a Tesla.
| arendtio wrote:
| Is 'buy' the correct verb in this context? I mean, if you would
| buy it in the traditional sense you wouldn't have any monthly
| payments you could miss and you would actually own the car. But
| this case seems a bit different.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| The repossession has nothing to do with it being a Tesla. Cars
| are repossessed every day. The unlocking made it easier, but
| without that assistance, a repossessor would just drag it up a
| ramp onto a truck and drive off.
| hatchnyc wrote:
| So...in case you plan to not pay for it but still keep it
| anyway?
|
| I am really struggling to understand the mindset here of what I
| assume are mostly well paid professional software developers.
| If I defaulted on a car loan (I don't know the details exactly
| off the top of my head, but this entails more than just missing
| a payment) I'd be quite ashamed of myself and return the car
| myself with an apology. I cannot understand the mindset of
| someone who would feel justified keeping the car, much less
| getting angry at the method used by the bank to reclaim their
| property.
|
| It's not like this is a cheap car either where you're
| threatening someone's livelihood who is not going to be able to
| get to work.
| themitigating wrote:
| Because on hackernews if the story features Facebook, Google,
| Microsoft, or Tesla what they did is bad
| foxfluff wrote:
| > I cannot understand the mindset of someone who would feel
| justified keeping the car
|
| No-one said anything about feeling justified keeping the car.
| People take issue with the backdoor. I too, would rather
| clean the car, take my stuff, and return it with an apology
| (if the bank refuses to negotiate an extension to the loan)
| than find that a backdoor has been used against me and it's
| just all gone one day.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| That's not the point. The car has a capability to lock you
| out, and all it takes is for someone to activate that
| capability. I don't want that in a car.
| ezfe wrote:
| Spoiler Alert: this applies to most new cars
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Does it?
| maxdo wrote:
| Yep, literally any luxury car on the market has this
| ability.
| LightG wrote:
| I appreciate I left little to assist your conclusion, but
| that isn't it at all.
|
| This isn't the the path I want us going down. If this applies
| / impacts a few thousand Tesla 'owners' so enamoured by the
| that cultish brand that they'll accept this BS, so be it.
|
| But apply variations of this to the world, and the countless
| mistakes and mishaps that can happen and you're in further
| down into a nasty world of things happening.
|
| I mean, look at getting something fixed with Google or a
| Facebook. Those bastions of the tech world.
|
| It has absolutely nothing to do with the money aspect of
| this.
|
| Case in point: literally this happened yesterday. I set up a
| D/D with one of our internet providers 3 months ago. They
| have been chasing me for 3 months for payments. New supplier
| so their email went to spam. I have evidence I did all the
| right things to do this. And yet, yesterday, I checked my
| spam luckily and there was a 7 day suspension notice if the
| bill wasn't paid. So, basically, our business internet
| connections relied on me being lucky that I caught a stray
| e-mail ... apply this to your car ... or your home (where
| there have been stories of this kind of BS, only for the
| owner come home and realise their home had been sold on and
| they can't get it back).
|
| Basically, automation is great, but don't automate
| interaction with your customers on key situatons.
| sschueller wrote:
| It has happened that cars and even homes have been "repoed"
| as a result due to a mistake by a bank.
| [deleted]
| gruez wrote:
| > It has happened that cars and even homes have been
| "repoed" as a result due to a mistake by a bank.
|
| So the obvious conclusion is to... eliminate the "repo"
| mechanism entirely, on the off chance it might get
| abused/mistakenly used?
| [deleted]
| zo1 wrote:
| Reason No 26 to buy a Tesla - This feature makes it more
| difficult for it to be stolen.
| gonzoflip wrote:
| I think the personal freedom and privacy implications of self
| driving cars with centralized communication are rarely talked
| about. What happens when your vehicle decides you can't travel to
| an area of civil unrest (for your safety), or refuses to drive
| you to the gun store?
| test6554 wrote:
| Ramming into protesters vehicle package should be selected at
| time of purchase and will cost an extra $74.99.
| gonzoflip wrote:
| Hmmm, I feel like this reply is making light of other's
| deaths. I was more talking about the ability to attend a
| protest. I believe in personal freedom, as well as personal
| responsibility.
| beervirus wrote:
| gonzoflip wrote:
| I don't really understand the connection to some sort of
| hypothetical situation about protesting in the street. My
| position is that I want my vehicle to start when I turn
| the key, and drive to where I take it. I think people are
| giving up a lot more freedom than what they are actually
| thinking about when they buy these cars that are able to
| be remotely controlled or disabled.
| malfist wrote:
| Are you seriously suggesting that protesting is an
| execution worthy offense?
| beervirus wrote:
| Not at all. But getting run over is certainly the
| _reasonably foreseeable_ consequence of your actions.
| It's not victim-blaming to suggest that people are
| ultimately responsible for their own safety, and they
| ought to take precautions.
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| If you're protesting in the middle of the street for the
| express purpose of disrupting traffic, you get what you
| get.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| So in other words, you believe that people protesting in
| the street deserve to die.
| malfist wrote:
| You could have more empathy for your fellow humans.
| chaostheory wrote:
| GM cars have phoned home for well over a decade now. Self
| driving features tend to also be extra optional features that
| cost more.
| gonzoflip wrote:
| So what? People can choose to have connected vehicles if they
| want. I choose to avoid them and the newest gm vehicle I have
| owned was a 1997 Saturn. My personal choices and decisions
| are a product of my values and beliefs, and I intend on
| avoiding the potential for remote intervention as long as
| possible.
| Wiseacre wrote:
| Wait until the cars are required to drive you to the police
| station when you are accused of a crime....
| dangus wrote:
| I don't think this is quite that extreme of a slippery slope.
|
| For one, areas of unrest are already restricted by physical
| police and national guard barriers. For example, during the
| unrest in 2020, Chicago physically raised its drawbridges.
| Anyone who really wants to get somewhere difficult would
| probably choose a bicycle or legs, so you need physical police
| barriers in that case.
|
| Refusing to drive you to the gun store sounds kind of silly
| when the government would more easily just ban gun stores (the
| right to bear arms doesn't include the right to buy them at a
| retail store). I realize you're just giving out an example but
| it was not a great one. Preventing you from driving somewhere
| is a simple as putting up a gate and closing it.
|
| Also, driving _at all_ is not a right. It 's a licensed
| privilege that can be taken away if you break traffic laws or
| drive while intoxicated.
|
| I think your perspective is coming from a car-focused area of
| the country (which is most of them). But, someone in NYC or
| Chicago might point out to you that they use a transit card
| that has the ability to track their movements through stations,
| and that they mainly travel by buses and trains that have
| government-owned surveillance cameras all over them. Despite
| this, it has has failed to turn into any kind of dystopian
| urban nightmare.
|
| What I'm getting at is that the technology is blamed for things
| that are actually just public policy, laws, and law
| enforcement. The privacy implications for using a smartphone in
| the Western world are a lot different than in China, even
| though the technology itself is identical.
|
| What we actually need is legislation surrounding automotive
| communication and centralized control and privacy. The rights
| that automobile owners have should be better enshrined in law
| rather than trusting auto manufacturers. This, I think, will
| eventually happen. We're still sorely lacking a _general_
| nationwide privacy law on the Internet in the US.
| gonzoflip wrote:
| Nah, I will continue to buy disconnected vehicles for as long
| as possible since I chose to live in a rural area of the
| country, and I expect my machine to start when I tell it to.
| People that live in Chicago or New York choose to give up
| their ability to travel without the need for the government
| that is their choice. And didn't the pandemic have a major
| impact on some public transit lines operation? Again I
| believe in personal responsibility and freedom, I choose not
| to have that level of reliance on others.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/06/nyregion/mass-transit-
| ser...
|
| And while driving on public roads is not a right, I still
| want my vehicle to start regardless of the governments
| opinions on whether I should be traveling :)
|
| I chose guns because it was something that large corps like
| to virtue signal about. Also, while the bill of rights does
| not protect buying guns at retail, most of the cries for
| increased gun control actually want people to be forced to
| buy firearms in a retail setting so that the transfer can be
| tracked in the nation DB, which does not happen with private
| sales.
|
| Also, multiple cities literally shut down transit during the
| protests last year due to "safety".
| https://www.masstransitmag.com/safety-
| security/article/21140...
| dangus wrote:
| > I still want my vehicle to start regardless of the
| governments opinions on whether I should be traveling :)
|
| No government was involved here, just a private company,
| who has the _freedom_ to do as they please with their
| property and the _responsibility_ to protect their assets.
|
| > People that live in Chicago or New York choose to give up
| their ability to travel without the need for the government
| that is their choice.
|
| What you're implying here is that city dwellers are
| government-dependent babies, which is very condescending to
| them. Choosing to drive your car on the public roads of
| your suburb or rural town doesn't make you any less
| dependent on society or the government.
|
| Yes, transit systems had cuts due to ridership and revenue
| issues, and shut down at certain stations during unrest. Do
| you think a bank should keep its doors unlocked when
| there's unrest going on outside? These city transit systems
| were exercising their _personal responsibility_ to protect
| public property, right?
|
| > Again I believe in personal responsibility and freedom, I
| choose not to have that level of reliance on others.
|
| Like it or not, you rely on others. There is little choice
| involved. There is almost no way to end that relationship
| entirely.
|
| You probably drink from water that was managed by a
| government, and your poop is taken away either in a public
| sewer or on a septic truck driving on a public road. Unless
| you literally live out in the woods off of the land and
| never leave, you are a part of society, and libertarian
| hyper-individualist rhetoric can't change that. "Freedom"
| doesn't mean you're just allowed to do whatever you want at
| all times regardless of how it affects other people, but a
| lot of Americans have misconstrued the concept of freedom
| to mean just that.
|
| Freedom as in democratic freedom has a lot more to do with
| freedom of speech, press, and elections. It doesn't mean
| you're free to drive on a road that is closed.
|
| I was very clear in stating that I believe we need laws to
| prevent technology from becoming dystopian, but also I
| don't believe technology reaching the most dystopian
| version of its theoretical capabilities is inevitable or
| even particularly common. We can blame the technology all
| we want but it is rules of society that protects us from
| its abuse, not "personal freedom and responsibility."
|
| The irony of your messaging is that your belief in freedom
| and responsibility would have to be applied to corporations
| as well as individuals. If you're free to make any choice,
| so are companies. Again, Tesla is, allegedly, exercising
| its own _freedom and responsibility_ to protect its asset
| by repossessing its car.
|
| Self-driving, interconnected cars could be an incredible
| boon to public safety, as car crashes are one of the top
| causes of premature death. Cars that can talk to each other
| and basically never crash into each other would be a dream
| world. We can talk about how technology would turn that
| into a surveillance dystopia, or we can build systems,
| laws, and checks on power that would make that technology
| enhance everyone's lives without significant downside or
| encroachment on "freedom."
|
| The fact that Tesla cars are connected to a central server
| isn't the cause of abuses, it's the present legality of
| their harmful business practices. A great example: the car
| dealer system that Tesla lobbies against was put in place
| to protect consumers against overbearing manufacturers. Has
| that worked? In some cases, yes, in some cases, no.
|
| In our present and most definitely not-libertarian society,
| the _government_ has at least curbed unchecked corporate
| power by enacting laws like HIPAA that protect consumer
| rights and enforce interoperability. We need similar
| legislation and enforcement for non-healthcare technology.
| We need our own GDPR, but better, more comprehensive, and
| better designed. That _will_ be difficult to achieve given
| the corporate influence on politics, but I do think we 'll
| eventually get _something_ , because even the elites in our
| society need protection from companies who want to exercise
| their _freedom._
| gonzoflip wrote:
| OK, I don't want a private company to be able to have any
| control over the starting over my car either. I didn't
| say we should ban these cars, I originally said that I
| don't think people realize how much freedom and privacy
| they are giving up by owning them
|
| >What you're implying here is that city dwellers are
| government-dependent babies, which is very condescending
| to them. Choosing to drive your car on the public roads
| of your suburb or rural town doesn't make you any less
| dependent on society or the government.
|
| I am not implying anything, I am stating my opinion that
| the people that choose to live in those cities have
| decided to trade personal freedom and privacy for the
| luxuries that come from living in those cities. These are
| tradeoffs, I chose to build a home in rural America with
| the goal of trading luxuries for personal freedom and
| privacy, as well as a reduction in crime.
|
| And I realize why the transit systems had cuts and why
| they shut down due to unrest, but that is some of the
| freedom those who live in major cities give up. I am not
| far from the Twin cities metro and I was able to get in
| my car and drive to Minneapolis the morning after the
| riots started to personally look at the damage.
|
| I do have a well and septic system, every few years it
| has to be pumped, you are right about that. I never said
| I was not part of society, nor did I say that my
| lifestyle is not dependent on society's infrastructure. I
| choose to live on the end of the spectrum to reduce my
| reliance on others as much as possible because I have
| personally seen and learned first hand what government
| oppression and social unrest can do to dense communities.
|
| AFAIK under US law Tesla is well within their rights to
| use their technology to repossess their cars if they want
| to, or enforce whatever restrictions they want on the use
| of their vehicles, but it won't be from me. I am not
| advocating for tesla to be stopped by the government, I
| am simply asking for people to think through the
| consequences of their purchases. I completely agree that
| tesla is free to do what they want as a
| corporation(within the current laws), and I am free to
| not buy their vehicles as a citizen, you are correct
| about that.
|
| You can feel free to give up your freedoms in the name of
| public safety, and eventually I will be forced to as
| well, but I will continue to resist as long as possible.
| I very much enjoy the act of driving to the point of it
| being one of my hobbies, I am in no rush for the
| impending future of driving being a luxury for the rich.
| I distinctly remember the feeling of freedom I got when I
| got my driver's license at 16 and bought my first car, it
| was actually a pretty critical point in my life and
| allowed me much more autonomy, freedom, and
| responsibility than I had ever had before.
|
| I just really think that your desire for federal laws for
| privacy protection are wishful thinking and quite
| unlikely to happen, hell our current president has
| actively tried to ban encryption without backdoors on a
| few occasions(actually indirectly causing pgp to be
| developed https://www.wired.com/2012/12/joe-biden-
| private-email/), this seems actively antiprivacy to me.
| gonzoflip wrote:
| We have different lifestyles, needs, and goals. I realize
| mine may be flawed but these are the opinions I have due
| to my personal experience. I am not trying to force
| anyone to share my lifestyle and I simply ask the same.
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