Fisker may have been especially vulnerable to this (my understanding from some very brief searching is that core vehicle functionality required cloud check ins without fallback), but nothing about this is inherent to EVs (this is response to Weisenthal's tweet early in the article). An ICE vehicle could (and many manufacturers are increasingly pushing in this direction) have the exact same problems.
This is a much bigger problem that requires a bigger solution. I'm pretty intrigued by the mention at the end that several european manufacturers are collaborating on an opensource automotive software platform, although their track record on software isn't that encouraging.
That so much could be done in an open source context is encouraging -- if Fisker could have made that a core of the offering maybe that could have made it more viable? They can still sell hardware, parts, services and support but owners would have DIY options too. Everybody wins.
>Fisker had built what Cory Doctorow, the digital rights author and activist, pointedly called a “software-based car.” Virtually every subsystem in the Ocean — brakes, airbags, shifting, battery management, door locks — needed to periodically connect with Fisker’s cloud servers for diagnostics or regular operations.
pretty sure you can say "Fisker built a software-based car" without being "pointed" and without needing to cite Cory Doctorow. It would be a pretty anodyne statement in an article about owners taking over maintenance of the software that is pervasaive in their electric cars from a defuct manufacturer,
suggestion to the maintainers: please find some place in the UI to allow "Fiskers cut and paste"
> We had reviewed the Ocean in late 2023 and found the hardware genuinely attractive — but the software was simply not ready for prime time. The irony of that headline — “Coming soon, in a future software update” — now reads like an epitaph. Those future updates never came from Fisker. They came from the owners themselves.
It’s sad to see a good site put out bad AI writing like this.
Hehehe have a strong feeling I should not doubt you…
Ah, the entire headline was about coming soon, and it wasn’t at all. The car was going to be good and impressive thanks to future software updates from the company, but instead the lack of updates helped kill the car. (About right?)
I'd buy any Tesla, even the big truck, if it came with open source software! I don't want a car that's spyware like a phone. Let me be in control of it, let me mod it, let me own it.
Not exactly what you are asking for, but did you see that Rivian recently provided a way for owners to disable the vehicle's LTE connection? It's straight In Canada. In the US, you have to ask a dealer.
See also this interesting slide deck about the GPLv3 and cars, I expect that regulations would mean you could not drive cars with modified software (similar to what happens with solar inverters):
Root persistence is more for encouraging you to report all bugs you’ve found instead of holding on to them in fear that the vendor will patch them and make further research difficult. See Apple’s security research device program.
There are plenty of FOSS engine management projects around. There is a big community of people doing incredible mods. But cars are complicated and to do it well requires a lot of time, effort, knowledge, money. I've blown up plenty of engines along the way, and it's fun and I'm learning a lot, but it's not something that's easy to just dabble in.
The company that doesn't froth at the mouth for a constant revenue stream by selling every bit of data it can siphon from you with digital leashes. With most of business and startups focusing on short term high gains there's little incentive to build a real company that will think long term while actually giving a shit about its products AND customers. That all died out long ago. That kind of thinking is radical these days.
sure, but there's still actual journalism behind it. Isn't the primary objection to ai slop is that it's just vapid regurgitation?
I've been reading electrek for years, they're generally pretty decent journalists. If the author here is doing the interview, getting the notes together, doing the research and then has a system prompt of the voice of the publication and says "generate", do we still say slop?
Personally I think "eh..." - I think basically everyone will eventually view journalism as not necessarily involving the writing of the final document in the same way that most people don't yell about synthesizers not being real music any more.
> most people don't yell about synthesizers not being real music any more.
I think a lot more effort is required to release (popular) music, and I'm only hearing 'independent' music at concert venues which also require a lot of effort.
It doesn't take a lot of effort to transform the raw materials of journalism, which you cite, into a finished product outside the process of writing and sitting with your thoughts. And there isn't a similar venue to the idea of concerts where I can personally see journalists' skill/creativity/mastery.
Thus, I can't tell if the work of an AI-assisted journalist is intentional or complete the way I can tell if an AI song is poorly done.
If you cannot tell if the work is poorly done or not, why it matters if it's AI or not?
The reason many of us dislike AI slop is because it's very evidently AI slop, if you cannot tell, then I wouldn't even say it's AI slop, maybe AI assisted if anything, but matters less if the content itself actually doesn't suck.
I was unclear - I can tell that there was an AI involved in writing readily.
In music, it's hard to make a convincing AI product (at the moment) because editing sound is challenging.
In journalism, it's easy to make AI articles and relatively easy to edit them not to sound like AI. So if someone isn't doing that minimal work, I wonder what other things they're taking the easy route for.
> Not perfect, but I think as good evidence as any
It really isn't, I just tried a random one of my own HN comments, very much 100% human and it reported "100% of this text is AI Generated".
Tools that give false-positives aren't just "not perfect", they're actively harmful and not "as good evidence as any". Stop relying on those tools to give you any sort of direction or indication what so ever, they simply do not work.
Edit: Lol, just noticed Pangram also provides "evidence" for their rating, your link says it's 100% written by AI because there is 16 instances found of the Em Dash, that's it, those are all the evidence for the very confident "100% AI" score they gave... Yay science!
How involved is the software in the car, any while driving features? I'd be a little bit afraid of getting in that car even with the best efforts of the community, maybe it's not really for driving, i'd be even more nervous to get in a car with no updates, but still.
More than anything I am nervous about having a car running priority code that can have mandatory updates pushed at any time that change the cars behavior -- not just throttle response and adjusting the emissions here, they could be updating thresholds for when the auto-pilot cancels and return to manual control, what level of cruise the car defaults to (GM BlueCruise IMO is terrible about this, it cancels hands free mode often, without any auditory alert) and so on.
That's my issue. You could drive the car one day, go to bed, and the next day the car does not perform the same way it did yesterday. That's ridiculous. Any update needs to be approved by the user. Even if that means doing like Apple does where the user has to enter their password to approve the update scheduled for the middle of the night.
I remember watching a youtube video where the one guy who has become The Fisker Whisperer said that screwing up an update will total the vehicle because several of the control modules just can't be had anywhere, at least until another ends up in a junkyard.
There is literally nothing about any Fisker automobile that makes it worth all this effort. But a handful of rich boomer tech execs think there's nothing else in the world that could possibly meet their expectations for a hybrid or electric vehicle, have more wealth than they know what to do with, and so here we are.
Saabs are much the same way. Some nonsense about a completely overengineered security system in the newer vehicles that makes losing a key a "well, now you're fucked" event, I believe?
A few days back, the breaks of my car suddenly stopped working. By stopped-working I mean they just got jammed. No matter how much I press, they just wouldn't budge. The reason: my car had abruptly turned-off by itself, jamming the breaks with it. HOW TF are breaks NOT connected directly to the tyres? Why the tf they have to be software controlled? This is the "critical" path, and SHOULD be 100% under driver's control, at all times.
And then just 3 days back, the same thing happened with steering wheel while I was reversing the car. But this time, the car hadn't even turned-off... the wheel just got jammed. Restarted the card, and it worked. What the absolute fck man!! What tf!
Electronics and the corresponding software should stay 100% out of all critical paths inside of the car. Sure if it "helps", it's fine, but, that should NOT turn into such outcomes.
There are a lot of mechanical reasons your engine will die. For example crankshaft or camshaft position sensors failing will do it because the engine control module can’t time fuel injection or spark properly.
What model? Is it possible that you accidentally had the car in a power-on mode, but without the engine started? I've done that by accident in my Mitsubishi Outlander Sport. The symptoms are similar to what you describe. Actually, it was at a car wash -- attendant left the car power on and I thought the engine was running so tried to drive away. Got the car to move a bit (happened to be downhill) but it was super scary because the brake pedal was taking more and more force to push down and I could barely turn the steering wheel. Luckily I was smart enough to put it in park, check everything, and realize the engine wasn't running!
The brakes (n.b., spelling) and steering will feel increasingly stiff or "locked up" if your engine is off because the engine is not powering the vacuum system that powers the brake booster, and the steering will be extremely difficult to operate without the assistance of power steering.
Yep yep yep.. that explains it. Not the software fault as I original suspected (at least in the break-jamming case). What I "felt" like jammed was probably just that vacuum system not helping, but since it happened for the first time (with me), and so abruptly, it felt like the brakes were jammed.
But, the worrying, and a lot more scarier part is that this was not me accidentally leaving the car in accessory/power-on mode. The engine cut out while I was driving, which is itself a serious fault.
Regarding the steering wheel case, it still feels like electronic/software fault since the car was actually reversing on engine power. But, similar to the first case, most likely it was also not jammed, rather, i lost the power steering assist, and hence, it "felt" like jammed since it happened first time to me.
Im from India btw and the car in question is a 10+ year old Maruti Suzuki Swift Dzire.
---
Summary:
1. Break issue: vacuum assist lost due to engine shutting off (by itself) which "felt" like it "jammed" the breaks, but, most probably had just gotten super stiff instead.
2. Steering wheel: Still looks like a software/electronic fault, but, similar to the break case, it "felt" like jammed.. but, it had just gotten super stiff.
This all, however, is still so wrong. In either of the cases the fault was not mine, yet, I was put in a situation that could have been very serious.
So I researched a bit more on that break thingy... and just learned that this assist provides anywhere form 4x to 10x the assist. And without it, you would literally have to stand on the breaks with full body weight to have a similar effect. Wow!!
> Steer around obstacles while pressing brake hard
That seems like a good way to flip a car or truck.
Also runs counter to the advice that's given for surviving a sudden kangaroo on road at night incident .. for the past 60+ years.
eg:
Don’t swerve Most severe crashes involving an animal occur when the driver veers off the road, and hits something else instead. What’s more, the animal is just as likely to flee in the direction you’re steering.
Brake in a straight line The only thing worse than swerving, is swerving with locked up tyres. Keeping a straight-line trajectory while you hit the brakes will allow you to reduce speed quickly, then – if the animal still hasn’t moved and you’ve reached a safe speed – you can steer around.
I believe Barbing is saying to start braking and if you haven't stopped when you reach the obstacle, to keep the brake pressed hard while steering around it. That said, it's also important to manage wheel and/or brake lock-up if either happens.
This is not a joke. The prime thing that keeps me driving my old vehicle is my avoidance of modern corporate totalitarianism in tracked vehicles, spying, and other crap. I'm not buying something just to rent it too.
I would pay above-market.
I'm researching this right now. Maybe I've finally found my new car.
Uh no, we need significantly less software in the auto industry. Software sucks. It excels at taking relatively simple (if inconvenient) problems and in exchange for some notional convenience introduces problem spaces so baroque they border on the occult. An example: between all of the seat controls on the driver's seat of my wife's car I've counted 16 individual switch positions and something like six motors, all wired into the CAN bus so the central console can save user preferences.
Without bothering to check the OEM parts cost to replace that seat I am absolutely dead ass certain that it by itself costs more than my first three cars combined. And all of this pageantry replaces the two traditional dumb mechanical levers to control seat distance from the pedals and back tilt. This and real-time cell network surveillance is all the proof I need that executive depravity in the auto industry is functionally unlimited, and the reason why I wouldn't accept a "modern" car as a gift, much less buy one.
So a leasing company bought the source code for $2.5 million and then cut off owners after they refused an additional deal. What was the point, then? Is there anything rational about this market interaction?
That explains the over-representation of Oceans in NYC’s supercharging network, and one of the worst side-effects of opening that network to non-Tesla operators.
Overall I think it’s a good thing, but it’s the closest to Eternal September I ever experienced in my life, the sudden change inclusion of cultural strangers in a shared space with its customs etc.
Well now I'm nervous I'm going to be susceptible to AI slop as that's a set of sentences I would absolutely have written my self. That kind of cadence is something that I remember being taught especially since it's comes as a group of three.
There's a reason AI uses things like em dashes and parallel structure and groups of three (catch me doing it here too). It's good writing. (Also varied sentence length.) AI trained on good writing uses the outward structure of good writing.
Fisker may have been especially vulnerable to this (my understanding from some very brief searching is that core vehicle functionality required cloud check ins without fallback), but nothing about this is inherent to EVs (this is response to Weisenthal's tweet early in the article). An ICE vehicle could (and many manufacturers are increasingly pushing in this direction) have the exact same problems.
This is a much bigger problem that requires a bigger solution. I'm pretty intrigued by the mention at the end that several european manufacturers are collaborating on an opensource automotive software platform, although their track record on software isn't that encouraging.
That so much could be done in an open source context is encouraging -- if Fisker could have made that a core of the offering maybe that could have made it more viable? They can still sell hardware, parts, services and support but owners would have DIY options too. Everybody wins.
Oh, not the owners of the company, the owners of the cars the company made.
Yeah the headline made me think "oh god they are trying to get away with their scam for the third time".
>Fisker had built what Cory Doctorow, the digital rights author and activist, pointedly called a “software-based car.” Virtually every subsystem in the Ocean — brakes, airbags, shifting, battery management, door locks — needed to periodically connect with Fisker’s cloud servers for diagnostics or regular operations.
pretty sure you can say "Fisker built a software-based car" without being "pointed" and without needing to cite Cory Doctorow. It would be a pretty anodyne statement in an article about owners taking over maintenance of the software that is pervasaive in their electric cars from a defuct manufacturer,
suggestion to the maintainers: please find some place in the UI to allow "Fiskers cut and paste"
https://www.fiskars.com/-/media/fiskars/images/united-states...
> We had reviewed the Ocean in late 2023 and found the hardware genuinely attractive — but the software was simply not ready for prime time. The irony of that headline — “Coming soon, in a future software update” — now reads like an epitaph. Those future updates never came from Fisker. They came from the owners themselves.
It’s sad to see a good site put out bad AI writing like this.
"the irony reads" isn't even grammatically correct.
I think what they're going for is
> The irony of that headline...
> [reflective pause]
> "Coming soon, in a future software update" [shorter pause] now reads like an epitaph
Should be OK (besides the lack of irony!). Easier for me to show with another noun, comedy:
"You HAVE to buy her novel ASAP! Sure, the comedy reads a bit acerbically at first, but chapter two through to the end is literary perfection."
Or alternatively, with another verb: 'the irony seems to have gone unnoticed'.
Hehehe have a strong feeling I should not doubt you…
Ah, the entire headline was about coming soon, and it wasn’t at all. The car was going to be good and impressive thanks to future software updates from the company, but instead the lack of updates helped kill the car. (About right?)
I think it's human - coherent ideas, grammar errors. AI tends to do correct grammar, muddled ideas.
I would guess it’s an AI foundation with some human tweaks that introduced errors.
I'd buy any Tesla, even the big truck, if it came with open source software! I don't want a car that's spyware like a phone. Let me be in control of it, let me mod it, let me own it.
Who's going to sell me one?
Not exactly what you are asking for, but did you see that Rivian recently provided a way for owners to disable the vehicle's LTE connection? It's straight In Canada. In the US, you have to ask a dealer.
Tesla is full of open source software, including the Linux kernel. They probably are GPL violators though.
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2018/may/18/tesla-incomplete-... https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2019/oct/30/calling-all-tesla... https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/dec/21/tesla-no-source-c...
See also this interesting slide deck about the GPLv3 and cars, I expect that regulations would mean you could not drive cars with modified software (similar to what happens with solar inverters):
https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...
> I expect that regulations would mean you could not drive cars with modified software
Aggressive regulations for emissions control software + industry deterrence for car modifications via insurance and warranties
Good then that there is very little need for emissions control in EV. No barrier for giving the owner of the vehicle more access to its innards.
If you can find a good security vulnerability Tesla will give you root on your car as an award.
If you found that vuln, wouldn't you already have root?
That's the joke
...because they never patch it, and are busy building robots instead.
Root persistence is more for encouraging you to report all bugs you’ve found instead of holding on to them in fear that the vendor will patch them and make further research difficult. See Apple’s security research device program.
There are plenty of FOSS engine management projects around. There is a big community of people doing incredible mods. But cars are complicated and to do it well requires a lot of time, effort, knowledge, money. I've blown up plenty of engines along the way, and it's fun and I'm learning a lot, but it's not something that's easy to just dabble in.
> Who's going to sell me one?
The company that doesn't froth at the mouth for a constant revenue stream by selling every bit of data it can siphon from you with digital leashes. With most of business and startups focusing on short term high gains there's little incentive to build a real company that will think long term while actually giving a shit about its products AND customers. That all died out long ago. That kind of thinking is radical these days.
This reads very AI. Pangram [0] agrees [1].
[0] Not perfect, but I think as good evidence as any: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.15654 [1] https://www.pangram.com/history/44cd07d3-ba94-4331-8c7f-a626...
sure, but there's still actual journalism behind it. Isn't the primary objection to ai slop is that it's just vapid regurgitation?
I've been reading electrek for years, they're generally pretty decent journalists. If the author here is doing the interview, getting the notes together, doing the research and then has a system prompt of the voice of the publication and says "generate", do we still say slop?
Personally I think "eh..." - I think basically everyone will eventually view journalism as not necessarily involving the writing of the final document in the same way that most people don't yell about synthesizers not being real music any more.
> most people don't yell about synthesizers not being real music any more.
I think a lot more effort is required to release (popular) music, and I'm only hearing 'independent' music at concert venues which also require a lot of effort.
It doesn't take a lot of effort to transform the raw materials of journalism, which you cite, into a finished product outside the process of writing and sitting with your thoughts. And there isn't a similar venue to the idea of concerts where I can personally see journalists' skill/creativity/mastery.
Thus, I can't tell if the work of an AI-assisted journalist is intentional or complete the way I can tell if an AI song is poorly done.
If you cannot tell if the work is poorly done or not, why it matters if it's AI or not?
The reason many of us dislike AI slop is because it's very evidently AI slop, if you cannot tell, then I wouldn't even say it's AI slop, maybe AI assisted if anything, but matters less if the content itself actually doesn't suck.
I was unclear - I can tell that there was an AI involved in writing readily.
In music, it's hard to make a convincing AI product (at the moment) because editing sound is challenging.
In journalism, it's easy to make AI articles and relatively easy to edit them not to sound like AI. So if someone isn't doing that minimal work, I wonder what other things they're taking the easy route for.
> Not perfect, but I think as good evidence as any
It really isn't, I just tried a random one of my own HN comments, very much 100% human and it reported "100% of this text is AI Generated".
Tools that give false-positives aren't just "not perfect", they're actively harmful and not "as good evidence as any". Stop relying on those tools to give you any sort of direction or indication what so ever, they simply do not work.
Edit: Lol, just noticed Pangram also provides "evidence" for their rating, your link says it's 100% written by AI because there is 16 instances found of the Em Dash, that's it, those are all the evidence for the very confident "100% AI" score they gave... Yay science!
How involved is the software in the car, any while driving features? I'd be a little bit afraid of getting in that car even with the best efforts of the community, maybe it's not really for driving, i'd be even more nervous to get in a car with no updates, but still.
More than anything I am nervous about having a car running priority code that can have mandatory updates pushed at any time that change the cars behavior -- not just throttle response and adjusting the emissions here, they could be updating thresholds for when the auto-pilot cancels and return to manual control, what level of cruise the car defaults to (GM BlueCruise IMO is terrible about this, it cancels hands free mode often, without any auditory alert) and so on.
Give me a car without internet uplink any day!
That's my issue. You could drive the car one day, go to bed, and the next day the car does not perform the same way it did yesterday. That's ridiculous. Any update needs to be approved by the user. Even if that means doing like Apple does where the user has to enter their password to approve the update scheduled for the middle of the night.
I remember watching a youtube video where the one guy who has become The Fisker Whisperer said that screwing up an update will total the vehicle because several of the control modules just can't be had anywhere, at least until another ends up in a junkyard.
There is literally nothing about any Fisker automobile that makes it worth all this effort. But a handful of rich boomer tech execs think there's nothing else in the world that could possibly meet their expectations for a hybrid or electric vehicle, have more wealth than they know what to do with, and so here we are.
Saabs are much the same way. Some nonsense about a completely overengineered security system in the newer vehicles that makes losing a key a "well, now you're fucked" event, I believe?
A few days back, the breaks of my car suddenly stopped working. By stopped-working I mean they just got jammed. No matter how much I press, they just wouldn't budge. The reason: my car had abruptly turned-off by itself, jamming the breaks with it. HOW TF are breaks NOT connected directly to the tyres? Why the tf they have to be software controlled? This is the "critical" path, and SHOULD be 100% under driver's control, at all times.
And then just 3 days back, the same thing happened with steering wheel while I was reversing the car. But this time, the car hadn't even turned-off... the wheel just got jammed. Restarted the card, and it worked. What the absolute fck man!! What tf!
Electronics and the corresponding software should stay 100% out of all critical paths inside of the car. Sure if it "helps", it's fine, but, that should NOT turn into such outcomes.
That's ridiculous. What year make and model car do you have?
It's a 10+ year old Maruti Suzuki Swift Dzire from India. See my reply to previous comment.. it doesn't seem like software fault (at least not fully).
There are a lot of mechanical reasons your engine will die. For example crankshaft or camshaft position sensors failing will do it because the engine control module can’t time fuel injection or spark properly.
yep.. been reading since the comment a lot ... there are so so so many parts in a car... holy cow!!
What model? Is it possible that you accidentally had the car in a power-on mode, but without the engine started? I've done that by accident in my Mitsubishi Outlander Sport. The symptoms are similar to what you describe. Actually, it was at a car wash -- attendant left the car power on and I thought the engine was running so tried to drive away. Got the car to move a bit (happened to be downhill) but it was super scary because the brake pedal was taking more and more force to push down and I could barely turn the steering wheel. Luckily I was smart enough to put it in park, check everything, and realize the engine wasn't running!
The brakes (n.b., spelling) and steering will feel increasingly stiff or "locked up" if your engine is off because the engine is not powering the vacuum system that powers the brake booster, and the steering will be extremely difficult to operate without the assistance of power steering.
Yep yep yep.. that explains it. Not the software fault as I original suspected (at least in the break-jamming case). What I "felt" like jammed was probably just that vacuum system not helping, but since it happened for the first time (with me), and so abruptly, it felt like the brakes were jammed.
But, the worrying, and a lot more scarier part is that this was not me accidentally leaving the car in accessory/power-on mode. The engine cut out while I was driving, which is itself a serious fault.
Regarding the steering wheel case, it still feels like electronic/software fault since the car was actually reversing on engine power. But, similar to the first case, most likely it was also not jammed, rather, i lost the power steering assist, and hence, it "felt" like jammed since it happened first time to me.
Im from India btw and the car in question is a 10+ year old Maruti Suzuki Swift Dzire.
---
Summary:
1. Break issue: vacuum assist lost due to engine shutting off (by itself) which "felt" like it "jammed" the breaks, but, most probably had just gotten super stiff instead.
2. Steering wheel: Still looks like a software/electronic fault, but, similar to the break case, it "felt" like jammed.. but, it had just gotten super stiff.
This all, however, is still so wrong. In either of the cases the fault was not mine, yet, I was put in a situation that could have been very serious.
So I researched a bit more on that break thingy... and just learned that this assist provides anywhere form 4x to 10x the assist. And without it, you would literally have to stand on the breaks with full body weight to have a similar effect. Wow!!
Funfact4life, even with modern cars in emergency braking scenarios you _still_ want to STAND on that brake pedal with all your weight!
...ooh, a mnemonic: "STOMP, STAY and STEER". (Stomp brake, Stay stomped, Steer around obstacles while pressing brake hard.) Even if it vibrates!
[Grand]pa had to "pump" his brakes (on/off/on/off), we have it easier :)
> Steer around obstacles while pressing brake hard
That seems like a good way to flip a car or truck.
Also runs counter to the advice that's given for surviving a sudden kangaroo on road at night incident .. for the past 60+ years.
eg:
~ https://www.isuzu.com.au/news/news-articles/how-to-avoid-a-k...
and
~ https://www.huddleinsurance.com/post/kangaroos-australian-ro...
I believe Barbing is saying to start braking and if you haven't stopped when you reach the obstacle, to keep the brake pressed hard while steering around it. That said, it's also important to manage wheel and/or brake lock-up if either happens.
You got it!
Interpreted from https://www.firerescue1.com/fire-products/education/articles...
Hope I conveyed accurately. Video in sibling comment shows in practice.
Steer vs. swerve nuance? From your quote, “you can steer around.” - probably thinking like this stomp stay steer video (three minutes):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYBvV_kE6kg
Have heard in the states:
“Smaller than a deer, don’t veer”
One more bit of info you might find helpful: the word is written "brake," not "break." We share a weird language.
Car owners the current title changes the meaning
Oh phew, the scissors are safe, thought this was about Fiskars for a moment
This is the second time Fisker has burned car owners and gone out of business. How many more times will it happen? Shouldn’t stuff be allowed to die?
Owners of the cars, not the company.
It's in the first few paragraphs - just hard to get there (without instantly closing) because it's pure AI slop...
I wish there was a similar attempt at making "open source" motorcycles
WHERE DO I BUY ONE?
This is not a joke. The prime thing that keeps me driving my old vehicle is my avoidance of modern corporate totalitarianism in tracked vehicles, spying, and other crap. I'm not buying something just to rent it too.
I would pay above-market.
I'm researching this right now. Maybe I've finally found my new car.
There are dealerships out of California selling new and used stock.
Edit: changed to present tense. Searching Google shopping for the model shows the locations and prices.
Minimally:
All software should be placed in escrow, made available at end of support.
"We need more open source in the auto industry"
Uh no, we need significantly less software in the auto industry. Software sucks. It excels at taking relatively simple (if inconvenient) problems and in exchange for some notional convenience introduces problem spaces so baroque they border on the occult. An example: between all of the seat controls on the driver's seat of my wife's car I've counted 16 individual switch positions and something like six motors, all wired into the CAN bus so the central console can save user preferences.
Without bothering to check the OEM parts cost to replace that seat I am absolutely dead ass certain that it by itself costs more than my first three cars combined. And all of this pageantry replaces the two traditional dumb mechanical levers to control seat distance from the pedals and back tilt. This and real-time cell network surveillance is all the proof I need that executive depravity in the auto industry is functionally unlimited, and the reason why I wouldn't accept a "modern" car as a gift, much less buy one.
So a leasing company bought the source code for $2.5 million and then cut off owners after they refused an additional deal. What was the point, then? Is there anything rational about this market interaction?
Patent trolling
Leasing company probably thought they'd found some suckers to pay their (the leasing company's) cloud bills.
The leasing company leases these cars to Uber drivers in NYC, who presumably did not get cut off.
That explains the over-representation of Oceans in NYC’s supercharging network, and one of the worst side-effects of opening that network to non-Tesla operators.
Overall I think it’s a good thing, but it’s the closest to Eternal September I ever experienced in my life, the sudden change inclusion of cultural strangers in a shared space with its customs etc.
> No more over-the-air updates. No more connected services. No more warranty.
LLM slop. Why does the author believe he is entitled to our attention if he cannot even bother to use his own words?
Well now I'm nervous I'm going to be susceptible to AI slop as that's a set of sentences I would absolutely have written my self. That kind of cadence is something that I remember being taught especially since it's comes as a group of three.
There's a reason AI uses things like em dashes and parallel structure and groups of three (catch me doing it here too). It's good writing. (Also varied sentence length.) AI trained on good writing uses the outward structure of good writing.