Beware, Tesla might take away your car's autopilot if you buy its vehicles from third party dealerships – plus more news Here's your latest roundup of AI news beyond what we've already covered on El Reg. And totally written by a human. Honest, $reader_salutation_alt4. AI and Google Maps: Hooray, it's the fifteenth anniversary of Google Maps! The popular navigation platform began as a desktop application, where users had to print out instructions …
I don't get it: the point of using a car dealership is so that they deal with any problems that arise. Engine breaks, AC stops working, Autopilot feature broken: take it back. It's up to the dealership to worry about these things, not the end customer.
Otherwise just buy privately and save some cash. It sounds as though the dealership owes this customer $8000 for a replacement Autopilot.
A 'popular' part of commercial software license terms and conditions is that the license applies to software installed on a particular computer owned by a particular person or company. Change the computer or the owner and the license becomes invalid. It would be nice to think that the previous owner of the vehicle still has a valid license but I would find that surprising. It would be sensible for the license to move with the vehicle but there is no legal requirement for that to be included in the license. It would be astonishing if car dealers read the terms and conditions and took care not to sell expired software licenses. I find it disappointing that Tesla have chosen to copy the typical behaviour of the nasty end of commercial software and I hope the decide to do better.
It is almost as is the rabid commie free software loonies have been on to the right idea for years.
I can see where you are coming from on that but this is not quite the same category. This is more closely related to software installed in industrial plant or suchlike as it is written for that specific purpose (can't exactly shft this onto a laptop to improve your GTA skills).
A closer parallel would be Ford/VW/etc remotely disabling the turbo if the car is not sold/maintained through their dealership chain. Doesn't stop the car working but very much reduces the driveability/resale value.
Edit: Got to learn to type faster, at least two other commenters got in ahead of me here :(
It is almost as is the rabid commie free software loonies have been on to the right idea for years.
Woof, woof!
Have one of these (free) -->
Anyway, whatever next - disable the engine management system because that was not licenced to the new owner?
May be the lemon laws could offer some path to resolve it.
What about other options at the point of ordering - if controlled by software, then, they could take those away as well
Apparently the car was sold at auction to the dealer by Tesla. Tesla had been compelled by a California "lemon law" to accept it back from the original purchaser because of a well-known fault. So there isn't really a previous owner.
But it seems that the car had Autopilot when Tesla auctioned it and when the current owner bought it. It was disabled by a "software update".
It's correct that Tesla probably have a legal figleaf for that.
It is however, terrible from a consumer and public relations point of view. Effectively it destroys the resale value of a car, making them immediately less desirable to buy new in the first place.
It is also troubling from a legal point of view that this can be the case. When one buys a car, it's normally thought of a a single system. All cars nowadays have tons of embedded systems and software, and all are tied to the car, not to the combination of car+owner. Could you imagine if you ABS controller or engine mapping software from BMW, Mercedes etc stopped working for a second buyer?
I highly suspect that both consumer ad legal pressure will get Tesla to reverse this decision
>It's correct that Tesla probably have a legal figleaf for that.
Not really, if Tesla supplied the car to the auction...
Remember, Tesla admit to auditing and removing the software after the auction.
First rule of auction, the lot is sold as-is, hence why they allow viewing, which can include starting the thing up and inspecting the installed software.
There is another important aspect to this, if I leave say some gold bars hidden in the vehicle(*) then after the auction they belong to the buyer...
(*) In the real world case the buyer did deposit the gold bars with the local police , reclaiming them a few months later when the police had confirmed they had no evidence they have been stolen.
"the license applies to software installed on a particular computer owned by a particular person or company"
From what I've read elsewhere, that's not the issue here.
From what I have read, the car was bought without the "extra" autopilot features enabled. This car was then acquired by Tesla, who activated those features and sold it on to a 3rd party dealer. This dealer then sold it on to a customer with the features enabled.
Tesla then performed an audit, and noticed these features were enabled on many vehicles when they hadn't been purchased, so they disabled them.
In this case, IMHO, they've screwed up: Tesla enabled the features, and advertised them as enabled to the 3rd party dealer who bought it, who advertised them to the end customer who bought it. The customer should be allowed to keep the features as described.
No offense intended, but I downvoted you because the terms and conditions under which software is released are typically incomprehensible to anyone including lawyers. That's pretty clearly intentional. Read them? Sure, why not? But why waste your time? They amount to: "Here's a product. we take no responsibility for it and do not promise it to be good for any purpose under the sun -- no matter what our ads and salespersons might have led you to believe. Have a nice day."
Perhaps there's a case here for a challenge to the terms and conditions on the basis that they are an unfair restriction to third party resellers of second hand cars.
The difficulty would be that it would probably have to be a class action and fairly complex, but it would be a good precedent to establish. As you say, though, a better result might be that Tesla takes the morally responsible position and makes the change allowing the software to stay with the car voluntarily.
It's a third party dealership and they have no control over what updates and other stuff Tesla deem applicable to any of their cars resold via non-authorised (i.e. non Tesla) dealerships. Tesla want to make it so difficult to buy a second hand Tesla from a non-Tesla dealer that people stomach the extra expense to save themselves any aggro further down the line. This has been mentioned before in other comment threads about how Apple have been disabling genuine replacement iPhone parts because they have been fitted by a non-approved Apple repair shops such as Louis Rossman and others so there is already a similar precedent here..
What the legal aspect of this is will be interesting to see, although unless it is explicitly stated in any of the Tesla terms and conditions for the sale a given car that it must only ever be resold via a Tesla dealer, this would probably be declared illegal and the only thing they could realistically do and get away with is to not provide any further updates to any of the software on the vehicle. This will be an interesting one to watch.
Possibly, but in this case I don't think so because the dealership isn't the only option (or even usually the best option...) and they have no responsibility or obligation to offer any support for a privately imported vehicle*. I once had a mechanic refuse to touch my car (following a bad experience with a previous customer who drove the same model!) so I simply went elsewhere. Their loss.
Tesla doesn't have that defence, though.
And if you have a privately imported car, with a few exceptions (e.g. the Nissan GT-R,) local dealerships usually aren't equipped to service it anyway. Some of them have enough trouble servicing cars they do sell. In most cases I think a specialist is the better choice, and that applies to all vehicles.
* I often wonder how owners of privately imported vehicles equipped with the factory Takata hand grenade in the steering wheel are dealing with it.
The car was owned by Tesla - it had not been sold or owned by anyone else, so it was not sold to someone, with a defined set of options. Maybe it was a demonstrator (hence all the options being enabled).
Tesla sold the car via an auction company to a third party dealer. The third party dealer sold the car (advertised with autopilot, etc,) to some guy. Tesla subsequently decided that the car should not have autopilot and disabled it. If Tesla sold that car at auction as not having autopilot, then I guess the third party dealer may have to pay up - but if Tesla sold the car to the third party dealer as having autopilot, they should probably reinstate autopilot and send the new owner some goodies as an apology.
"Tesla subsequently decided that the car should not have autopilot and disabled it."
If Tesla made a mistake and let out a vehicle with autopilot that shouldn't have had it, they should just suck it up and let it carry on.
Why? Firstly it's not the mistake of the dealer or the customer, and secondly the eight grand for the autopilot software is surely less than the impact of the potential negative publicity.
This is more like a traditional car maker breaking into the car you just bought from a dealership and removing a feature ( say, the NAV system or the seat heating ) because " - you - did not pay [the manufacturer] for it" ...
Sounds weird, in case this story really happened that way ...
Just because a "feature" of a car is a configurable software item and not a physically installed item, it still belongs to the car's features that are sold to the first customer who for all I know should be allowed to sell it to a new owner via dealership or directly.
I heard a good description of Tesla recently. This story seems to agree.
Tesla is a software company that just happens to make cars as well.
It seems to me that this move is just mean. If I buy a 'thing' that is advertised to have X, Y & Z features yet when I got said 'thing' those features are missing then there is a legal case to answer.
Tesla may well produce fine computers on wheels otherwise known as cars (but as bland and as boring internally as hell) but :-
1) their manufacturing quality leaves a lot to be desired.
2) their customer service is IMHO at the same sort of level as Talk-talk is for ISP's.
(but as bland and as boring internally as hell)
Objection: This is subjective. I find it sexier than anything currently on the market.
Perhaps that's why Mercedes-Benz has copied the design in their cars post-2015?
Riiiight... if Mercedes really did that, they're really lousy copiers
For reference, Mercedes Benz's cockpit vs. Tesla's
Inappropriate comparison. Why didn't you compare with the Model S?
(Hint: the idea being copied is the on-screen instrument cluster + touchscreen dashboard + "mini car" image on dashboard combo [Mercedes] [Tesla] . The only difference is that the Mercedes dash is vertical instead of horizontal. Otherwise, it would be flagrant lawsuit material.)
The only difference is that the Mercedes dash is vertical instead of horizontal. Otherwise, it would be flagrant lawsuit material.)
So you can avoid lawsuits by rotating the infringing design by 90 degrees? Samsung obviously missed a trick there.
Oh, wait..... OK, mine's the one with the diamond-shaped smartphone in the pocket.
So you can avoid lawsuits by rotating the infringing design by 90 degrees?
They would be able to claim prior art. Touchscreens in vehicles have been in landscape since the first ones ever introduced in a car, but as far as I have seen, there have been no cars with portrait touchscreens until Tesla debuted the design in the 2011 Model S. (Before that, even Tesla's Roadster had a landscape-orientated display)
Samsung obviously missed a trick there.
No. Nokia's N-Gage line has the claim to being the first here.
I know what you were referring to :-)
In the Apple vs. Samsung suit, couch commentators like ourselves pointed out that there had been rectangular touchscreen phones before the iPhone (like the LG KE850/Prada, released 12/2006).
I was doing a ha-ha-only-serious variation of that.
Well the Tesla one's look hideous - particularly the one where the Tesla guys have simply bolted a circa 10 tablet to the dashboard. But then Mercedes, like other automotive manufacturers have decades of experience of designing dashboards. So it is far more likely that Tesla is the one doing the copying and doing it poorly...
That makes sense, but pre-Tesla, Mercedes-Benz's COMMAND infotainment center was a mouse-puck-operated monstrosity, not a touchscreen.
Only post-Tesla had they introduced touchscreens ... and EV models into the mainstream, although to give them credit, they had been experimenting with EVs ever since these nineties prototypes, and possibly even before that.
So it is far more likely that Tesla is the one doing the copying and doing it poorly...
This is what one is inclined to believe, especially that both compete in the same segment, but in this case, Tesla really set a precedent. It is a bad idea indeed to mess with a touchscreen while driving, but hey, one has to give credit where due.
(And that "mini car on the dash thing" - particularly annoying now that almost every other car manufacturer does it)
Why has the Tesla got a clutch?
I thought an intrinsic part of the idea of electric vehicles was, the necessary matching of effort to load was done electrically (by changing the effective number of turns in the coils, and hence the strength of the magnetic fields they generate) as opposed to mechanically (by changing the ratios of gear teeth)?
No clutch in any of these pictures - the clutch-like pedal in this picture is a footrest
"For reference, Mercedes Benz's cockpit vs. Tesla's"
As a person who drives a car that doesn't even have a computer onboard... I'd pick the Mercedes any day. Why? Pleasing rounded things, soft curves, gentle.
Tesla, on the other hand, looks ugly as fuck. It's like whoever designed all that harsh angular stuff is angry... at life? at themselves? at other drivers? It just doesn't look like a car I could hope to feel happy in, and the photo of the S one in the reply, oh my God. That's what I'd expect to see if I died in a car crash and ended up in a budget remake of Transformers. Horrid!
There's too much bullcrap that goes on with software. If it's a subscription service and the subscription lapses then that's perhaps understandable, but if it's an option with a one-off payment I don't think anyone would tolerate their air conditioning or radio being taken away in the dead of night because they had the temerity to buy a car second hand.
It's not even a per person licence, it doesn't carry over to the next Tesla you buy (if you ever buy another one).
There should perhaps be a law about this to dissuade manufacturers pulling stunts like this "because software"... that is the option or feature should be available for the lifetime of the vehicle once it's been paid for with a one-off payment.
"There should perhaps be a law about this to dissuade manufacturers pulling stunts like this "because software"... that is the option or feature should be available for the lifetime of the vehicle once it's been paid for with a one-off payment."
I hope they try pulling this stunt in the EU where resale of "used" software licenses is legal. Just ask Adobe about it.
The Nintendo Wii's marketplace. Anything you download is for that machine only, and for you only. If you sell or give away your Wii, the license demands you wipe it first, but you don't retain the rights you've paid for.
Consider: I have a black Wii, you have a white Wii. We both have installed Ocarina of Time, and nothing else. We want to change colours, so we swap. We are required to wipe Ocarina from both of them, and then buy it a second time if we want to play it.
It sounds like the same is true for Tesla; if we swap cars, we both lose $8000 of features. Aside from artificially enhancing the company's profits, what sense could this possibly make?
>what sense could this possibly make?
Lots to be bean counters...
Suspect it will only really be applied to/enforced against refurbishers...
Remember MS has a similarly daft licence demands whereby PC refurbishers cannot reuse the Windows licence attached to the box by the OEM, they have to: completely wipe the HDD (destroying any other licenced software), remove the OEM COA and install a "Refurbished" COA; whilst also paying MS for the privilege of doing so.
"Remember MS has a similarly daft licence demands whereby PC refurbishers cannot reuse the Windows licence attached to the box by the OEM, they have to: completely wipe the HDD (destroying any other licenced software), remove the OEM COA and install a "Refurbished" COA; whilst also paying MS for the privilege of doing so."
What a licence says, and what is legal are not always the same thing. That's why so few licence disagreements ever end up in court. The licensors would rather settle out of court and leave everyone else thinking the licence is enforceable than have a court strike out whole chunks of it as illegal and unenforceable.
Given the current record of "Autopilot", disabling it probably qualifies as a safety feature. But it'll be interesting to see how the law on this plays out. How does one distinguish between a feature that is disabled by the vendor because of greed and one that is disabled because it is hazardous to the driver, the public, or the environment? If the law comes down on the side of it was sold with X feature, the manufacturer must reimburse anyone it takes the feature away from, is the manufacturer then obligated not only to leave the feature alone but to keep it updated?
The disease has been around for decades. It would be nice if schools attempted to teach the meaning of GIGO to young children but the real challenge is to teach it to the politicians spending tax payers' money on blockchain AI social media facial recognition smuggler detecters.
It has been around for a long time in one way or the other. We had a solar heating guy who claimed that when the analogue and digital thermometers disagreed, the digital was right because you got this nice exact number. I kept my peace.
Similar: The story of the security consultant who swanned around City of London with his very well made ID with the name Armitage Shanks.
The uptake of so called AI to deal with the issues in the article are a clear indication of the lack of professionalism and disinclination to learn on the part of those who fun the justice and welfare systems.
The software is only as good as the writers and they will only be as good as the hey are allowed to be, given the algorithms are commercial products, they will always suffer from the pressure to get it into the sales catalogues.
The potential damage these products can and are doing to society and the way government is run will be expensive and difficult to remedy.
In essence it's the perfect excuse... no need to design how it works because AI, if it goes wrong then it's not anyone's fault, just the AI. *
* Where AI means "machine learning". **
** Where machine learning means "copy this dataset and outcomes and treat its errors and imperfections as the target to aim for".
when the "Auto Pilot" crashes into something/kills someone - they could just point any queries/lawsuits in the direction of Tesla - a modification that was done to the vehicle not by the 3rd party dealer/supplied by them, but by Tesla at the request of the customer
Sir Robert Mark - I'm convinced this is a major contribution to road safety !
If the new owner bought a new Tesla could he transfer his licence to the new car? If he's not allowed to then is the licence for the car, for the owner or a car/owner combination?
As someone who is currently considering a Tesla I think for once I'll actually read the terms and conditions very carefully before I buy... and certainly I'll have some interesting questions at the dealership.
Err... But... Tesla does not have 'Dealerships' or otherwise known as 'Stealerships'.
That have Outlets where you use a Computer to order your vehicle and then to collect it sometime later.
Good luck with those T's & C's. You may find that they are either written for the US Market or have changed before you get delivery.
"If the new owner bought a new Tesla could he transfer his licence to the new car? If he's not allowed to then is the licence for the car, for the owner or a car/owner combination?"
All the software options stay with the car, not the owner. One of the tricky issues is where an owner has paid for a future update, which was never delivered, because it was not yet available -- and his car is then written off. The Tesla rules say that he or his insurers would have to buy the undelivered software option again for any replacement car.
In the UK yes, also the speed limit for the road you're on.
Although the speed limit data can be inaccurate for up to a mile after passing into a different speed zone - one of the reasons I think that GPS linked automatic speed restrictors on any vehicle are the spawn of satan and will lead to deaths.
"reading road signs to set the limiter."
I'd like to see how that would work here. I live in a network of lanes which can be accessed from 30mph and national speed limit roads and can be navigated between the two without any road signs at all.
I also wonder how it would cope with the stretches of the A75 with 40mph signs with a rider applying it to HGVs. Or the change between MPH & KPH at the Irish border.
AN idea with too many built-in assumptions.
I noticed the speed limits had appeared for the UK (well Oxfordshire at least) on Saturday, but no current speed - and the limits were hopeless, showing 50 or even 30 for long stretches of the A34 with a 70 limit. I've never noticed Waze being far off - given the common owner I'd have expected better.
How many other hardware / software companies are going to look at this and go "great idea guys"?
Phones, PCs and applications locked to one cloud user account forever? Plus all your lovely connected TVs and smart fridges. On the way very soon I reckon.
To be fair, most people don't resell their tech. They either bin it once their done with it, or use it till it dies.
I've had to bin 3 kettles in the last 6 months alone, and my coffee machine has stopped heating the water and that's only 2 months old (keeps it warm after brewed though, so I just put hot water in it now.)
Most modern tech is built to fail sadly.
"I've had to bin 3 kettles in the last 6 months alone, and my coffee machine has stopped heating the water and that's only 2 months old (keeps it warm after brewed though, so I just put hot water in it now.)"
Surely they should all be replaced under the guarantee. Why would you put up with broken goods?
My mum (God rest her soul) was such a prolific tea drinker that the kettle always broke just inside the two year guarantee. This meant a trip to John Lewis for a replacement of a model with a similar specification and a new guarantee.
I think she got nearly a decade's worth of kettles out of one purchase.
"I've had to bin 3 kettles in the last 6 months alone, and my coffee machine has stopped heating the water and that's only 2 months old (keeps it warm after brewed though, so I just put hot water in it now.)"
Take them back. That's not any good. Unless you're using them in an unsuitable environment - such as a domestic kettle in an office that's running almost constantly.
That brings me to my second point... What on earth are you doing to your poor appliances?
agree 100%
also, just because I put my headlights on during the day, Android Auto dims my auto's LCD map display.
And when I turn off the 'auto dim' feature during the day, when night falls, it's so bright drivers in other cars run off the road from the glare...
but of course the autodim fuction is like five levels inside Android Auto so turning it off and on is a hazard.
I really wonder if Google's UI designers ever actually use the stuff they ruin.
AdWords / Google Ads UI being another excellent example of their digital misanthropy...
Don't. Adjust during time of day and/or have roads a colour that is visible on a display under normal settings. ;)
Hammer looking for a problem that don't exist is how most software development devolves from "this worked for decades" to "it's crashing/broken/unusable but we got investment money because 'AI' buzzwords".
I wonder how long it will be before TESLA owners start noticing that their uber fast electric cars are only just able to keep up with an average
saloon as Tesla have reduced the performance in order to sell the latest model... Or maybe every component which has a consumer profile (Brake Pads, Coolant, Oil etc) has to be purchased from Tesla so that they can secure some recurring revenues.
Sorry Mr. Musk,... we've seen all this crap before.
"...as Tesla have reduced the performance in order to sell the latest model"
Ah, the old slowing down via firmware update ploy to "preserve battery life" as Inspector Clouseau may have said...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/08/france_fines_apple/
Within the first 8 years the battery replacement is free. We've also yet to see good statistics on battery charge loss as that 8 years is still running for the vast majority of Tesla cars. It seems that charge loss is far less than doubters expected with most approaching that age being up in the high 90s percentage of retained range.
We're seeing the same with our Leaf. It's currently 5 years old and we are seeing exactly the same range as we did when we bought it (no - we do use it - it does a 40 mile each way commute daily).
You also don't mention trade in. Most older batteries will be traded in and it looks like Tesla will pay a large amount for the battery for power wall use. Again proper prices aren't available yet.
...is a way to define a custom route, store that, and then utilize it.
Along the same lines, how about a route option "route with least stoplights"?
Google Maps consistently will take me the 'shortest distance' through seventeen traffic lights, when a route that is two miles longer is actually fifteen minutes shorter because it only has two stoplights.
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