by Animats on 10/10/24, 4:01 AM
"But those clouds and servers will not be maintained indefinitely, and once they go down, the cars that depend on them will lose features that owners may be relying upon."
This may prevent cars being advertised for "sale" in California after January 1.
AB 2426: Consumer protection: false advertising: digital goods.[1]
“Digital application or game” means any application or game that a person accesses and manipulates using a specialized electronic gaming device, computer, mobile device, tablet, or other device with a display screen, including any add-ons or additional content for that application or game.
That's a car with an infotainment system.
This law makes it a crime to offer something "for sale" if it can be remotely disabled later, absent a separate acknowledgement that it's a lease.
[1] https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB2426/2023
by Habgdnv on 10/10/24, 4:41 AM
Just in case someone from American Lease is reading this, I’d be willing to migrate their servers for less than a million.
Jokes aside, after reading the comments here, I doubt anyone with technical knowledge would believe this. Even with certificate pinning, you can simply dump the firmware as a raw binary, replace the certificate with your own, and upload it back to the car.
And even if the source code is lost, you can still sniff the traffic and implement an API. I did this for my previous employer, who had a collection of expensive, locked devices. It took me about a week, without any prior knowledge or experience. Imagine what someone with more experience could do...
by sverhagen on 10/10/24, 3:16 AM
It would be nice to understand what "can't" means in this context. Are they not technically able to achieve it (which may be overcome by bringing in other technical experts), is it a DNS issue (ha-ha), or is there a licensing issue with some component they integrated with?
by throwaway48476 on 10/10/24, 4:03 AM
In a way I'm glad fisker went bankrupt if only to provide proof positive of the dangers of the 'connected car'.
by walrus01 on 10/10/24, 3:41 AM
A good reminder to never buy a high-dollar tech product that you don't actually own because its continued functioning is dependent upon phoning home to some corporate overlord. I'm happy with my shitty old non-tech-laden car, thanks.
by h0l0cube on 10/10/24, 4:37 AM
Are there yet any EVs out there where you actually have control over the software? Or are there any where you could conceivably root the firmware and use open source updates and 3rd party services when the support timeline ends or the manufacturer folds?
by willcipriano on 10/10/24, 3:25 AM
My dream job is solving "impossible" technical problems like this rapidly, on short notice, and eating everything I kill (I'd imagine they could pay $500k+ for a fast [24 hours] solution here).
Some sort of tech navy seal.
by lykahb on 10/10/24, 3:57 AM
I'd guess that making the cars depend on the cloud so much that they are unusable without it is intentional and was a part of the pitch deck.
by TheRealPomax on 10/10/24, 4:02 AM
I guess they're handing over full control of those servers, then. Seems a pretty simple problem to solve, given the legal mandate Fisker is under?
by NotYourLawyer on 10/10/24, 3:23 AM
I don’t understand the issue. Just transfer the domain names and the servers to the buyer. Problem solved.
by jandrewrogers on 10/10/24, 6:45 AM
Analogues of this have been playing out in other industries for some time. The legal incentives strongly bias the outcomes toward it not being possible to own these products, only rent them. At a visceral level I don’t like it but at an intellectual level I understand why it is the only plausible way forward. There is no easy solution.
In automotive, it is common for there to be a requirement that software is supported to some degree for 7-15 years. In practice, this is extremely expensive to guarantee but no one wants to pay for the cost of a reliable guarantee. The industry is at an impasse with consumers and it manifests in situations like this article.
by gjsman-1000 on 10/10/24, 3:22 AM
Reminder for anyone here who has imposter syndrome:
Highly paid engineers built a system this way.
I also have doubts they were specifically instructed to make the infrastructure non-transferable.
by hn72774 on 10/10/24, 4:52 AM
Are there any viable open source electric vehicle initiatives out there yet?
by numpad0 on 10/10/24, 4:01 AM
Is it because someone fired hit [<] and [>] buttons on HSM on the way out, or is it because they’re trying to take control of fractions of the fleet?
by LegitShady on 10/10/24, 4:08 AM
cloud features are the enemy of consumers
by pabs3 on 10/10/24, 4:20 AM
Probably a bigger problem for modern cars (including EVs) is how long security updates will be provided for.
by kragen on 10/10/24, 6:09 AM
Technical incompetence, it sounds like? The risks of technical incompetence seem to be rising.
by sublinear on 10/10/24, 4:31 AM
Stop stacking the deck with incompetent opportunist scammers who don't belong in front of a computer let alone managing jack shit especially IT projects. Pure stupidity and downvote me all you want.