[Discussion] What would it take to selfhost some of the backend that Tesla's connect to?
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I have some bad news for you - any random idiot with a driver's license and a two-ton death machine already puts your ass at risk, all the time. We call it "traffic" because we've just gotten used to it
I'm talking 'I disabled the awareness requirement of autopilot' or 'I fucked with the object detection and here goes my beta test yolo' or 'I added a button to disable all the lights so I can covertly street race' or...
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Assuming that Tesla goes bankrupt, actually shuts down forever, and shuts its servers down…
At a minimum someone would have to find out where the software sends and receives data from. Then you’d have to reverse engineer the software to control the vehicles.
Then you’d have to reprogram the software to send to your C&C server. I don’t think it would really take all that much to host that… it’s getting there that’s difficult.
Yeah it'd be a LOT of constant wireshark and reverse engineering to figure out every API it calls. Then probably something in the middle to sit on the host, need to figure out https certs since you'd be spoofing the host, and of course making sure you get the responses absolutely correct.
Not impossible, but it's not trivial anymore either.
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I'm talking 'I disabled the awareness requirement of autopilot' or 'I fucked with the object detection and here goes my beta test yolo' or 'I added a button to disable all the lights so I can covertly street race' or...
Imagine thinking Tesla has all-that-much in place to prevent those things in a stock configuration. Full-stop, any self-driving is one of the first features anyone trying to disconnect their cars from Tesla servers would lose outright.
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I saw this article earlier:
Tesla 'going bankrupt' is endpoint of protests, says local organizer
In the spirit of right to repair, self-hosting, giving a second life to old devices, and limiting data collection by car companies:
- What are some considerations?
- Are there any projects worth keeping an eye on?
An example that came to mind was Valetudo, which is a cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation. Some robot vacuums are easy to install this on, and others require more invasive modifications.
What I've found so far:
Something else that people don’t think about besides the backend server is the connectivity. A lot of these cars use LTE with eSIMs that can’t be replaced, and getting an internet package for it will be next to impossible since Tesla gets them at bulk rates. Once upon a time cars did allow “bring your own SIM cards” but not anymore. Also as cars get older the cell networks get shut down. Some companies did offer upgrades but that was few and far between. Most just said “sorry, you’re SOL”.
So even if you could hack your car, your car won’t have any way of talking to a custom endpoint.
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That's wasteful and dangerous
Harvest the beast for batteries and GPUs
Then sell it to a demolition derby show.
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Imagine thinking Tesla has all-that-much in place to prevent those things in a stock configuration. Full-stop, any self-driving is one of the first features anyone trying to disconnect their cars from Tesla servers would lose outright.
Ehh doubt, but I don't have a tesla to verify. If I can sever the connection to the home base, I can fuck with it however I want, and their kill switch is useless. Maybe they implemented the kill switch in the modem or something, but again I can't test. I highly doubt that when you're road-tripping in bumfuck nowhere the ap disables itself...
Anybody want to give me $40k? We can be besties.
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I saw this article earlier:
Tesla 'going bankrupt' is endpoint of protests, says local organizer
In the spirit of right to repair, self-hosting, giving a second life to old devices, and limiting data collection by car companies:
- What are some considerations?
- Are there any projects worth keeping an eye on?
An example that came to mind was Valetudo, which is a cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation. Some robot vacuums are easy to install this on, and others require more invasive modifications.
What I've found so far:
You're better off building an open source car. Teslas aren't complicated
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Something else that people don’t think about besides the backend server is the connectivity. A lot of these cars use LTE with eSIMs that can’t be replaced, and getting an internet package for it will be next to impossible since Tesla gets them at bulk rates. Once upon a time cars did allow “bring your own SIM cards” but not anymore. Also as cars get older the cell networks get shut down. Some companies did offer upgrades but that was few and far between. Most just said “sorry, you’re SOL”.
So even if you could hack your car, your car won’t have any way of talking to a custom endpoint.
And this is another reason why putting internet on cars is a bad idea
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Mixed feelings on this. Yeah, you buy it you should own it. But if your ability to fuck with a two-ton rolling death machine puts my ass at risk, we've git a fucking problem.
Nothing has stopped people with ice vehicles.
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I'm talking 'I disabled the awareness requirement of autopilot' or 'I fucked with the object detection and here goes my beta test yolo' or 'I added a button to disable all the lights so I can covertly street race' or...
And? People can already do this with most cars.
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If you bought a live service car you're probably shit out of luck
It's not.
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And? People can already do this with most cars.
There's a difference between 'physical work required' and 'plug in this dongle and run the exe' though
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And this is another reason why putting internet on cars is a bad idea
I mean, what’s the alternative? It’s not like it has to have internet. Anything internet connected is mainly quality of life:
- Traffic
- Remote (app) features
- Music
Except maybe Teslas, damned if I know what they do. But they’re nice to have things that generally require realtime updates but the car functions just fine as a car without it.
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You're better off building an open source car. Teslas aren't complicated
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I saw this article earlier:
Tesla 'going bankrupt' is endpoint of protests, says local organizer
In the spirit of right to repair, self-hosting, giving a second life to old devices, and limiting data collection by car companies:
- What are some considerations?
- Are there any projects worth keeping an eye on?
An example that came to mind was Valetudo, which is a cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation. Some robot vacuums are easy to install this on, and others require more invasive modifications.
What I've found so far:
Realistically they would get a bailout "for the consumer".
More likely than central hosting would be some of the same people enabling faster modes via software hacks currently making them run offline.
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...But will it run DOOM?
Pretty sure someone would have already done it. Anything with a screen and some sort of computer behind it is low hanging fruit for doom. It's shit like running it on a calculator using potatoes that raises the bar!
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I mean, what’s the alternative? It’s not like it has to have internet. Anything internet connected is mainly quality of life:
- Traffic
- Remote (app) features
- Music
Except maybe Teslas, damned if I know what they do. But they’re nice to have things that generally require realtime updates but the car functions just fine as a car without it.
- Traffic
- Phone (CarPlay/Android Auto (yes I know Tesla doesn’t have them, garbage decision you’ll have to live with if you bought one)
- Remote (app) features
- Don’t care/want/need, plus security risk. If you really can’t do without, use WiFi when at home, and no-idea-what for when on the go.
- Music
- See point 1, also “dumb” media devices via Bluetooth/USB should be possible.
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- Traffic
- Phone (CarPlay/Android Auto (yes I know Tesla doesn’t have them, garbage decision you’ll have to live with if you bought one)
- Remote (app) features
- Don’t care/want/need, plus security risk. If you really can’t do without, use WiFi when at home, and no-idea-what for when on the go.
- Music
- See point 1, also “dumb” media devices via Bluetooth/USB should be possible.
Again though, they are all quality of life things. You don’t have to use it on most cars. Don’t want it, don’t pay for it and don’t use it. So just like giving people the choice of AA/CP, what’s wrong with giving them the choice of using those features?
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Something else that people don’t think about besides the backend server is the connectivity. A lot of these cars use LTE with eSIMs that can’t be replaced, and getting an internet package for it will be next to impossible since Tesla gets them at bulk rates. Once upon a time cars did allow “bring your own SIM cards” but not anymore. Also as cars get older the cell networks get shut down. Some companies did offer upgrades but that was few and far between. Most just said “sorry, you’re SOL”.
So even if you could hack your car, your car won’t have any way of talking to a custom endpoint.
Could a Tesla ever work if the cell network went down
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Could a Tesla ever work if the cell network went down
I think I mentioned it in another post but Schwaticars are a bit different. Though I’d assume they’d have to have some basic functionality in the event of an outage. “Always on” hasn’t come to cars… yet
