
Revenue from self-driving Teslas only allowed through the Tesla Network - TDL
http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/10/dont-plan-on-using-an-autonomous-tesla-to-earn-money-with-uber-or-lyft/
======
snowwrestler
The erosion of the concept of "ownership" continues.

Traditionally, goods are subject to the first sale doctrine--once I buy a
shirt, it's my property, and if I want to sell or rent it, I can. It's mine.

But software is licensed. When I buy a piece of software, I'm actually paying
for a limited and revokable right to use someone else's property. And now
companies are putting software into more and more goods.

As software is eating the world, it is also eating our concept of what it
means to buy and own things.

Amazon in 2009 remotely deleted George Orwell books (you can't make this up)
from customer Kindles without asking first. Amazon didn't need the customers'
permission because a Kindle book is legally a license, not a piece of
property.

John Deere tractors have been prized by farmers for their durability and
flexibility. Now they come with software and a prohibition against customer
modification or repair.

It sounds silly but the right to repair our own property is under threat. It's
now something that we need to fight for.

And now apparently even paying $100,000 will not be enough to give full
ownership rights to a car.

~~~
RUG3Y
It's our responsibility to choose and support products that respect our rights
and empower us. Vote with your feet.

~~~
snowwrestler
I don't think voting with dollars will do much on its own, for two reasons.

1) Goods powered by software are frequently much better than goods without. I
mean, compare a phone with software vs. without. Compare a car with software
vs. without. Which one would you rather have?

2) Entire industries are converting to software-based capability. Speaking of
phones and cars, try to find a new one these days without software in it.

I think we have to adjust, as a society.

~~~
takeda
This is whole reason GNU and Open Source was started. When you have source,
you are getting back control of your hardware.

~~~
snowwrestler
I think access to source code is a key enabler. Even if it was limited in some
ways, that would be a good start.

Imagine if Consumer Reports could access the code and do a code review when
testing a car. We know from lawsuits that Toyota software is absolutely
horrible, for instance. I'd think that insurance companies and consumers would
benefit from knowing that up front.

Or imagine if repair shops could get certified for access to the software to
modify it. Mod shops already do this on the sly--they're just hoping to fly
under the law. Maybe they have to carry a bond, like home contractors.

On an Android device or Chromebook there is a user-adjustable setting that
permits root powers. If there was a liability standard about this capability,
then maybe more companies would feel comfortable offering it.

The ideal would be full source access to everything, but I think there
probably will have to be some intermediate steps or limits, as a means of
compromise.

------
vermontdevil
Wow. Key statement here:

 _" but doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible on the Tesla
Network, details of which will be released next year."_

Tesla Network? Uber/Lyft competitor?

Plus I sure hope this won't hold up in court. I do not want a company telling
me how to use my product that I paid for.

~~~
lanna
> I do not want a company telling me how to use my product that I paid for.

I'm not defending Tesla here, I just want to draw an analogy. You can't go a
store, buy a DVD for $15 and then charge tickets to project to an audience.
You need a different, more expensive license for that. The same applies to
music and software, even if it is embedded firmware in a car.

~~~
ddalex
> You can't go a store, buy a DVD for $15 and then charge tickets to project
> to an audience.

Maybe this model is actually bad because it circumvents the first sale
doctrine, and we need to make this kind of restriction one illegal (haha, in
my dreams).

~~~
lanna
I'm not defending the model, I'm just saying how it is now.

~~~
EdHominem
A few court vaugely related court-cases don't make a widespread and reliable
principle. If there was such a doctrine it would depend on the presentation of
the product, the importance of the software to the product, and the viability
of the product if separated into parts.

Further, such a doctrine would allow you to _buy_ the Tesla and remove the
software they didn't want to license to you.

So no, that isn't how it is - that's how they want you to think it works so
you don't even bother trying.

Go ask a lawyer for a clear-cut answer on anything.

------
pfarnsworth
We pretty much were set on getting a Tesla next year. The fact that they can
ban me from doing whatever I want has effectively stopped me from purchasing a
Tesla. Not that I plan on doing car-sharing, but I refuse to spend so much
money on something that I don't actually "own".

~~~
agentdrtran
Then are you going to avoid basically every newer model vehicle? They all have
the same TOS wrt software.

~~~
themgt
Where is the line drawn though? Can Tesla sign a contract with McDonald's and
then prohibit my self-driving car from taking me to Taco Bell? Could Tesla
allow me to deliver pizzas for Papa Johns but not my local pizza shop?

------
aantix
It's not enforceable, so why demand it Tesla?

Nothing more annoying than a company that starts to overstep boundaries.. Stay
out of my personal decisions.

~~~
notatoad
it's probably unenforceable if one person is using their autonomous car for
ridesharing, but i doubt that's what tesla cares about. If Uber decided to buy
a fleet of autonomous Teslas and use them to operate an autonomous taxi
service, instead of building their own autonomous car, Tesla could get that
shut down pretty easily with these terms. And i'm guessing that's what they're
targeting.

~~~
pault
Why? If Uber buys a car, why should the manufacturer get to dictate what they
do with it? I don't see how it's any different than the consumer use case.

~~~
DanBC
The manufacturer provides a guarantee. That guarantee is based on expected
uses. If the buyer uses the product well outside the expected use should they
be covered by the same guarantee?

~~~
EdHominem
You can't disclaim warranties for no reason, or for normal use.

Unless they show that Uber is routing the cars over speedbumps at high speed
or something, there's no reason to think that there'll be excessive wear
beyond the simple distance covered.

They can walk-back their unlimited mileage warranty, if they want. But not
selectively for arbitrary usages.

------
grecy
A few people here have mentioned maybe Telsa just want to stop Uber/Lyft
buying a bunch of Telsas and operating an autonomous fleet.

My questions is - why would Tesla want to stop them doing that?

The goal is to transition the world to sustainable transport, ASAP. If
companies are buying tens of thousands of their cars, that's great!

I have to wonder if Tesla want to stop this because they want to make the
profit from the fleet, or because of legal reasons.

~~~
jwegan
Probably branding? If Uber/Lyft start operating a lot of Teslas, then they
start to loose their brand allure and people start to view them as just taxis

~~~
comboy
Never heard of a car brand that would ban using it for taxi purposes.

If you take a ride in a taxi, and you like what you see, you seem more likely
to buy that car in the future.

------
M_Grey
This is why you shouldn't buy a car you don't actually get to own (or any
device you don't actually own).

------
bryanlarsen
There are a bunch of possible good reasons that Tesla might want to do this:

\- liability

\- hacking prevention: anybody in the car will be able to take over the car,
so you should make sure there's always somebody you trust in the car

\- regulatory: the owner of the car is liable for any infractions a car makes,
so only there should always be somebody you trust in the car

But the wording makes clear that this is just a cash grab. You'd think that
Tesla would have worded it to imply that they actually have a good reason...

~~~
CoryG89
This might be a reasonable argument except that Tesla makes clear that they
plan to allow this as long as you use _their_ ride sharing service, Tesla
Network, which doesn't even exist yet.

------
ohstopitu
You can't do what you want, with a car you buy - even though this does not
mean that it will be a lot cheaper :/

I'm more than willing to agree to this concept, if for example, Tesla sends me
a new top of the line model 3/s/x every year for around 5k-ish/yr - At that
price point, I feel that they can tell me what I can / can't do with "their"
car.

However, now, they expect people to pay the full price of the car (anywhere
between 31k to almost 150k) and then they get to dictate how I use the car.

Given time, this sort of concept will be applied to everything "we" own. I
mean, it's just getting started...

In a few decades, you'd not really own anything - the house you live in, the
devices that you use, everything will be a subscription service.

While I look at it as a bleak / weird future, I love SaaS products in general
over IaaS products, because it means, I don't have to put effort into stuff.
And if that means, I'd never have to fix my car, or my house for example...is
that a future the general population will have an issue with?

~~~
joering2
> In a few decades, you'd not really own anything - the house you live in
> [...]

Just to clarify, in the true meaning of the word "own", you never owned your
house, and that goes to at least post WW2 times.

If you believe you own your house simply because its paid off, then try not to
pay property tax imposed on you by the county you live in. But don't be
surprised if one year later Sheriff shows up at your "own" house doorstep with
eviction team.

~~~
FireBeyond
That's a facile example.

You still own your house, but the government, as elected by the people, has
decided that one of the ways to encourage/ enforce property tax payment is the
right to use said property as collateral. You explicitly agree that you are
obligated to do so, and laws, which aren't secret, divulge the possible
consequences of failure to do so. This in no way diminishes ownership, any
more than you parking the car that you own somewhere that it may be towed and
impounded means that you somehow "never really owned it".

If you want to talk about ownership of the -land- that's a different,
tangential, kettle of fish.

~~~
joering2
I have not signed nor agreed on any such a thing. I got house from my grandpa
who build it on his own land. So if anything I am forced into either paying
the property tax or facing penalty of having my house closed down and put for
bid.

Call it anything but, please don't call it an ownership.

~~~
FireBeyond
I fear this is going down a rabbit hole, but nonetheless.

You are, I suspect deliberately, attempting to obfuscate the issue of
ownership. Here are some examples:

\- you legally own a gun. you use gun in commission of a crime. gun will be
confiscated.

\- you legally own a vehicle. you use it in commission of a crime (whether as
a getaway vehicle, or striking a pedestrian). car can be confiscated.

Whether you think they SHOULD be or not, not paying taxes is considered a
crime.

That doesn't mean your ownership of the house, the car, the gun are any less
valid, only that the government has determined that possible confiscation of
said property is a viable punishment for violation of certain laws.

If you want to carry that to the extreme - you own nothing, because the
government can confiscate it.

Which makes me wonder how your grandpa "owned" that land? How did he acquire
it?

You didn't sign or agree to obey the laws of the city, county, state or
country you live in either.

I presume that also means you are not beholden to those, either?

As I said, I suspect this is a rabbit hole of twisted reasoning and logic that
I don't overly care to get into, but the simple fact remains. Ownership of any
object is tangential to the potential of being deprived of possession thereof.

~~~
joering2
> Whether you think they SHOULD be or not, not paying taxes is considered a
> crime

That's fine so lock me up. But don't take over my property and sell it to the
highest bidder. If they have a right to do so, I have to be naive to say "I
own my house".

~~~
ohstopitu
Locking you up does not get them their money. Infact, they are spending more
money on you. Taking over your house and selling it, gets them their money.

If you really wanted to complain about the govt being over powered and taking
over stuff you own, you could point out Civil Forfeiture.

------
calvinbhai
I had a similar reaction (as in the article) when I read the Tesla feature
explanation initially. But, later I realized Tesla is not overstepping the
boundary.

Here's why I think so:

Tesla is setting the correct expectations. Once the car is fully autonomous,
the process of dispatching rides to a pickup location will be controlled by
Tesla.

So, if you own the car, and but are not needing the car to be used for a week,
the car becomes available on the Ridesharing Autonomous Network of Teslas
(RANT :). At that point, it makes no sense to put the car on something like
say Google / Uber autonomous networks of Ridesharing.

Its a bit like how iPhone is not open for non app store downloads and yet an
iPhone buyer 'owns' the phone.

FWIW, every autonomous car maker will put their car on their own rideshare
network (making a rider app is 1% of creating the ridesharing service effort).
Uber and Lyft apps will become too expensive to use if they cannot figure out
the autonomous vehicle part of the equation.

~~~
tremon
_Once the car is fully autonomous, the process of dispatching rides to a
pickup location will be controlled by Tesla._

But if that's the case, then I will not pay thousands of dollars to own one.

~~~
tonyhb
Why? You'll earn the same money as with Uber. The cut goes to Tesla to reward
them for their work in making the hardware and software. That's instead of
paying Uber, who fire people by email.

~~~
forgottenpass
_Why? You 'll earn the same money as with Uber._

No I won't. It's simple economics that I won't.

Assuming a future where I can choose to rent my car's free time to a ride
sharing app. You just told me that I'd be able to make just as much money
locked into a single customer as I would if different customers had to compete
to rent my car's free time.

And yes blah blah blah I could buy a different type of car. But market forces
don't break this sort of monsopoly until "what app can I rent my car's time
to" is the TOP purchase differentiator to a very sizable portion of auto
buyers.

~~~
tonyhb
You're assuming a future with one app; Tesla. There are, and will continue to
be, more apps, hence competition.

And we'v not covered that the dynamics are different. With Tesla you're not
paying for fuel. Or for human time. You literally earn money while you do
something else. This means that, over time, Uber and Lyft would be saturated
by Teslas because it's a race to the bottom in terms of profit.

~~~
forgottenpass
_You 're assuming a future with one app; Tesla. There are, and will continue
to be, more apps, hence competition._

No, I'm not. I'm assuming that in the post
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12753624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12753624)
you're comparing between the choice of only being able to drive for Tesla's
app vs being able to choose which app to drive for.

If you're not, I don't understand what you meant to say to the post you
replied to.

------
joesmo
So are these terms subject to change without notice? What will I be prevented
from doing or where will I be prevented from going in my Tesla next? What if
Tesla says I can't sleep in my car. Or I can't go visit other car dealerships?
I love self driving cars, but I'm sure other competitors will have models that
I can actually _own_. I am not interested in giving up my right to own a car
just to have a car that can drive itself. Hell, can I even sell one of these
used or are we just transferring software licenses now? In lieu of that, if
this is just a glorified lease/rental, then I would expect Tesla to pay for
100% of the maintenance for the life of the car. That's clearly not happening.
My opinion of Tesla and Musk has dropped considerably. This isn't
revolutionary. It's not even desirable for consumers.

------
sschueller
What will Tesla do if you do it anyway? Disable your $100k car? Does that hold
up in court? What did you buy for $100k?

~~~
arcticbull
The license to drive a Tesla subject to the terms and conditions.

~~~
FireBeyond
So you still own the car but won't be licensed to drive it?

And people are saying "Yeah, sounds reasonable!" in this thread? Okay...

~~~
jboles
Might want to read the article?

------
serge2k
> While this is the first instance we can think of where a car company has
> preemptively banned its customers from using their vehicles for a specific
> use, post-sale conditions imposed by car companies are not entirely unheard
> of. Ferrari, for example, has been known to insist that customers buying its
> most expensive cars (like the Enzo or LaFerrari) promise not to resell them
> before a certain point, and the Italian sports car maker also famously
> disliked the way one of its high-profile customers had his car wrapped.

Right, but isn't the penalty for going against Ferrari merely that they will
refuse to sell to you in the future? The deadmau5 thing was about the
"purrari" stuff, not the crazy nylon wrap.

Tesla is attempting to do something far worse.

------
virtualsue
Surely this is to stop Uber, Lyft etc from buying a fleet of the things for
their business use, rather than targeting individual drivers specifically
(though they're happy to stop that too).

~~~
serge2k
Why should tesla stop that? Fleet sales are big money.

~~~
virtualsue
Since they appear to plan on running an uber/lyft style service with self-
driving tech, and they believe that their tech is especially likely to give
them an advantage in that business, that would be one big reason.

------
sideshowb
This sounds more like a PR stunt than anything else.

Honestly how many jurisdictions will allow self driving vehicles (without a
human on board) to function before the current generation of cars reach end of
life?

------
chc
As the article notes, this isn't about ride-sharing as we know it. It's about
having your car autonomously drive somebody else around without you. You can
use your Tesla while driving for Uber or Lyft — but if you're going to have
the car autonomously drive people around for fares, Tesla requires that you
put it on their network. It's still lame, but it's not the "You can't drive
for Uber in a Tesla" situation that a lot of people seem to be interpreting it
as.

------
anbende
If this is really about Tesla pushing their own ridesharing, wouldn't it be
smarter for them to make all future price-breaks contingent on using their
system? That way if someone really wants to drive Uber they can, but it'll
cost them 10-15k extra for the "unlocked" version. This would seriously
curtail Teslas being used on competing services, and when they were, Tesla
would make money...

Seems like it would be better to do it with pricing than irritating rules...

~~~
TheCondor
Are they preventing you from driving for uber or are they preventing their
software from driving for uber?

~~~
pcr0
Their software

------
ghaff
On the one hand, it's absolutely appropriate for people to raise questions
about these types of contract/license terms and have a discussion around them.
On the other hand, as a practical matter, this particular case is a complete
non-issue. Anyone who thinks a car being sold today is ever going to be
remotely capable of fully autonomous operation, software updates
notwithstanding, is... optimistic.

------
moon_of_moon
How would this work?

"Dear Customer - your usage patterns shows that you are using your car for
ride sharing revenue. Please stop it."

"Dear Customer - Second warning."

"Dear Customer - we have disabled important safety updates for your car,
because it looks like you are ride sharing for profit. You might be a real
estate agent with irregular driving patterns for legitimate reasons but we
cannot confirm that. Sucks to be you."

~~~
bluehawk
I think a couple of things will help alleviate this problem:

If you are a real estate agent with irregular driving patterns, there will be
other patterns that are consistent. For example you (and your key fob) always
being in the car. You would go from your home/office to several different
addresses, then back to home/office.

Also, I'm sure that when tesla sent the warning the best action would be to
explain the situation. If that fails, tweet Elon.

------
jomamaxx
You don't own your iPhone, your music, your car, your house ...

Even though you paid for them ...

I have a new toaster for sale. Must use my electricity, nobody else's :)

------
pmdulaney
I can well believe that Tesla would _like_ to ban this activity, but do they
have legal standing to do so?

------
awesomerobot
A venn diagram with two circles that don't intersect:

"Can afford a Tesla"

"Wants to drive for Uber"

~~~
uptown
This guy tried it:

[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-uber-driver-picks-
you-...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-uber-driver-picks-you-up-in-a-
tesla-model-s-2015-09-11)

~~~
noer
Here's another guy that tried it as well:

[https://medium.com/@SteveSasman/how-i-used-abused-my-
tesla-w...](https://medium.com/@SteveSasman/how-i-used-abused-my-tesla-what-a-
tesla-looks-like-after-100-000-miles-a-48-state-road-trip-6b6ae66b3c10)

------
f137
It does not matter, really. We will never see a fully autonomous car from
Tesla, for the simple reason that this is still a few years away, and Tesla
will go bankrupt or will be sold within 2-3 years.

------
qntty
Stallman was right

------
protomyth
If Tesla is truly going to build trucks in the future, then stuff like this
will scare off quite a few buyers.

------
XJOKOLAT
"...the street finds its own uses for things"

------
fnordfnordfnord
Why?

------
geodel
Makes sense. If money is to be made Tesla with all its engineers and finance
people can think better than individuals who were thinking along same lines.

------
rdlecler1
This is a smart move. Tesla doesn't want to be disintermediated. Besides ride
sharing is a commercial use application and may be costly to their warranty.

~~~
rdlecler1
Down voted for this comment? What would Paul Graham recommend to Telsa is he
was on the board.

