
Teslabot: A virtual assistant for Tesla cars – Locate, lock and other features - mitultiwari
https://www.teslabot.ai/
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spullara
The problem with doing this with Teslas, as I have had one for years and
thought about building this, is trusting someone else to hold your credentials
for your car. There is no authorization scoping and anyone with the
credentials can find the car, unlock it, get in and drive it away. Also,
plenty of mischief as well like opening the sun roof, the trunks, flashing the
lights and honking the horn. I wish they had proper OAuth with scopes that
could support use cases like this one.

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sahaskatta
Passage AI is using Smartcar.com (disclosure: my company) to build TeslaBot.
We do the work facilitating OAuth2 and permission scopes so that developers do
not need to handle usernames or passwords.

~~~
sandermvanvliet
However Tesla doesn’t provide a way to grant a token to a 3rd party so you
(your application) would still need my tesla account credentials. How are you
solving this?

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Shivetya
I guess I am confused. I use ValetforTesla, granted it runs on my Mac, but I
do not give anything other than token generated through an API call via a
script, npx generate-tesla-token [1] ; after a NPM install through terminal.
So yeah, its not official, but its open enough to know what it does

there are sites out there which claim security to generate tokens for you but
I am not going to even begin to suggest them.

[1] [https://github.com/ELLIOTTCABLE/generate-tesla-
token](https://github.com/ELLIOTTCABLE/generate-tesla-token)

~~~
spullara
As long as you are running the software yourself then you are the only
responsible party. (assuming they don't just send your credential to their
server :) )

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rena-anju
I do not have a Tesla, and I do not know what is available out there in terms
of managing a Tesla from a remote location. But I am curious about using the
chat bot-format for a status monitor application like this. What value does it
provide to the user that is not fulfilled by an application just displaying
the statuses to the user?

I get that in this case everything is handled inside of Facebook Messenger,
and to some extent there is interaction that provides a value to the user such
as the range calculation described in another comment by sahaskatta.

But I am curious about other situations where a chat bot provides an extra
value, not only considering this application?

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wongarsu
I once wrote a chat bot for a printer (think big photocopier with network
printer functionality operated by student body of ~10 students and used by
~2000 students).

It had simple commands for showing the state of consumables or monitoring
budget spent (calculated based on spent consumables). But the real value came
from the chat bot requesting actions ("yellow toner at 12%, verify replacement
is in storage", "A3 paper is running low, refill suggested", "heavy A4 paper
empty, replace now", etc).

Of course all of this could have been it's own app with push notifications.
But getting people to install that would have been much harder than having
them use a chat bot in a messenger they already have. Using a chat bot also
made it available everywhere, on Android, iOS, Windows, the Linux distribution
of the week, if you desire even your watch or fridge, with synchronised
notifications. And all that with a bit of code running on some server, none of
the head aches of front-end development.

~~~
rena-anju
Thank you for sharing. I have always considered chat bots to be passive, but
this opened my mind. Maybe I am narrow minded...

~~~
wongarsu
I think of chatbots as asking the question "what if we could put an AGI
(artificial general intelligence) in here" and programming the closest
approximation for the task. Sometimes that's a natural language interface, and
that's what most people focus on (lots of money in customer support and sales
automation). But if our office coffee machine had an AGI I wouldn't care about
natural language comprehension, I want to be able to tell it to have coffee
ready when I come to the office early and I want it to convince humans to
clean it.

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obenn
I'm aware that some people do not care but for me the fact that it uses
Faceboook messenger is an immediate non-starter for me.

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redfive_001
Just curious, what platform would you trust more?

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obenn
I would add Telegram if it's not too challenging.

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flixic
Call in Nikola* and there will be zero controversy about naming.

* thanks for correcting my error!

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masters3d
Call it Nik or Niko for Nikolas

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tyingq
"TeslaBot" and "Elon" ? Aren't they poking a bear with these naming choices?
Or is Tesla okay with this?

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natch
As a user I find it mildly offensive. Elon himself probably would laugh it
off. Not going to use this as I find the exploitation of the name kind of
gross. Maybe in 100 years if he’s not around then fine... but for now it’s too
soon.

“Tesla” is a separate issue and different.

~~~
jrace
But Tesla himself is not even 100 years dead....is it OK that there is a
company named after him?

~~~
natch
Of course. It’s also ok that this chatbot is called Elon.

Plenty of people get offended at stuff. That doesn’t mean they are right.

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aantix
How does this differ from using the app?

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sahaskatta
There are a few neat features that Tesla's app doesn't offer:

1) You can use it from your computer browser. (Anywhere that Facebook
messenger works!)

2) It can find nearby ChargePoint stations.

3) You can ask it "Does my car have enough range to drive to San Francisco?"
and it will check your car's range and the distance required to travel there!

I'm not involved with the development, but we know the folks at Passage AI
building this and I hear a lot more exciting things are coming soon!

~~~
autojoechen
Neat! I wish the website explains the features a bit more - #2 and #3 aren't
mentioned at all on the home page.

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gomi7321
I agree, the website doesn't explain much. I found a blog post about the new
features though: [https://passage.ai/introducing-teslabot-v-2-0-a-passage-
ai-c...](https://passage.ai/introducing-teslabot-v-2-0-a-passage-ai-chatbot-
powered-by-smartcars-api/)

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sarathyweb
Imagine what will happen if the car owner's Facebook account is compromised

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jjallen
Awesome, works well!

I would pay $5/month if I could just talk and if my phone or Airpods were on I
could control my car or check on it. "Teslabot, what's my range?"

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gorkish
Assuming you're on iOS due to airpods comment -- here are a bunch of actions
you can add to the shortcuts app so that you can access all of that stuff via
Siri

[https://teslacuts.com/](https://teslacuts.com/)

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iwaffles
What’s the advantage to using this over the official tesla app?

Typing “please lock my car” seems like so much more effort than tapping “lock”
in the app.

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mitultiwari
A few things that you can't do in the official app, but you can do in the
Teslabot: (1) voice control - send a voice messages/commands to Teslabot, (2)
find out whether your car can go to a destination such as San Francisco with
the current charge - Teslabot figures out location of the car, distance to the
destination, battery range and answers that question, and also the bot is
available from your laptop/desktop.

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nirav72
does this require Tesla account login and password or can we use!the Tesla API
token?

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monicageller018
It doesn't look like Teslabot is handling usernames and passwords. They are
using Smartcar.com, which uses OAuth2 and permissions.

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samstave
"Select * from TESLA where driver-status=FELON AND ownername=political-
dissident AND because-fuck-you-thats-why=1"

