
Renault ships a brickable car with battery DRM that you're not allowed to own - edoloughlin
http://boingboing.net/2013/11/13/renault-ships-a-brickable-car.html
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sillysaurus2
I'm surprised everyone is ignoring the obvious elephant in the room: The car
receives a signal to lock itself down. Therefore someone can impersonate the
car dealer and lock your car down (as long as their encryption is set up in a
broken way, which it almost always is).

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travisp
Is that substantially different than GM's OnStar? It's already been used to
slow down/shut off stolen vehicles.

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duaneb
OnStar is a feature that can be disabled. This is straight up DRM.

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travisp
The comment I was responding to wasn't about DRM, it was about the possibility
of someone else hacking into it. That same issue applies to every person who
hasn't disabled OnStar (and I mean physically disabled, since GM can turn them
back on by court order, I assume a "hacker" could too).

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codex
It looks like this is a lease, but instead of using an expensive repo. man to
haul away the car when you can't pay your bill, the car stops charging
instead. When your account becomes current, the battery unlocks. Progress
marches on! The Boing Boing and EFF "articles" here are only so much outrage
porn.

Note that you really do _not_ want to buy an electric car at this point;
leasing is really the only option. Technology is changing so fast that if you
should buy an EV you risk holding the bag should it become radically obsolete
in the next three to five years. There's also a chance the battery will
degrade faster than anticipated.

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cantrevealname
You're saying that leasing is better than buying because cost of obsolescence
is borne by the lessor.

This is an economic fallacy so common that it deserves a memorable name.

If a product became obsolete so quickly that everyone chose to lease it, then
the lease price would rise to the level where leasing and buying were equally
good.

For example, if the cost of a product went to $0 after 3 years, then-- _all
factors being equal_ \--the cost to lease it for 3 years then return it to the
lessor versus the cost to buy it and throw it in the garbage after 3 years
would be equal.

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ronaldx
Yes, and it's likely that the cost of the lease would be signifcantly higher
to account for the risk of default.

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codex
The risk of default in an auto loan is just as high, if not a bit more, as
loan payments are typically higher than lease payments. But yes, you pay more
for a lease than if you bought the car outright, assuming you couldn't get a
higher return on your money elsewhere.

The ability to remotely lock down the car, though, probably lowers the default
rate and eases recovery of the car, so leasing this car should have lower "bad
debt" costs than leasing a non-DRM'd car, making the lease comparatively
cheaper than other cars.

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waps
I find this risky on the part of Renault. We still have the ENAC principle (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exceptio_non_adimpleti_contract...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exceptio_non_adimpleti_contractus)
). When Renault locks the electric car, they are reneging on their contractual
obligations. So given that they want to recover the money, how will that work
? In court you can say "I'm not paying for (a) the period that the car was
disabled, ever (b) nor am I paying anything until the car is re-enabled", and
that's a defensible position. Given that the car costs exactly the same (in
loan repayments) to Renault, whether it's driving or locked down, this seems
beyond stupid. I wonder who their legal advisor is.

Reneging on contractual obligations is something you should only ever do if
you're not expecting any payments anymore.

(Of course this would be the situation in Northwest Europe, I'm not sure how
this works in the US, so YMMV. And of course, you can bet it's unlikely in the
extreme a collection agency will see it like this). This does not constitute
legal advice, and I am especially not advising anyone to do anything. I am
just voicing a concern. Contact a lawyer before you do anything (there is free
legal representation for people having trouble with payments to financial
institutions in most locations, use it).

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gdilla
This article seems a little harsh. Does leasing/renting the battery out make
the car more affordable? Because aren't batteries still a huge cost driver for
these vehicles? What is the difference in sticker price? And can drivers be
incentivized to share their driving data - maybe lower insurance or insurance
per mile, a lower battery leasing fee, etc? Just saying that this 'brickable
car' may be worth it for some. No need to write it off just like that.

And would you really want to own an expensive battery that has to be replaced
eventually at great cost?

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mjolk
I don't think it's harsh enough. Renault wants to 'sell' a product to a
consumer that he will never truly own.

>And can drivers be incentivized to share their driving data - maybe lower
insurance or insurance per mile, a lower battery leasing fee, etc?

This reminds me of the fictional television set that used its built-in camera
to take a photograph of its users' living rooms and lowered or raised the
price of streaming movies based on how many people were in the room (as
insurance that you're technically not broadcasting it to a group that they've
determined as needing a paid license). Sure, it's intrusive and you're
potentially paying more for a stream than ownership of the media, but maybe
there's a bright side.

And really, do you want to buy a blu ray that's possibly, eventually going to
have to be replaced by a more expensive format?

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rplnt
> Renault wants to 'sell' a product to a consumer that he will never truly
> own.

So exactly like when you purchase an ebook from Amazon, a game from Steam, or
dozens other services where you think you own something but in reality you
don't. I'm not saying it's good, but why do people get angry when it's more
"real"? And at the same time are OK with it when it's something virtual?

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Dylan16807
Amazon, Steam, etc. are not in fact capable of taking away the data I bought,
no matter what they do with their servers.

Also I'm optimistic law will catch up and fix the first sale doctrine
eventually, so that they won't even _try_ to take away the data.

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pmh
> Amazon, Steam, etc. are not in fact capable of taking away the data I
> bought, no matter what they do with their servers.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, could you elaborate? As of now, if e.g.
your Steam account is suspended or the Steam servers shut down, you will no
longer be able to play any of the games on that account (offline mode and DRM
circumvention notwithstanding).

You may have access to a subset of the data on your disk (the games you
previously downloaded), but they're still wrapped in DRM.

As an aside, Steam is also capable of removing games from your account, which
they do e.g. in the case of a chargeback.

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rplnt
Most of the games are in fact not wrapped in Steam DRM. Just by the way, as
playing them is equal to pirating anyways. If your service is suspended you
"can't" play them (even though you can).

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pmh
This is getting slightly off-topic, but it's only a minority[1] of games that
lack the Steam DRM wrapper and they're primarily indie titles. Nearly all (if
not all) AA/AAA titles on Steam require Steam to be running.

[1]
[http://www.gog.com/forum/general/list_of_drmfree_games_on_st...](http://www.gog.com/forum/general/list_of_drmfree_games_on_steam/page1)

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JoeAltmaier
Silly; they claim if you lose your job and can't make battery payments, you
can't even drive your car. If you lose your job and can't make gas payments,
same effect. This is just another model trying to make an electric car
affordable. Why all the vitriol?

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gambiting
If you lose a job and can't afford to pay for the car(but still might have
some savings to pay for gas) it usually takes a few months between you missing
a payment and you losing the car to the bank or a debt collector.

With this technology your car can be disabled as soon as a single payment is
missed.

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JoeAltmaier
So you have gas money but not battery money? Huh?

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tedunangst
You have $10 a month to charge the battery money, but not $200 a month pay for
the car money.

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rayiner
What's the rental fee? Is it more or less than the $100-200/month most people
spend on gas?

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jlgreco
_In a bind_ , you can get that $100-200/mo much lower.

Perhaps they can offer a system where partial battery payments will get you
reduced usage.

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astrobe_
They would do that only if they have to fight a competitor, for sure. The
whole idea of this rental is to follow the quite successful model one sees
with ISP or mobile operators. Currently, they sell a car and that's it. They
don't get more money if you use it for 20 years (my car, which is from another
french brand, is that old).

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001sky
This is actually sounding like some sort of accounting gimmick, that combines
a lease (power) with a purchase (shell). It may have the effect of some cost
benefit to the end user. They are trying to sub the "rental" for the "gas
payment" ($8/gallon==lots) to not make the stupidly uncompetitive on price.
The main risk of this strategy, then would be if people "carjacked" the
battery and a black market of non-traceble inter-operable parts emerged. Also,
a grey market or secondary market that limited the "ticket sale" to only the
commodity shell. This has the also obvious abuse potential (forced maintenence
$$, engineered obsolecense, etc). Also, the value of the residual car? Going
to take a huge hit. Athough this last point would be mitigated somewhat if the
rental was not much worse than petrol costs (op-ex, otherwise incurred).

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pepsi
It's worth noting that while Renault is not in the US market and we won't get
the Zoe EV, Renault and Nissan are partners and this tech could wind up in the
Nissan Leaf. (edit: depending on future battery lease models)

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cma
If you bought the 40,000Whr tesla model S, they give you a 60,000Whr battery
and use similar "DRM" to limit it to 40,000.

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gnu8
Is this a fact? It seems like the cells are so valuable that they are selling
multiple tiers of battery so they will have a lower cost model. There's real
money to be saved in not putting 20,000Whr in the car.

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83457
They weighed the cost of having variations during manufacturing and installing
larger batteries after the car has already been delivered or resold and
decided that it would be cheaper and give the car a higher resale value if the
battery capacity could be upgraded remotely at any time.

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Ricapar
Who comes up with these ideas? I can't even picture a somewhat educated group
of people, sitting around a board room table, thinking that this is a remotely
good idea.

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rtpg
The DRM stuff aside, the obligatory battery rental is probably because the
battery itself is expensive, and it allows them to hide the price of that.

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JulianMorrison
"Give 'em the razor; sell 'em the blades"

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rtpg
maybe if Gillette razors were made of diamonds this would make sense. I
honestly don't think they'll be making much off of this scheme.

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vermontdevil
I hope no one buys this. Hit back at Renault where it hurts the most.

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rtpg
They seem to be killing this car intentionally. You can't use wall plugs to
charge, and the battery rental stuff is also a mess. Apparently they were
trying to sell 40k in 6 months, and only ended up selling 10k.

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mjolk
The fact that they were able to hock 10k makes me sad for the state of the
global society.

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rtpg
can you explain why? DRM might be important for some people, but weighed
against their primary mode of transportation, I feel like it's a values
concession I'd be slightly willing to make (making it clear I'd be willing to
go for an alternative).

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mjolk
I more or less cover it in this reply:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6732192](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6732192)

The world needs to stop giving in to corporate control schemes.

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hi_t_ch
Disclaimer : I'm as concerned as you about data privacy, money etc. I'm not
technically a Renault employee, but it just happen that I'm working for them
as a consultant (in a non related field). So I'm not representing Renault
[insert legal terms here], I'm only trying to transcript the response when I
expressed off record some of the concerns to one of Zoe's engineer. Here is
more or less what he said about: \- Data privacy: Renault worked with the CNIL
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNIL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNIL)) to
legally comply with French/European data privacy laws. All data sent to
Renault remains anonymous, Renault does not associate the "ID" of the car with
owner's personal information. \- Battery: He used the same gas pump analogy.
When I asked him why a renting system for a part of the product, he replied
"simply to make it cheaper": Renault could have added the price of the battery
(around 8000 euros) to the price of Zoe, but this is not a smart marketing
move.

Meanwhile, I'll forward the conversation and your concerns to Renault's
communication team. Let's hope they make a public statement about all this.
Cheers.

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wes-exp
How dare they ship a proprietary car! The blueprints should be open source and
it should be assembled by volunteers. /sarcasm

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stcredzero
_Renault ships a brickable car..._

Nothing new yet.

 _...with battery DRM that you 're not allowed to own_

Ah, news! On the upside, this car is somewhat theft-proof. (Nothing can be
totally theft proof.) Next, it should have a 360-degree dash cam that's
monitored 24-7 by an organization funded by a consortium of insurance
companies and 3 letter government agencies. All the above sounds scary while
bringing benefits. (The scary that brings benefits with it is the truly scary
stuff, as it has a good chance of sticking around.)

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chris_wot
So don't buy the car. Lots of alternatives out there!

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orenmazor
So? Dont treat the automotive market the way you treat the tech market. single
companies have a much, much lower affect on the market when it comes to cars.

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pasbesoin
This will be a rather flippant remark, but very occasionally we, the public,
need one to sum things up in a useful soundbite.

DRM --> Don't Renault Me

Maybe it will catch on. Renault Marketing and PR would hate that -- which is
precisely the point.

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frank_boyd
This has EVIL written all over it, in so many ways I don't even...

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droopybuns
Security Researchers in the SDR community are going to have a field day with
these kinds of features. Companies like Renault need to bring in better
consultants. This is not going to work.

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mratzloff
How long until someone finds themselves in a life-threatening situation
because their car refuses to start because it has been remotely deactivated?

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mikeash
About a hundred years after the first time someone found themselves in a life-
threatening situation because their car refused to start because they couldn't
pay for gas.

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Karunamon
There's a real and fundamental gap between "physically unable to run" and
"physically able to run, but blocked from doing so by someone else's actions".

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mikeash
If gasoline is available, but the owner of the gasoline refuses to dispense it
because you can't pay, then you are in the second category.

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Karunamon
(Car analogies: the bane of hackers everywhere.. especially when talking about
cars ^^)

The gas is available and you already paid for it (via the power bill) - DRM
reaching out to kill the system is a third party action.

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alandarev
Can't wait until some russian releases a crack to disable the DRM on this
battery.

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wil421
CaaS. Car as a service. What will the corporations think of next?

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TeMPOraL
With self-driving cars this could actually make some sense.

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tonyedgecombe
That's called a taxi.

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dublinben
Autonomous taxis would largely revolutionize car ownership. Why own your own
car, when you can pay a fraction of the price to have one available whenever
you need it, and never when you don't?

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jotm
Hack the shit out of it, say "Re NO"!

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caruana
It's time for someone to root the battery!

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Fuxy
Yay another car that i will never buy.

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mnml_
There are no cars in the future.

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vjvj
That would be the opposite of progress.

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tomrod
Well, I'm not buying that.

