
Tesla flips a switch to increase the range of some cars in Florida - prostoalex
https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/09/tesla-flips-a-switch-to-increase-the-range-of-some-cars-in-florida-to-help-people-evacuate/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
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newman8r
IMO locking down the battery capacity via software is pretty lame.

Does anyone know exactly how this is done? does the battery just never charge
up all the way? does it claim it's empty when there's actually more charge
left? Are some of the cells locked down and just don't charge? How does it
impact the health of the battery (since not being able to charge or discharge
completely would presumably affect the health of the cells)

~~~
drewg123
My understanding is that it does not charge all the way.

There are some advantages in having a s/w locked down battery rather than a
physically limited battery. Since the battery charges slower when it is above
80% capacity, you can recharge to "100%" much faster with a software limited
battery. Similarly, charging to 100% is supposed to cause more battery wear,
so in a real 75 you don't want to do that very often. But in a 60, its no
problem, since 100% is really 80% of the physical capacity.

~~~
newman8r
I wonder if you could get around it with a relay and some resistors to trick
the system into thinking the charge is lower than it actually is

~~~
extrapickles
That's a good way to get a lithium fire. Lithium batteries need careful
monitoring to charge correctly. To give you an idea, 4.2V is 80% charged for a
chemistry I worked with. 100% is 4.23V, so you don't have much margin for
error.

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elihu
This was a good move on Tesla's part, but the dark side of this is that they
could also "flip a switch" to reduce the range of cars. Presumably they could
also disable the car entirely, disable the brakes or rev the motor at an
unsafe time, or cause the battery to catch fire.

All of this seems very implausible for a company like Tesla, but cars can last
a very long time and companies and society change over those time scales. It's
not hard to imagine an authoritarian government forcing an auto manufacturer
to mess with the cars of protesters, journalists, or anyone else they don't
like and to use the implicit threat to encourage compliance from everyone
else.

I'm not saying this is a likely outcome for anyone who buys an electric car,
but it is new failure mode that didn't exist in older, non-internet-connected
cars.

It's kind of frustrating that there doesn't seem to be a middle ground between
giving an enormous amount of power to supposedly-benevolent-for-now product
manufactures or finding and disabling the car's antenna and not getting any
updates again ever. (Hopefully the car doesn't just refuse to function if it's
not able to phone home?)

~~~
jccooper
You can remove the SIM card from a Tesla if you don't want it to phone home,
and only connectivity functions are broken (obviously). This isn't a
particularly satisfying solution, of course, but it's more recourse than I
have against, say, Google shutting me down.

You probably actually have implied (or express) warranty protection against
the manufacturer screwing with your car. Certainly for the first four years,
possibly even after that. I feel like software updates ought to come with
their own implied warranty, though that's far from standard understanding
right now. Beyond that, it's likely that anyone deliberately degrading your
car, even the manufacturer, is a tort.

~~~
elihu
Taking out the SIM card sounds like a good idea if it's physically possible
(i.e. the "sim card" isn't soldered down or integrated into some other non-
removable device).

Maybe the sensible thing for most IoT-enabled car owners is to get all the
software updates for the first few years as the manufacturer works out all the
major bugs, then disable the network when the manufacturer's attention has
shifted to the next new thing and drive it until the wheels fall off.

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bussierem
So I'm REALLY curious to know now - in all those road tests where people
testing the car gave the 60kWh cars such glowing reviews, was Tesla flipping
the switch for more range, the way ISPs flip the switch when you run speed
tests??

This has some pretty serious implications...

~~~
rgbrenner
considering that the ONLY thing it changes is the range.. and the ranges are
public info... wouldn't that be pretty obvious to the person reviewing it?

~~~
bussierem
I would normally hope so, but Tesla cars have definitely had a bit of "fanboy
blindness" happening where they don't really think too closely about things.

This also could apply to the battery's overall lifespan - by releasing more
capacity with software as the battery degrades, they can make their "60kWh"
battery seem to last far longer than any other competing battery. While this
is nice for the consumer, it is very disingenuous if they do it and claim "we
have better batteries"

 _Edit_ : To clarify I'm not claiming they do this, but just bringing up
another possible use of this "software switch" that they could use
maliciously. We just can't possibly know because there's zero way TO know...

~~~
rgbrenner
_This also could apply to the battery 's overall lifespan_

They did pay for a larger battery for a car with a 60kw promise. They just
gave those people lots of spare cells to use as their battery ages.

They could have built a cheaper battery to fill the same promise and it would
have failed earlier.

So don't they in fact have better batteries?

I don't understand the objection.

~~~
bussierem
Mechanically, the battery is better yes. However since it's becoming rather
obvious that the general population had no idea how this battery limit worked,
it means that Tesla could say "our battery is better" and be lauded for making
the better "60kWh" battery. They don't have the "better" battery, because
you're comparing an apple to a bigger apple and saying the bigger one is
better at being an apple.

~~~
rgbrenner
Sounds like a perfectly valid strategy to me. You can create a longer lasting
battery by investing in R&D or spending more on the battery itself.

No consumer is buying batteries by looking at what technology was used to
create it. They're buying it for X range, X recharge cycles, for X dollars.
Those are all of the variables. So giving them more recharge cycles for the
same money IS better.

This is exactly the way the SSD market works btw.. in fact its worse, because
the largest manufacturers are actively investing money to make shorter life
(but denser MB/area) cells (SLC > MLC > TLC), while building more spare
capacity into each drive to meet their reliability targets.

Without it, SSDs wouldn't even exist.

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aftbit
I understand the value to managing the hardware and software of your deployed
devices centrally and with protection from users breaking things or becoming a
road hazard, and the significant difficulties in developing for an automotive
environment. I still wish we could buy Tesla's hardware and run something open
source on it like we can with Apple.

~~~
brianwawok
You can run something open source on an iPhone?

So I assume you are talking about mac?

Why would you buy hardware for double the going rate for a given set of specs
and remove the OS that you paid so much for? Macbooks are OK, nothing against
them, but I never understood who would buy one to run linux on. (I bought a
Dell, and it actually included support out of the box)

~~~
redial
You _can_ run open source software on an iPhone. You can even compile your own
code to run on it.

------
post_break
Tesla had preorders for lower capacities and chose to honor the deal and
charge for the extra capacity instead of build another smaller battery pack.
They could have told people who preordered the smaller one to pucker up. They
also probably have over provisioning so they could in theory enable more
capacity in an emergency.

~~~
advisedwang
Or they could have given those people a free upgrade. It would have cost them
nothing except the opportunity to try and wring more money out of customers.

~~~
post_break
Businesses don't really survive when they give things for free.

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Negative1
A find it humorous that this is a real world equivalent to mobile game speed
boosts, where you pay to save time. It's interesting to ponder the
monetization model this could open up. Imagine paying extra to unlock another
10 MPH on the highway (or unlock the speed limit governor). Before going on a
long trip you pay for extra distance. Level 3, 4 and 5 Autonomous AI can be
toggled via in-app purchase on your mega-screen.

One step further; the car is free and self driving, but you're bathed in a 360
degree never ending stream of advertisements, targeted to you based on where
you've been, and where you're going (not just your digital/google footprint
but real world).

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nandhp
See also, from four years ago: [http://insideevs.com/entry-level-40kwh-tesla-
model-s-cancell...](http://insideevs.com/entry-level-40kwh-tesla-model-s-
cancelled-60-kwh-cars-all-get-supercharging-hardware/)

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timgebrally
Perhaps it's like what Sony did with the PS3 a long time ago: they
manufactured it with an eight-core processor but only allowed access to seven
of them. The manufacturing yields were really low at launch so they
manufactured an eight-core and played the odds that they'd be able to fix the
yields later.

~~~
chadcatlett
The PS3 had one PPE core, and eight SPE cores. One SPE was disabled for yield
purposes and of the remaining seven only six were available for usage by end
developers.

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elliottcarlson
This is like on-disc DLC in the gaming world -
[http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Why-Disc-DLC-Bad-Crime-
Game...](http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Why-Disc-DLC-Bad-Crime-Gamers-Make-
It-Out-48109.html)

------
Bromskloss
How weird to have someone remote control your car.

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Abishek_Muthian
Talk about life saving update.

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em3rgent0rdr
I've heard CPU companies do this sometimes for things like cache capacity
(maybe even number of cores).

~~~
pcurve
intel did this back in the days when they sold 80486 CPU with DX and SX
designation, the latter lacking math coprocessor a.k.a FPU.

In assembly line, all chips would start off as DX with math FPU. In order to
make SX variant, they would use just disable FPU function, though they
eventually made different chip to cut out FPU altogether.

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solracanobra
Love that I saw this online somewhere and I thought "This must be at the top
of HN" and boom there it is.

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ccorda
Is there another car company that even does OTA updates yet? Let alone
unlocking car features with geotargeting.

For all the talk of Tesla's lead in electric vehicles being short term, their
software DNA feels like an even greater competitive advantage.

