Robust "right to repair" legislation can't come soon enough. Giving owners the right to load aftermarket software/firmware on their car will "fix" these kinds of business models.
When sold by the manufacturer, sure. When modded by the final consumer, I am less convinced. Sure, a misbehaving car can be a hazard to those around it as well as its driver, but we already accept a huge amount of that in the name of personal freedom. Why not a bit more for those among us who choose to tune and hack their vehicles?
I'm firmly on this side. The single most dangerous part of the car is the driver. You can do basically the exact same damage with a standard car at highways speeds using nothing but the steering wheel and accelerator.
And it happens all the time. Functionally - I don't see much difference between a misbehaving control module and a driver having a stroke.
You can also solve both problems with a single stroke by making public transportation effective and preferable in places where density is likely to make this a problem (cities).
And you're also going to require this for all other mishaps on the road that we can reasonably prevent?
Legally binding regulations for auto maintenance? Legal stops on the road for tire wear checks? Legal scrapping of cars that don't pass certain safety standards? Legal checks for dementia and vision for the elderly?
Basically - why is this one the one that you draw the line at? What makes it special? Most folks can agree that neither the driver nor the public want a vehicle with a malfunctioning control module. It's not like there are misaligned interests here. Tuning should be expected to work just as well and any other after-market modification. Are you concerned that it provides more torque, or more speed? Because the same thing is true of just buying a different car...
Should a sports car be illegal because it has more torque?
Should we ban red cars because - statistically - they're more likely to be involved in an accident?
Should no one be allowed to drive a subcompact because crash mortalities are nearly double those of the average vehicle?
Why? Why does this require regulation that you're proposing? What warrants the loss of control for the individual, in a case where it's pretty clear interests are aligned, and there are dozens of other nearly identical risks?
>Unfortunately we can’t reliably prevent people from having strokes
Nonsense, we can implement draconian licensing laws and Orwellian medical record sharing laws to keep the at risk off the roads. The peasants can have all the strokes they want, just not on the roads.
(The above is satire but it's proximity to viewpoints that aren't satire should make people uncomfortable.)
Or require redundant driving controls and a backup driver always present, if the main driver has a stroke the co-pilot takes over and drives. Where there's a will there's a way.
Or take it to the limit and make driving so inconvenient that nobody drives, thereby solving the problem once and for all.
The cool thing is we can choose where to arbitrarily draw lines between acceptable and not acceptable.
I’d say we can choose to place that line somewhere between “regulating modifications to cars” and “draconian health examinations for licensing”.
In your satirical scenario the methods needed in order to prevent strokes while driving are far less reasonable than the methods needed to regulate modifications to critical systems of cars, from feasibility of implementation to the effects on personal privacy and liberty. Therefore I think we can pretty easily distinguish the two and they are not really that similar.
The point I was trying to highlight which predictably went over some heads is that just because you can prevent 99.99% of something doesn't mean that would not be an absolutely asinine endeavor with little payoff.
Medical events, mechanical failures, software failures, they're all in the long tail of "rare causes of accidents". The fat part of the curve is made up of various flavors of willful dumb driver behavior. It is pure foley to direct more resources at those problems than the bare minimum needed to look like you're "doing something" so that the people who don't understand how likely these events are are placated. The bulk of resources spent toward safety should be allocated toward reducing dumb things drivers do.
I'm incline to agree, but the driver is the most dangerous because we _assume_ that the when the driver pushes the gas or the breaks they will work.
In the age of the accelerator and break going to software systems instead of mechanical systems, it is 100% possible to crash that software and all the sudden you cannot break.
We've had after market solution to modify the power train of combustion engines for a long time, I remember ones that used a palm pilot. Once it is yours, you should be able to do what you want, especially on such a large ticket item.
isnt there the idea of a car being 'street legal?' we already have an incredible amount of regulation on how you are able to modify your car. You shouldnt be able to do anything you want to your car and expect to use it on public roads.
In the US as long as you don't touch the emissions system you'd be hard pressed to run afoul of anything as long as you're not taking some specific look and chasing it to the extremes (super tall trucks, cars with tires sticking way out, absurd headlights, etc).
Very few places have restrictions beyond your basic safety equipment (seat belt, airbags), turn signals, reflectors, being installed and working properly.
Smog isn't a requirement in a vast majority of US counties, and even in the ones where it is required, finding a shop that will pass you for it even without a catalytic converter is fairly trivial. Further, I've never heard of anyone getting ticketed outside of California for having smog noncompliance.
You're describing fraud, which is an issue orthogonal from standards compliance.
If you're worried about people surreptitiously breaking the law then it doesn't matter what the law is because those people are breaking it regardless.
> Sure, a misbehaving car can be a hazard to those around it as well as its driver, but we already accept a huge amount of that
"Well we shouldn't" is also a very reasonable response to this. Cars should have speed and acceleration governors. The main reason they don't is that they haven't, but in this case "personal freedom" is basically just the enjoyment of the driver.
There are very very few other domains where we allow people to risk harm and death to other nonconsenting nonparticipants just because it's enjoyable to them. We should bring cars in line with our other social norms, not increase the degree to which they are an outlier.
It's not quite as straight forward when it comes to ECU reprogramming/tuning. While it seems legal to modify an ECU or use an aftermarket ECU, states like California now won't allow cars with these sorts of mods to pass smog tests, and there's nothing to stop manufacturers from voiding your warranty for soft-modifying the ECU. It's a small leap for states to decide that not having the latest ECU firmware causes a failed smog test or even an "emissions fine" regardless of the actual exhaust composition.
> states like California now won't allow cars with these sorts of mods to pass smog tests
Thankfully, a lot of us live in better-governed states than California. And even if it is illegal where you live, stuff you own shouldn't try to enforce laws against you.
Generally speaking, yes, unless a dealer believes they can blame your modification for the issue. The ECU affects the entire powertrain, so there's incentive for the dealer to blame the mod for even just a cracked engine mount, while counting on you paying for a repair as opposed to filing a lawsuit.
After all, your engine must have been running hot and accelerated the wear on the mount. Oh, logging shows it wasn't? Must be a malfunctioning thermostat. That'll be $3,000 for the mount, the thermostat, and the labor. Not including any extra charges, fees, surcharges, taxes, or overcharges.
Car dealers are no different from insurance companies. Whether it's warranty or insurance, they make money by denying claims. The ECU is enough of a black box that practically anything critical can be blamed on it if it's not using factory settings.
Many ECUs are not equipped with adequate tamper detection to detect having been modified, and then flashed back to stock before returning to a service center. This an extremely common practice in the auto enthusiast community.
Wouldn’t they need to demonstrate that the ECU modifications _caused_ the damage? Of course they have incentive to get out of the warranty, but isn’t the whole point of the act to prevent them from getting out of it _unless_ they can demonstrate your mods to the ECU caused the damage?
Technically, yes in the US, but that does not mean that they can't still deny you claiming a modification did it. You could then take them to court but here's the rub there.
Consider, how much just a single lawyer cost per hour I don't think it would be worth it a lot of the times unless the entire car was basically destroyed or something very expensive has failed to have enough value to justify it. Otherwise the repair is gonna be a lot times in a similar ballpark cost wise (for most cars) as a law suite.
-Edit-
Moreover if the case is not decided quickly or settled it could also end up costing a lot more.
Okay sure but in that case the dealer/manufacturer is willing to _lie_. I.e. to claim that your actions caused it without any proof. At that point everything is a bit out the window. They could simply make up any justification to deny your claim if they're willing to lie. I don't really see what's so special about the ECU in this case.
Apple will won't honor their warranty if you jailbreak your phone which is kinda similar to modding the firmware on ECU. Do you think car companies are going to be any different if they can get away with it.
In the case of Apple it's pretty hard to justify the court costs for a 1000 dollar device. So Apple rarely has to prove that the Jail break was the cause of the failure. They technically can't deny warranty claim if a modification was not the cause of the failure. However, Apple operates basically by default for almost all failures if Jail Broken you get no warranty which is technically not legal.
> They could simply make up any justification to deny your claim if they're willing to lie.
Yes, but only if they think they can get away with it. This kind of thing happens all the time.
Arguably, the fact that the ECU was modified is evidence enough. It's pretty difficult to argue that an aftermarket stereo head unit, or air intake, or "ooga" horn caused engine damage. That would be a fairly easy win in court if the dealer is foolish enough to think anyone would buy that explanation.
Remapping an ECU is very different. If an ECU is remapped, that likely means the engine is operating outside of the intended parameters, and dealers would probably argue that the ECU is not intended to be modified by 3rd parties. From their perspective, why should they foot the bill for damage caused by changing how the engine functions? The dealer can deny your warranty claim because they know there's a 99.9% chance you won't fight it, and that you'll probably lose anyway if you do.
In the case of Mercedes and their paywall for faster acceleration, they could argue that any "hack" to enable faster acceleration is not only a form of piracy but that a hack could lead to dangerous situations; when say a bit is flipped to enable the acceleration, but the rest of the conditionals in the programming aren't aware of this change, the behavior of the vehicle can't be entirely predicted.
I don't necessarily agree with any of that reasoning, but this is how car companies not only defend their ability to deny warranty but extract more revenue from its customers going forward into the digital future.
> Wouldn’t the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act still apply?
The act is intended to allow voiding the warranty after modding the ECU (even though the act predates ECUs and so doesn't mention them). Well your radio warranty would probably still apply, but modding the ECU has potential to damage the engine, and therefore the engine is out of warranty if you touch the ECU code.
You're talking about the possibility of maybe eventually causing some kind of damage, but isn't the important question whether it caused the specific damage that the owner wants to be repaired under warranty?
How?
There are dozens of closed source microcontrollers and one big central unit involved in making this happen. Surely any decent tech company has the ability to safeguard their components against tampering like that. "Right to repair" doesn't give you access to the source code, devkit and flashing hardware.
And do you really want to mess with a central component of your drive by wire system?
Wait before they start complaining about "car piracy" and how they can't afford to stay in business unless they do all of this stuff and show you ads on your windshield while driving.
I mean you already here such arguments from smart TV makers and their fans as well as in other industries.
The real truth is all of this stuff would be fixed if a new standard and baseline was set for them so none of them have to do any of this stuff to survive. They'll find other ways to compete.
>so none of them have to do any of this stuff to survive
They aren't doing those things to survive but for extra profit. That said TV ads is the reason their prices have dropped so much and can block them by simply not connecting them to the internet. You still get a superior dumb monitor for their cost.
