Tesla offers to unlock features for a fee, which for many is crazy
Before starting to address the topic of the article, I know that many will come to say that this has nothing to do with Linux, free software, etc. and above all, I am not even close to being able to even aspire to acquire a Telsa (although at the time Mexico, a bank offered quite attractive credit, but it condemned me to eat air for at least 6 years), but at least I can tell you that Tesla has Linux in its guts.
Leaving sarcasm aside a bit and getting into the topic of today's post that I want to get to, the first part is tTake the recent news as a reference which became known about a group of researchers managed to unlock the options blocked by software in Teslas.
For those of you who are still unaware of Tesla, you should know that this is an electric car manufacturer run by Elon Musk, which offers its customers many features that can be enabled or disabled through software, payment or subscription.
This group called their achievement as "Jailbreak Tesla" and which literally refers to the term used to unlock Apple devices, since they discovered a flaw in Tesla's on-board computer that allows you to unlock these features without paying.
By doing this, the researchers essentially found a way to jailbreak the car. This not only took advantage of open access to paid features like Acceleration Boost and heated seats, but also gave them access to Tesla's internal network for more sophisticated modifications.
This included breaking geolocation restrictions in browsing and beta FSD (in regions where those options are not normally available), as well as the ability to transfer a user profile from one vehicle to another Tesla. However, it should be noted that the researchers did not test all of these capabilities, indicating that this would require further reverse engineering.
"We're not the evil outsider, but we're actually the insiders, we own the car," Werling said. "And we don't want to pay that $300 for heated rear seats."
“Currently, our attack can be applied by people with some background in electronic engineering, a soldering iron, and the ability to purchase additional hardware for around $100. We recommend using a Teensy 4.0 development board for voltage problems which can easily be used with our open SPI flash programmer and a logic analyzer can be a great help in debugging the overall attack.”
It is mentioned that during his tests what they did was "play" with the supply voltage of the AMD processor running the infotainment system, allowing them to bypass the security mechanism of the processor and gain full access to the Linux system running Tesla's software. In this way, they can run any program and modify the parameters of the blocked functionalities.
Up to this point, I think that many will already be able to understand the reason for the title of the article and how the current monetization model used by application developers and especially video games, is being applied in a rather absurd way to other sectors.
And it is that for example, in a Freemium app or game, if you want to access new features or content you must pay and I think that for many it is logical and it is fine, no one loses their head with it. Since at least many of us see it as if it were like before you bought your application or game in physical format (cd/dvd) or in digital format and with this you only had access to what was offered at that time.
But the problem comes when you buy a product which is already equipped with X function or accessory, but there is a detail, You cannot use that function or accessory because you must pay another amount more to be able to use it, something that for me and I think for many is absurd, at least in the situation when it is already included, but it is disabled. As for the extra software features, which are if they are additional, no problem, if you want to pay for X support that was not available or that is not part of your product as such, that's fine.
And this is where one as a supposed "owner" wonders, is it really my property? What rights do I really have over my supposed acquisition?
Finally, I can say that this "monetization" model is not that it is bad, but that awareness must be raised where it does and where it does not apply, since not only in the automotive industry are they wanting to take advantage of it, since for example Intel also is already exploring this new model.
Si Are you interested in learning more about it?Or, you can check the details in the following link