Well this does not inspire confidence in Tesla.

Wikipedia articles sites their sources. It is where I found that Toyota press release contradicting your "it's not a recall". I provided the links so others can check the ones on these recalls.

But since Tesla isn't doing recall by your standards, and thus this isn't an issue, this is all moot.

 

While this is not exactly on Topic this discussion does beg the topic of car software hacking.

With a cars so dependent on technology you wonder when the first cases of mass software hacking will begin.

If a car is so dependent on technology and downloadable upgrades from the Manufacturer you speculate when a group of hackers will hold that company hostage for ransom while disabling the Manufacturers vehicles.

If an aging baby boomer is aware of this possibility I'm sure modern day hackers are actively at work on this enterprise!

When a car is dependent on interfaces rather that push buttons and knobs it would seem an electrical malfunction could seriously diminish a cars usefulness if not even make it inoperable if a fuse popped of a wire failed.

This is not directly at any particular manufacture or brand just kind of thinking out loud about the possibilities and liabilities of technology and wireless communication with these vehicles

 

The knobs and buttons on a modern car's dash are electronic switches. They are an input device just like the touch screen, and they all input to a car's controlling computer. The level of computer control in a Tesla isn't much different than in other brands.

The difference is tesla has taken security of their systems more seriously than most of the others, and offer prizes for people that can defeat their guards. Over the air updates aren't the only wireless entry point for a hacker. Many other cars have smart key systems and cellular telemetrics that could be entries for hackers looking to do ill.

I only quoted a small portion of the article, because doing more is rude, and could violate copy right. Since links weren't clicked.

"Barr said that the 2005 Camry L4 source code and in-vehicle tests by the experts confirmed that some critical variables are not protected from corruption, and sources of memory corruption are present. He believes that Toyota’s engineers sought to protect numerous variables against software- and hardware-cause corruptions, but they failed to mirror several key critical variables, and they made no hardware protection available against bit flips.

Stack overflow and software bugs led to memory corruption, he said. And it turns out that the crux of the issue was these memory corruptions, which acted “like ricocheting bullets.”

Barr explains the issue this way:

Memory corruption as little as one-bit flip can cause a task to die. This can happen by hardware single-event upsets — i.e., bit flip — or via one of the many software bugs, such as buffer overflows and race conditions, we identified in the code.

There are tens of millions of combinations of untested task death, any of which could happen in any possible vehicle/software state. Too many to test them all. But vehicle tests we have done in 2005 and 2008 Camrys show that even just the death of Task X by itself can cause loss of throttle control by the driver — even as combustion continues to power the engine. In a nutshell, the fail-safes Toyota did install have gaps in them and are inadequate to detect all of the ways UA can occur via software.

Just to clarify, the “tasks” are equivalent to apps running on smartphones or PCs. All software malfunctions from time to time — we often have to reboot our machines. The 2005 Camry L4 has a set of dozens of apps (or tasks). Because they are all meant to be running always, the death of one could have dire consequences.

When asked if the whole case for unintended acceleration could be pinned on the task X death, Barr replied, “The task X death in combination with other task deaths.” There are dozens of tasks and 16 million different ways those tasks can die. The expert’s group was able to demonstrate at least one way for the software to cause unintended acceleration, but there are so many other ways that could have happened.

Barr also said more than half the dozens of tasks’ deaths studied by the experts in their experiments “were not detected by any fail-safe.”"

There was more than flipped bits. There were multiple software bugs that could cause a crash in the software which weren't caught by the fail-safes Toyota had in place. On top of that, they found that the black box "can record false information about the driver’s actions in the final seconds before a crash."

 

you want hacking and short lifespans? wait until apple makes a car...

 

what it was?

 

Apparently, only legally mandated recalls count as evidence of an issue. Thus any voluntary ones, whatever they are called, mean the issue isn't real.

So Toyota and Tesla have done nothing wrong, and make perfect products.

 

hiding the truth is wrong where i come from. paying 1.2 billion is right.

according to the ag, 'toyota treated a public safety issue as if it were a public relations problem'.

 

don't even get me started on the ipm inverter debacle

 

I wonder how much access Communist China has to the codes used in Tesla and other manufactures codes for software for vehicles made in China and exported across the world. I think it would have been fascinating to sit in some of the discussions about this for the manufactures building cars there and how they will maintain security and control of this proprietary data.

It would be curious if it is the same code that is used across all their international and domestic manufacturing process including America or special new code for instance only for China manufacturing. It would be interesting to know how different manufacturers address this dilemma.


Tesla goes big in China with Shanghai plant | Reuters

 

I wonder if Apple’s car entertainment interface would be a ‘way in’ for hackers.
If so, it may not be necessary to wait for Apple to make a car, but simply to build an entertainment system that other manufacturers use for their cars. What... oh... never mind.

 

To be consistent, Dan's blood must now "run cold" - & /or be "appalled".

.

 

Not at all. I know the risks involved. I've worked in businesses that did software development right. I've worked with systems that were extremely fault tolerant. I'm not worried about my Prius.

Tesla's the one where management has openly said that cheap and being on time is more important than quality.

Dan

 

i'll take honesty over deviousness anytime, at least you know where you stand