With the boycott for Teslas seemingly going strong I was wondering if anyone has successfully removed the proprietary software off any of the models or removed it from the Tesla network?

Considering that the cameras send data to other cars on the network to be processed (using the customers power instead of the company’s) this seems better than just reselling to me.

  • mortalic@lemmy.world
    49·
    3 months ago

    Ok since no one here is giving actual information, there was a guy on Rich Rebuilds channel a few years ago that had done a lot of work in this space. I think it was this video: https://youtu.be/o-7b1waoj9Q

    Any way, at the time he had made a ton of progress on the hardware. I don’t have the mental energy right now to dig in to see how it’s gone, but feel free to do so and post back.

  • zxqwas@lemmy.world
    35·
    3 months ago

    Sounds like it would require a huge amount of reverse engineering and during the process you don’t have a usable car.

    • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.worksOP
      101·
      3 months ago

      I can only imagine lol Honestly just looking for alternatives for people that can’t afford to sell it and scraping it is a waste of the hard work people put into making it.

  • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
    18·
    3 months ago

    With the boycott for Teslas seemingly going strong I was wondering if anyone has successfully removed the proprietary software off any of the models

    This will be a herculean effort.

    or removed it from the Tesla network?

    This one should be fairly straight forward. There are a number of radios in the car. Some could be disabled or neutered fairly easily. Others would require workarounds to preserve require functionality.

    As far as I know there are four radios:

    • Mobile phone network - (AT&T in the USA I think). This is not required for the car to function. Antennas could be disconnected and shorted at the board connector
    • Wifi - this is pretty easy. Simply remove any configured Wifi connections configured in the car. The one exception to this is I’ve heard some Superchargers have “free wifi” which means if you’re in range of one of these, your car could attach to it as these may be preconfigred
    • NFC - this one isn’t really a risk as its such low range, and as far as I know, its only used for key access to get in the car or put it in drive when Bluetooth auth isn’t detected. No modification needed to this, and no risk to keeping it in place as is. bluetooth LE
    • Bluetooth - this one may be the most difficult because its used by most users as the keys to unlock the car. These radios are also capable of high speed data transfer at decent range up to 100 meters. While I don’t have any knowledge this is used currently for data transfer outside of the car to the Tesla mothership, it certainly has the possibility of doing so with software changes in the future. The antennas for these are in the rear view mirrors, so they could be disconnected/shorted to neuter it.
    • CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee
      10·
      3 months ago

      What do they use to do the OTA updates for many of their recalls? I would assume the 4G connection, but if that were disabled, the car still functions the same?

      • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
        9·
        3 months ago

        OTA updates default to wifi first. If you don’t have wifi configured to a site, you’ll still get notified of an OTA update via the 4G. If enough time goes by they will force the OTA update to download over the 4G then nag you whenever the car is put in drive to apply the update.

        So yes, leaving wifi unconfigured (avoiding superchargers with free wifi) and disabling the 4G will prevent any future updates and the car still functions.

  • skysurfer@lemmy.world
    10·
    3 months ago

    The main things are removing the cellular connection and disabling the connection back to the Tesla services. Back in the old days you could pull the SIM card, root the center and driver’s displays, setup firewall rules to block traffic to/from the Tesla servers, and disable the VPN.

    This is more difficult with the newer models. You can still pull the SIM, but would need to get creative for root access since it is a continuous game of whack-a-mole between the root methods and patches.

  • invertedspear@lemm.ee
    7·
    3 months ago

    I’ve seen a few classic cars retro fitted with Tesla batteries and engines from junkyard teslas. A common thread in that space is that you don’t get high speed charging. There weren’t really alternatives to super chargers at that time, so maybe they can use the other high speed chargers these days. Anyway, that’s tells me it’s possible, but that’s an extreme end of it. Just removing software probably requires a lot of specialized knowledge.

    • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.worksOP
      3·
      3 months ago

      Oh that probably is a good place to look into. I know for some cars changing out the whole ECU is needed to go FOSS, so buying parts might just be what’s needed if the DRM sucks to much on them. Junked Tesla rebuilds or retrofits using them probably have all sorts of what to use if you don’t have (or in this don’t want to use) XYZ part