New DC Metro Supercharger Plans-2018

[Austral]

I know a perfect place under I-395 on 8th St SE--easy access to the highways (I-295, I-395 et al.), close by shops, restaurants, and the USMC barracks. Would be awesome.

 

[DarrenK]

That was originally true. Although the car passed the VIN to the supercharger as part of the conversation, however it appears the supercharger didn't so anything with that info. The VIN passing appears to be there for future authorization/accounting usage.

So the sole factor in determining if the car could supercharge was based on the configuration of the car itself, which someone with root access could toggle. As far as I know that global toggle within the car still exists, and may still be how Tesla disables supercharging for salvaged cars.

Since that time, however, Tesla has moved to a pay-per-usage plan. That plan also grandfathers in "free for life" folks, as well as allows for some initial free credit each year. As this would have to be tracked per-car, I believe it's now done via that authorization with the supercharger. I've not seen the decodes since that was implemented, thus it's plausible the car itself talks back to HQ instead, but I doubt it.

That is interesting. I have noted when supercharging that the last supercharger info shows up on the MCU when it shows a certain screen (I forget which one). That to me would imply some of the info is stored in the car.

 

[scaesare]

I have no doubt the car retains logs about the sessions as well. I just don't think it's the car end of the session that does the authorization piece.

 

[MP3Mike]

I have no doubt the car retains logs about the sessions as well. I just don't think it's the car end of the session that does the authorization piece.

What are you basing that on? What we are basing our idea on is the fact that WK057 enabled Supercharging on a car by just changing the setting on the car, he also had a car send an invalid VIN and it was still allowed to Supercharge. (But that was a while ago and Tesla could have changed things since then.)

 

[scaesare]

What are you basing that on? What we are basing our idea on is the fact that WK057 enabled Supercharging on a car by just changing the setting on the car, he also had a car send an invalid VIN and it was still allowed to Supercharge. (But that was a while ago and Tesla could have changed things since then.)

It's admittedly conjecture, but based on that (as far as I know) that test WK057 did, as well as the supercharger session protocol sniff another forum member did that I reviewed the traces of, both were prior to Tesla implementing the pay-for-play supercharging system we have now. So even though the superchargers appeared to do nothing with it at the time, the car transmitted it's VIN. It seems that Tesla was planning for that data to be used for something.

So now Tesla needs to know the VIN of the car in order to determine what supercharging the car is allowed, track usage, and charge for it as needed. So given the system was designed to hand it's VIN to the supercharger, it's my assumption that the chargers are doing that accounting for charger usage.

As I say, while it's possible that the car could be transmitting that accounting data back to Tesla, it seems more reasonable and secure for the systems Tesla owns (the chargers), rather than the systems the user owns (the car) to be responsible for that. For the same reasons, I'd also expect that Tesla will (or has) transition disabling of supercharging ability to the chargers itself. This ostensibly closes the type of loophole WK057 exploited. (Although there are others).