What is the deal with everybody being so afraid of Tesla? People talk about this car as if it runs using alien technology taken from Elon's home planet, using unknown hardware and software, the likes of which us "earthlings" have never seen. Having seen the works of this car from stem to stern, that is total and utter hogwash.
Not only is it made by humans right in downtown Silicon Valley, but it is poorly made and kludged together in some spots, using off the shelf hardware and software from manufacturers like Recaro, Daimler, Maxim, TI, Continental, Chevy, Ford, Brembo, and Linux/Ubuntu. Alongside a whole host of standard protocols and hardware interfaces, absolutely nothing about this car is a mystery, heck, half the wiz bang features can be turned on or off using standard bash files with human developer names at the top. This car is not a black box, it is NOT a complete mystery, "beyond" mere mortals to understand and fix. The fact that Tesla has been able to so easily bamboozle you into thinking that you can't do a simple brake job, on a car that literally has the same hardware as a Chevy Camaro SS (minus the badging), is frightening. My motto has always been and still remains, "if a man can make it, then a man can fix it". That said, this car does have a lot of software that might be beyond the skill set of your average auto shop joe who doesn’t know what the OBD in OBDII stands for, but that DOES NOT mean that the rest of us are totally clueless when it comes to electromechanical systems. I've designed, repaired, and maintain much more complex devices than this car uses with relatively ease, if the needed knowledge scares you off, then by all means, pay $150 a labor hour, but don't tell the rest of us that "it's too complicated". I am so sick of everybody telling everybody else what they can and can't do, we get enough of it from family, friends, schools systems, and the government, do we really need it when it comes to our cars too? What happened to the land of the free and home of the brave? It has turned into the land of ne'er do wells and home of the scared.
It's true, in order to be a grease monkey in the 21st century you are going to need a lot more electrical engineering class then mechanical ones, but I think we need to be heavily encouraging (not discouraging) this switch over. Otherwise where will all our electric vehicle mechanics, racers, engineers, and fixers come from? the sky? Tesla's technician monastery? People need to get realistic, this car is pretty cool, but it's not magic.