Tesla goes bankrupt, or desides to go HP or Samsung... what happens to my car?

[Tangible]

I'm so glad I came upon this thread, because I was worried about running out of things to feel anxious about.

My view is that when I bought my Tesla I was actually investing in a whole eco-system consisting of many interdependent elements. ICE cars also have an eco-system, but their infrastructure is shared among many business entities, and an orphaned vehicle still has value. With so much of the Tesla infrastructure being proprietary, buyers are implicitly betting on the company thriving.

In short, if Tesla ceases to exist —a different thing from bankruptcy —I'll consider myself lucky to sell the car for its salvage value, or for parts to those owners who would want to pursue the various workarounds described here.

 

[N5329K]

My daily driver was built by British Leyland. They went BR in the mid 1970's, and yet parts (pretty much all of them) for my "orphaned" car are ubiquitous, cheap, and available by next day delivery. All because it was worthwhile for the aftermarket to step in and fill the gaps.
I do have to install them, though.
Robin

 

[Saghost]

In short, if Tesla ceases to exist —a different thing from bankruptcy —I'll consider myself lucky to sell the car for its salvage value, or for parts to those owners who would want to pursue the various workarounds described here.

If they'd died in 2012 with a few thousand Model Ss in the fleet, you might be right - though even there, look at how the Karma fleet is doing. The values dropped by about half, but then folks started coming up with solutions.

Today, with over 200,000 cars out there, and both the service manual and gurus that can get into the car's code, I don't think it'd go that way. You'd see folks making the parts and servicing the cars.

I don't think it's a realistic concern in any way, shape, or form, though - Tesla is making money hand over fist on the S and X, and the market doesn't see it because they are investing it all on the gigafactory and Model 3 line. It'd take something remarkable and absolutely unprecedented for them to fail now (think "act of god" or "act of war".)

 

[verygreen]

I get that the cars wouldn't continue to get better with software upgrades, but could we possibly find ourselves in a situation where we suddenly have multi-tonne paperweights due to software license expiration/revocation?

I'm not trying to be an annoying downer doom-and-gloom guy, really. It was just a nagging question that I've never found an answer to and wondered if anyone had any insight.

Sorry to confirm your fears, but in a way YES, there's a "planned obsolescence" built into the car in the form of excessive logging (probably covered elsewhere). This means that the internal storage inside of CID (the big screen) gets worn at a very accelerated rate. I heard that failure rates due to that are really high and some owners that rooted their cars disable the logging completely for those reasons, but otherwise ou only probably have just a few years (less if tesla goes down because amount of logging increases manyfold then, similarly once the cell network goes down (nonpayment or such) - logging similarly increases manyfold)).
Personally I am not 100% convinced that disabling logging is a 100% great idea and have an alternative idea, but the choice of some software versions by Tesla makes it a bit more difficult than originally imagined (this is the wrong board for this potential discussion, though).

Anyway, I suspect longevity out of warranty of Teslas are going to be severely limited due to this I imagine.
The other concern is: replacing the flash chip is not too easy since it's soldered on, depending on salvage parts is also hard because they all age over time if in active use (and if you power it off for too long (think year+) the flash content might be lost too. There are other caveats there as well.

Now, time to read the other 4 pages of this thread

 

[verygreen]

The installed base is already large enough that I could see an open source firmware development organization forming to develop new firmware to be hand loaded onto the cars - or even establishing a new automatic OTA system on a subscription basis after the Tesla restrictions are manually defeated on your car

This is mostly a pipe dream.
Tesla did not even fulfill their GP obligations to publish source for kernel and some other essential parts, let alone the closed source gateway blob, the bootloader, the actual UI parts that are closed source.
Sure, you can run the old UI but that means no new development.

Ever heard of the 3rd party ROMs for phones? Know how they start? People take existing opensource google Android and modify that. If there's nothing to start from, if you need to break hardware signature checkign and such - the task becomes a lot more difficult. At 20k+ installed base it might make sense to do it, but it would not be easy.
Then again, I guess at those installed numbers it would make sense for somebody to just buy the IP and keep on development, but they are unlikely to be some free volunteers.

 

[MXWing]

There would be tens thousands of ex service center employee with teams being able to assemble new cars from parts and salvaged vehicles.

Not saying it would be the most convenient for Tesla owners in rural areas but major metro would have independent service centers that would have expertise from former Tesla employees.

Fun to hypothesize but knowing how Elon can generate money entirely through tweeting I'm not too concerned.

 

[verygreen]

There would be tens thousands of ex service center employee with teams being able to assemble new cars from parts and salvaged vehicles.

This does not help you TOO much if you consider that a lot of internal parts are VIN-paired and repairing requires a mothership connection and special tools on that side.
Drive units, CID, ape, IC, other parts... forget about just replacing them yourself on any recent firmware.

 

[MXWing]

This does not help you TOO much if you consider that a lot of internal parts are VIN-paired and repairing requires a mothership connection and special tools on that side.
Drive units, CID, ape, IC, other parts... forget about just replacing them yourself on any recent firmware.

I agree. It wouldn't be hassle free but the idea is the collective braintrusts exists to decouple and recreate any needed proprietary processes to keep things running.

 

[Saghost]

This does not help you TOO much if you consider that a lot of internal parts are VIN-paired and repairing requires a mothership connection and special tools on that side.
Drive units, CID, ape, IC, other parts... forget about just replacing them yourself on any recent firmware.

We have a couple folks on the forum who already have the ability to do this without a mothership connection, like the gentleman in North Carolina.

 

[verygreen]

We have a couple folks on the forum who already have the ability to do this without a mothership connection, like the gentleman in North Carolina.

No. we don't. Last I heard (about a month ago, I think) wk complained that he changed a drive unit, upgraded firmware and got a nonworking car with no way to restore it.
It's not that you cannot work around this in some way eventually, but there's quite a bit of effort in it and it's not clear how scalable that would be in the end.

 

[Dcr26]

Apple can buy all of Tesla, all of Netflix and possibly all of Disney and increase its dividend if it felt like it.

Except for it seems one other person, it flies over investors heads that if mobileeye automation unit is worth 15 billion what is all of Tesla combined worth?

If Apple was willing to buy Dr Dre for 3 billion dollars, surely Musk is worth some higher multiple of that.

Laughing at the person wondering if tesla should be shorted. Smartest position is probably no position. Hide in brk.b, appl, or the financials with Dodd frank repeal but man don't short Tesla. One tweet could end you instantly. Agreement for 4 gigafactory in china or some MOAB like that on Shortville.

sure apple is rich enough to do that. hell why not make a tender offer for 60 billion (tsla now at 50 billion) once they repatriate that 225 billion plus cash? just because you can do something doesnt mean you should. irrational exuberance doesnt make anyone rich.

 

[MXWing]

sure apple is rich enough to do that. hell why not make a tender offer for 60 billion (tsla now at 50 billion) once they repatriate that 225 billion plus cash? just because you can do something doesnt mean you should. irrational exuberance doesnt make anyone rich.

You missed the context behind my rationale. Some members expressed concerns their 100k purchases would be worthless were Tesla fail and go belly up.

My thesis is a company like Apple would come in and pick up Tesla if they were become for sale at a discount and rescue current owners as part of a buyout package.

 

[bcsteeve]

Which is quite possibly true, but not assured. For all we know, Apple would buy it just for the collected data and wash its hands of the rest.

This topic doesn't really need to continue, in my opinion. I'm satisfied with the responses thus far. But if we want to go into the hypothetical based on my original post, I suppose I meant "and nobody steps in to continue operations". What I was concerned about was whether or not I'd have a paperweight if there was no longer a "mothership" for it to talk to.... not whether or not a different mothership would take over.

 

[MXWing]

Which is quite possibly true, but not assured. For all we know, Apple would buy it just for the collected data and wash its hands of the rest.

This topic doesn't really need to continue, in my opinion. I'm satisfied with the responses thus far. But if we want to go into the hypothetical based on my original post, I suppose I meant "and nobody steps in to continue operations". What I was concerned about was whether or not I'd have a paperweight if there was no longer a "mothership" for it to talk to.... not whether or not a different mothership would take over.

Let's not forget Elon is personally wealthy as well. I don't know his reputation for washing his hands of things and what would happen to SpaceX and other ventures were he to let Tesla die a horrible death.

 

[bcsteeve]

Ok, "and Elon flies of to Mars and is stranded and loses his mind".

The question really was a technical one more than a business or Elon-morality one.

 

[Brando]

A thought crossed my mind about a year ago, but I just dismissed it. Now that a corporate decision by Samsung just left my TV partially inoperable, it crossed my mind again.

Basically... I wonder if Tesla has considered - in the total design of their hardware/firmware/software - the ensured continuation of operation of their products beyond their own existence.

OK,

1- You'll have to drive the car yourself - you won't get self driving updates.
2- Model S won't get faster - see #1
3- Will only last 8 years and as this end of usual warrantee period, it won't start.
4- OR - As you start driving very carefully so as not to break anything it will last til the end of its design life - 1,000,000 miles
Hope you don't get sick of it as no one will buy ir from you.
5- OR you just park it and 30 years latter It sells at Barrett auction for $1,000,000
6- Sadly after inflation and storage/insurance costs your not sure if you broke even.

 

[timk225]

I have a 2009-ish HP laptop that was running Windows 7. It worked fine. Windows 10 comes around and I get this constant "want to upgrade?" message along with assurances that "your machine is ready" and "you can always go back". After upgrading, the fan won't stop going full speed. It is a driver issue, but HP no longer supports my model and they suggest I go back. After the rollback, the machine won't boot. No help from HP. Eventually I put Linux on it but I'm on my own.

OP - your laptop problem is a very common issue with Windows 10 that I have solved many times, I merely save the files off the laptop, zero wipe the drive, and do a complete fresh Windows 7 Pro install. Then after drivers, updates, adding other programs, etc, it is like it never happened. NOTHING from 10 is even still on the hard drive, and 10 is blocked from reinstalling, even thought it isn't free anymore. I can fix it if you don't mind shipping it to me. If not, I understand, just know that there is no reason it has to stay on Linux.

Windows 7 Pro is superior to 8. Or 8.1 . And 10.

 

[Xenoilphobe]

You P85+ becomes in instant classic and will sell at auction in 20 years for $4M USD..