Tesla remote detects Boost50 acceleration mod

[arghx7]

Taken from this Reddit thread:

Papa Elon cracking down on 3rd Party Mods? : teslamotors

Boost50 is basically a mod to make your LR AWD increase acceleration without buying the Tesla software.

Before you sharpen your pitchforks, I want to point to everyone that ICE cars go into limp mode when you mod them too. The difference is that there has long been an arms race between on board diagnostics on an ICE engine and aftermarket mods. When you buy a tune for your Mustang, the software basically turns all the checks off that could trip limp mode. That includes things like torque limits or detections for tampering with the catalytic converter. When you take an ICE car to a dealer they can in some cases detect aftermarket software. "Piggyback devices" to interrupt signals can also be detected sometimes, the OEMs just don't put enough resources into it to stop them all.

Try putting a Home Depot boost controller (a DIY valve to modify boost pressure mechanically) on a modern turbo car and see how far you get.

The real difference here is over the air programming and rapid software releases. I'm not going to weigh in on whether Tesla has the right to do this or not. What I will say is, it is totally normal for a car to not run when you try to increase power unless you basically "hack" it to allow such modifications. Tesla is just blatant about shutting it down, that's all.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

No one even saw this coming ...

 

[arghx7]

No one even saw this coming ...

yeah this is exactly why I bought the warranty backed acceleration boost software. It was obvious that you were going to have to root your Tesla to use aftermarket acceleration mods, and deal with all that entails. Just like when I flashed my Ecoboost Mustang with a Stage 1 Cobb tune which adjusts the boost pressure and torque limits and anti tampering algorithms, and risks the warranty.

 

[TomT]

Imagine my great surprise... NOT!

 

[one2many]

Well as Tesla starts making 1,5, 10 million cars a
year, I am sure that the 10 guys that do illegal mods
will not be so important. But it is fun to watch.

 

[T3SLAROD]

You never own the Car. Tesla does. This is just the first step. The next will be taking away SC. I mean every manufacturer tells customers about their warranty being voided for modifications, nothing new. But I think this is the first time I’ve seen a message on the screen.

Just put a message that your warranty could’ve void if this modification causes an issue and call it a day. But I have a feeling they can disable the car and blame the mod.

 

[TMThree]

once you do a mod like this, you should also pull the cell card off the car. Otherwise you risk them disabling the mod.

 

[LionXng]

The guy said he, "Just updated to 2020.32.2 and saw this message after the update". I thought it was known you couldn't update after getting the mod without going back to EG?

 

[fr100]

It doesn't disable it like your title says.

 

[whitex]

Well as Tesla starts making 1,5, 10 million cars a
year, I am sure that the 10 guys that do illegal mods
will not be so important. But it is fun to watch.

I think got it backwards. The more cars Tesla makes, the greater the potential revenue loss ($2,000 USD per car in this case), so it will become even more important to secure the paid features. It doesn't mater thay a hack comes from 10 person company or 10,000 person company.

 

[BlindPass]

I think got it backwards. The more cars Tesla makes, the greater the potential revenue loss ($2,000 USD per car in this case), so it will become even more important to secure the paid features. It doesn't mater thay a hack comes from 10 person company or 10,000 person company.

They can try, but once Tesla is making that many cars and has many millions of aging cars on the road, the more likely other companies will evolve to make money off of them. Tesla is great at making the machine that makes the machine, but poor at customer service and supporting ownership.

It’ll likely start with the out-of-warranty cars with nothing to lose, but once that’s developed, the natural step is to offer better OTA, warranty, and service than Tesla on newer cars. There’s actually a huge financial incentive for competing companies to get control of the storage/batteries and Big Data these cars represent. Think a combination of Google/Waymo types, insurance companies, and even utilities could move into the space of post-production management of Teslas/EVs.

With the investment of chasing “million mile” batteries, there’s some that think Tesla could eventually stop selling cars, effectively just offering long-term rentals or subscriptions to prevent losing some of the inherent advantages. With ever increasing range and other fast charging, Tesla will already eventually lose one of their biggest advantages in supercharging (I personally don’t find it that advantageous). After that, one of the biggest aspects of the Tesla ecosystem is data. Look for the market to erode that imo.

 

[Knightshade]

The guy said he, "Just updated to 2020.32.2 and saw this message after the update". I thought it was known you couldn't update after getting the mod without going back to EG?

That's the stage 2 mod you're thinking of- that flips the bit that tells the car it's a P. It cuts the car off from Tesla- and you have to bring it back to EG if you want any software updates.

This is about the stage 1 mod you just plug in and was advertised as "undetectable" but everyone knew that was a lie going in.

EG has since removed that claim from their website, replacing it with a disclaimer about how you might lose your warranty and by buying it you accept 100% responsibility for that and hold EG blameless.

It’ll likely start with the out-of-warranty cars with nothing to lose, but once that’s developed, the natural step is to offer better OTA, warranty, and service than Tesla on newer cars.

I think you grossly, like hilariously grossly, underestimate how difficult it'd be for someone to "take over" things like OTA updates on a Tesla.


Volkswagon, which has invested billions into doing this for their own cars they have 100% control over has spent the last year or two utterly failing at it.

To the point they're having to manually update tens of thousands of cars by hand, that they're months late actually delivering to customers, in tents, physically plugging laptops into them, taking like 10 hours per car to update them.


Not to mention Teslas updates come as complete blobs... Updates to the interface, or the radio, or anything else come along with updates to FSD and real driving features in the same package.... someone would have to reinvent all of that despite having no access to any of the original code or data used to create it (or the driving data, or back end AI resources) used to improve it in the case of FSD).

Google has their own car OS (it's in the Polestar 2)- they're not going to try and reinvent Teslas in hopes they can support some out of warranty Teslas someday.

Mind you- out of warranty teslas still get software updates free so I'm at a loss for how/why anybody would expect to even make $ replacing that either.

 

[Apprunner]

That's the stage 2 mod you're thinking of- that flips the bit that tells the car it's a P. It cuts the car off from Tesla- and you have to bring it back to EG if you want any software updates.

This is about the stage 1 mod you just plug in and was advertised as "undetectable" but everyone knew that was a lie going in.

EG has since removed that claim from their website, replacing it with a disclaimer about how you might lose your warranty and by buying it you accept 100% responsibility for that and hold EG blameless.







I think you grossly, like hilariously grossly, underestimate how difficult it'd be for someone to "take over" things like OTA updates on a Tesla.


Volkswagon, which has invested billions into doing this for their own cars they have 100% control over has spent the last year or two utterly failing at it.

To the point they're having to manually update tens of thousands of cars by hand, that they're months late actually delivering to customers, in tents, physically plugging laptops into them, taking like 10 hours per car to update them.


Not to mention Teslas updates come as complete blobs... Updates to the interface, or the radio, or anything else come along with updates to FSD and real driving features in the same package.... someone would have to reinvent all of that despite having no access to any of the original code or data used to create it (or the driving data, or back end AI resources) used to improve it in the case of FSD).

Google has their own car OS (it's in the Polestar 2)- they're not going to try and reinvent Teslas in hopes they can support some out of warranty Teslas someday.

Mind you- out of warranty teslas still get software updates free so I'm at a loss for how/why anybody would expect to even make $ replacing that either.

People don’t understand how difficult it is to produce platform software that can control an entire system. For Tesla, it’s just not infotainment. It controls the entire car and it takes billions of dollars of software development to create and maintain this. Tesla has to hire a ton of unbelievable software talent from Google, Apple and other Silicon Valley talent pools to get their software to this point. Not to mention the code is proprietary and would be sued to high heaven if anyone tried to remotely replicate it (Tesla is very litigious like most tech companies). It’s safe to say, not many developers are going to want to modify the software given this recent event.

 

[one2many]

Well I think this is a very cool problem. As cars age and folks want to do crazy
stuff, well there may be room for both folks.
Intel and AMD have tried for years to keep people from overclocking there chips.
At some point they gave up and just started selling chips that can be overclocked.
It will be interesting how Tesla handles computer 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 and so on. There will be
a time where new sensors and cameras will be needed. Thus end of the code stream
for many ie. the end of updates. Do they get a second party, who knows but they must
make what they have work without flaw.

 

[arghx7]

It doesn't disable it like your title says.

I'm not sure if I can change the title without a moderator doing so.

 

[jjrandorin]

I'm not sure if I can change the title without a moderator doing so.

If you want it changed, click the report button on your own first post, and request a title change and suggest a new one through there. Mods will change it for you especially if the title you have is not correct.

 

[Glamisduner]

People pay to flash their ecu on gas cars to make more power. On my RzR there was a recall which required reprogramming the ECU. That means your mod gets wiped. You could choose to do the rest of the recall and sign a waiver for the ECU, but that means they are not liable if the thing catches fire for pretty much any reason. So it was best to just pay to have your ECU reprogrammed again.

So this isn't a Tesla specific thing, it's just that Tesla gets more updates than ice cars.

 

[whitex]

They can try, but once Tesla is making that many cars and has many millions of aging cars on the road, the more likely other companies will evolve to make money off of them. Tesla is great at making the machine that makes the machine, but poor at customer service and supporting ownership.

It’ll likely start with the out-of-warranty cars with nothing to lose, but once that’s developed, the natural step is to offer better OTA, warranty, and service than Tesla on newer cars. There’s actually a huge financial incentive for competing companies to get control of the storage/batteries and Big Data these cars represent. Think a combination of Google/Waymo types, insurance companies, and even utilities could move into the space of post-production management of Teslas/EVs.

With the investment of chasing “million mile” batteries, there’s some that think Tesla could eventually stop selling cars, effectively just offering long-term rentals or subscriptions to prevent losing some of the inherent advantages. With ever increasing range and other fast charging, Tesla will already eventually lose one of their biggest advantages in supercharging (I personally don’t find it that advantageous). After that, one of the biggest aspects of the Tesla ecosystem is data. Look for the market to erode that imo.

I think you're applying concepts from traditional automotive world to new automotive technology, in which Tesla is at a forefront. New technology allows the manufacturer to lock down the designs to protect their revenue, so that products like the Boost50 or simple hacks are not enabling features for a fraction of the price, zero dollars to the manufacturer. Think iPhones, which are cheaper so economically Apple will actually invest less per phone to protect it - how many "better OTA" solution for iPhones do you know? How many memory upgrades for iPhones do you see out there? None. Is it because it cannot be done? No, it's because it takes A LOT of effort per phone to do so. Tesla's first generation cars were easy to hack (with physical access to the car). As time goes by, Tesla is locking down more and more things. Have you heard of general AP HW3 hacks yet? Probably not.

In this particular case, Tesla can lock down communication to the inverter using cryptography, or simply stop at cryptographically authenticated configuration file for the inverter which will limit max power. Each such configuration file would be car specific, so no copying from car to car. Can it be hacked? Of course, but per car effort involved would exceed the benefit.

 

[whitex]

People pay to flash their ecu on gas cars to make more power. On my RzR there was a recall which required reprogramming the ECU. That means your mod gets wiped. You could choose to do the rest of the recall and sign a waiver for the ECU, but that means they are not liable if the thing catches fire for pretty much any reason. So it was best to just pay to have your ECU reprogrammed again.

So this isn't a Tesla specific thing, it's just that Tesla gets more updates than ice cars.

New generations of ECUs will require signed firmwares, which will make it impossible to use your own versions not blessed (signed) by the manufacturer. More meticulous manufacturers will even sign them per-vehicle, meaning you won't be able to copy from car to car even if some cars have a more powerful firmware from the manufacturer. This is not new tech btw, it's just new to automotive world.

 

[Fernand]

I"m impressed with how incredibly dumb people are. It's one thing to root your phone, or hack a protected game. But it's always unpredictable and a lot of work by savvy techies, using firewalls, working around checksums, adding VPNs etc etc. And crashes come with the territory.

It's hard enough to keep legit software running without yahoos messing with code they don't fully understand. Nobody sane pays for pirated/hacked software. And the worst thing that happens to a phone or a laptop is that it crashes or gets bricked. But on a car like a Tesla, where everything is software ???

An average Joe paying actual money for a back room hack to the software that's running a car that can kill him and others, just to get a little more vroom vroom without paying for the factory firmware is beyond stoopid. And Tesla would be nuts not to block it.
.