Scenario: Undocumented immigrant family in Minneapolis get in their Tesla car to go to work, school or shopping. The doors lock and are disabled via software OTA. Because they are not mechanical, the family can’t open the doors. They try to roll down a window, but that too is software controlled. The buttons do nothing. They are trapped.

The car then disables the steering colums via OTA software so the wheel goes limp. It is a drive by wire steering with no mechanical, rack and pinion physical link for the driver to control.

The cars autodrive engages and sends the trapped family to an ICE detention facility.

Is there any design feature stopping this from from hapening today?

  • StinkyFingerItchyBum@lemmy.caOPEnglish
    42·
    15 hours ago

    there’s an emergency mechanical release for Tesla doors, may damage the windows, but hey

    A quick search tells me this is only model 3 from Shanghai because they insisted. Do you know what models and years have this mechanical latch, because there is a lot of press about accidents made worse due to their absence.

    • speaking of damaging windows, there’s this little hammer that everyone should have in their cars, but especially in Teslas

    Yes, but that speaks to my point, not against it.

    • last, but not least, if they’re not actually illegals, just imagine the lawsuit, and the brand damage to follow

    What part of brand (brain) damage do you think Trump and Musk will stop at? We haven’t seen it yet.

    • ZeroGravitas@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      2·
      15 hours ago

      I don’t know enough about Tesla models to reply, that’s just a fact I filed away at some point under strange design decisions - you must agree that having a door latch that damages your car window on use is strange.

      But I feel like you’re looking at this from a purely US-centric view (I’m not US based myself, just to be clear). Tesla can’t afford not to sell overseas, so it can’t afford the loss of reputation. Besides, there’s potential for abuse in all cars with a central computer and a connection to the Internet these days: lock doors & broadcast location is a trivial feature to implement. It just doesn’t make sense practically for ICE to pursue this,at least in my opinion.

      • StinkyFingerItchyBum@lemmy.caOPEnglish
        4·
        15 hours ago

        All true. But the car does seem to be designed for weaponization. You talk about the hit to reputation, but what hit would they take? An OTA assasination is just an everyday car accident. Plausible deniability. A kidnapped family won’t tell the press anything. Undesirables were disappeared by ICE. There is no one to tell the story, thus no story to tell.