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?
There must be a way to disable the vehicle’s remote connectivity. Probably not as simple as opening a fuse though.
I’m searching for Tesla modders/hackers info but not finding much.
What I can see are articles saying there is a software setting that disables networking and GPS tracking. However because its not open source, those setting might be disabling your use of those features superficially, while everything stays on in the background and is still fully in control of Tesla.
I would love if anyone from the hacker community could speak to this with real experience.