Cars with remote summons features today basically just crawl forward a few metres to help you get out of a parking spot. They aren't self-driving across town to a repossession lot, if that's what you're thinking.

Tesla is evolving country music: not only will your girl leave you, so will your truck.

To me the problem isn’t that they might, but that they can. I guess the fault is technically on the person who rented something under terrible terms, but the problem to me is that over time terrible terms seem to win out over reasonable ones.

Not to mention, if Tesla is capable of doing this for rentals, I have to assume they are capable of doing it for any Tesla. Which is not great.

Tyranny of the marketplace, I guess. If most people are not bothered by the terrible terms, then the selection of items with non-terrible terms will be correspondingly small.

Case in point: I'd like to buy a TV (even at a higher price) that does not have ads all over the interface. From what I can tell, as of right now there are approximately a handful of such TVs, not counting older models that probably aren't produced any more. And of course out of that handful, most are not very good in other respects..

I don't know how to solve that apart from regulation, which is often a very poor solution.

That probably won't make them cause damage immediately -- I assume there's a set of sensors that will apply brakes rather than hit a wall or a detected car -- but there's a lot of chaos to apply that way.

I wonder if Tesla's EULA immunizes them against such breaches.

I don’t give my mortgage company a copy of the keys to my house.

Imagine then making those vehicles larger to enable not only a decrease in traffic, but an increase in housing density, local infrastructure in walking distance, and economic growth.

Imagine if we then realized we could charge that elongated car as it's driving if we put electric lines above streets.

Oh, and why not increase rolling efficiency while we're at that, and make the task of self-driving simpler by embedding signaling infrastructure into the road itself.

You just imagined buses, trolley buses, and streetcars respectively.

Which is what makes the most sense, and will continue making the most sense for vehicles that don't sit in your garage most of the time.

There's more to car ownership than being able to get from A to B in principle.

Once you add immediate availability, individual vehicle preferences, having your stuff in the car already, the ability to keep your stuff there once you arrive at your destination, never having to think about small, but normal usage damage (especially if you have kids), or, conversely, having the vehicle just as clean as you want it...

...you will see that garages aren't going anywhere any time soon, self-driving cars or not.

And that we'd be wise to develop actual public transport infrastructure for the people who really do only care about getting from A to B, with some acceptable wait time. It's a win-win for everyone.

My pessimistic prognosis is that the development of the self-driving car will make the taxis slightly cheaper, but instead of paying your Uber driver, you're going to be paying engineers, maintenance, and cleaning staff.

Because it was basically 100 years ago when the car industry sought to dismantle that infrastructure, and succeeded.

That is to say, there's enough there to suggest that this wasn't the free market answering solely to consumer demand.

If you follow the same 100 year trajectory in other countries, then you will see an uptick in car ownership for sure, and infrastructure adapts to support this (highways/freeways/motorways), but it's not nearly as drastic as it is stateside.

Of course, the US is a large place and even its states are larger than other countries. And it hasn't existed in its modern form for more than a couple of centuries whereas the civil infra on the other continents has been around for at least a full millennium and most likely longer than that (e.g. Roman roads in the UK that would date back well over 1000 years). So the US got the luxury of a blank slate and, well... see what you got from that.

At the same time...car manufacturers had the perfect opportunity to seize so they could sell more cars and thus have civil infrastructure designed around the fact that everyone has a car. If someone at that point in time had more money than Henry Ford they could have dumped it into trams and trains and the landscape would have been significantly changed.

As the Wikipedia article you cited elsewhere discusses, streetcar systems outside the US went out of business at the same time as those in the US for the same reasons.

[1] No, kids, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? isn't real history

When there's funding for highways but not rails, the results are unsurprising. The benefits of public transit are a positive externality[1][2].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Positive

[2]Real history is way worse

There's no public transport in the US, aside from a few exceptional places like NYC, Seattle, Boston (maybe), and, like, DC.

Uber is so popular because it actually allows you to get from A to B, for some money.

But I love the circular logic of "nobody wants the buses, why fund them" — "you can't get anywhere on a bus, why fund them" — "look how few people ride the bus" etc.

I could rent every single one of these, but don't because the economics don't make sense, and the use model would otherwise lead to a lot of inconvenience.

Except it didn't work for ZipCar or the rental agencies that have added hourly options -- sure it's not bad, but is it really pushing people out of car ownership? No...

Ride sharing similarly hasn't worked to push people out of car ownership either -- it's just killed traditional taxi services by compensating drivers less and eliminating the flag down monopoly some cities have maintained (a taxi medallion in Boston/NYC used to be worth hundreds of thousands... no one wants them now)

All these share options work for low use scenarios like the city dweller who wants a weekly trip to a shopping center, but for the daily commuter/driver it won't ever make sense... and it'll never make sense for those that need to keep things in their car like child seats, diapers, a walker, tools, etc...

Bike/Scooter shares haven't eliminated personal ownership either because of the scarcity issue at peak times.

A couple I know in SF don't have a car but they seem to make a lot of use of cars in some form or other pretty regularly.

Have these people never been in the back of a taxi, or any kind of public transit?

In the early days, it was great. But once membership increased, there was an increasing chance that I would get a car that was not particularly usable.

Filthy on the outside (dirt, mud, etc) and/or inside (dog hair, bodily fluids, etc).

Or a car that had one or more warning lights illuminated (check engine, brake, no wiper fluid, low gas, etc).

And each time I had to phone into Zipcar support to report it (and/or swap cars), otherwise the next user could report it -- leading to me being charged some cleaning fee or such.

The best experience I had was in Seattle when I entered a dirty Zipcar and called support who said I had to take the vehicle to a car wash otherwise they would charge me a cleaning fee.

While I understand I could have probably escalated to someone who understood the situation ("oh? you just got into the car 5 minutes ago?"), I decided it was a better use of my time to avoid short-term car rental programs altogether.

Less hassle with verifying who actually trashed it, but also if you have to stare someone in the face after your ride, you'll probably be more respectful of the car.

But really, there's just not a satisfactory solution I can think of to make me want to use the service.

Presumably if the rate of mess is low enough and there are extra cars, you would just request a new one. Then they punish the person who left the mess or odor, disincentivizing them from doing it again. Probably need cameras monitoring the inside of the car.

While I honestly don't expect door to door self driving in most places for decades, a lot of people who don't use cars much probably underestimate the degree to which many people customize their vehicles. And even if they sit a lot of the time, most of the cost is often in miles, not time.

Soooo many questions.

...being plugged in to a charger (that doesn't have some sort of automated disconnect) would also be disable.

The question is valid though after you've put the kid in and you're on 30 second excursion to push the shopping carriage back... what if the car is recalled? Seems like a potential disaster and tragedy.

Likely, they'll pass the animal on to a shelter and give you the info as to where to pick them up. It wouldn't be considered "stealing".

Google actually seems like they will be first to full self driving. My biggest fear is that they continue to have zero interest in being an actual car company and keep all their Waymo tech locked behind their taxis and Lyfts are replaced by Waymos with no reduction in price, just a loss job for the person who would normally drive the Lyft. Other companies follow suit and the self driving car dream is ruined to make C suite executives richer.

No, I don't prefer software subscriptions with monthly fees. I don't find the "maintenance" required for software annoying or onerous. However, I really don't like car maintenance. Waiting for an oil change, tire replacement or rotation, or really any repair is the worst part of car ownership and I could die happy never having to do any of that again. I don't place a lot of value on ownership in general because of maintenance or storage burdens.

I do like pay-as-you-go for most of the stuff I use, for whatever it's worth. Food, electricity, gas, that sort of thing. I use cabs when I go on vacation and look for opportunities to travel by bus, train, or plane instead of driving. A self-serve on-demand auto rental service would be ideal, for me.

To be fair, most of those maintenance options do go away with fully-electric vehicles. For example, you could lease a Tesla Model 3/Y. The process is impressively streamlined: pay $100 using Touch ID and Apple Pay, then select a pick-up date on the calendar. Now you have a vehicle with basically no maintenance, apart from topping up wiper fluid. All managed with an intuitive and highly-polished mobile app. In 3 years, repeat process.

My intention isn't to advertise for Tesla. I'm just pointing out that options exist nowadays for people who dislike the entire hassle of vehicle ownership (dealing with dealerships, negotiation, financing, scheduled & unscheduled maintenance, etc.)

I very much prefer owning a car over renting because I can leave things in the car. Like child seats, but also extra clothes, diapers, a phone charger, some snacks etc.

I definitely understand why folks want to own a car, keeping useful tools in there makes a lot of sense. I don't have that same use case but I get it.

Smart summon on a M3 (what the article is talking about) can back out and navigate parking lots... although horribly and slowly. But it's not just a straight line.

I avoid Costco like the plague because the experience is always bad for my mental health. I'd rather pay a few extra bucks to avoid oblivious giant cart drivers, having to show multiple forms of ID , having my receipt validated before I can leave, having to figure out how to transport stuff to and from car, etc. Plus, there is no consistency in the non-grocery inventory. You're forced into the "we _have_ to buy these pans today because we never know when they'll be available again!" psychological trap.

It's just a very inconvenient shopping experience in my opinion. But I know I'm the only person in America who feels this way.

Walmart and Target: slightly better experience, slightly more expensive.

Supermarkets and Malls: better experience, more expensive

So I guess, you aren't the only person in America, but people make the choice to accept the burden for the price savings.

I generally hate supermarkets and malls. Annoying music, questionable `sales` pushed on aisle end caps and elsewhere, etc. Not the experience I'm after.

The Walmart near me has the main entrance to the parking lot at the opposite end of the store. There is also a long protected cart path going down the parking lot.

The Costco on the other side of town is almost as good as the Walmart.

If the operator was ruled at fault, they would receive consequences.

Are you insinuating that Tesla operates on a higher level than the law and is receiving special privileges vs other automakers, or are you saying all automakers should be more accountable? What event are you pointing to they should be more accountable for? Or is this all just a vague hypothetical?

Are you sure there would be any material consequences for the board and leadership?

Holding companies to the same standards as members of the general public runs into an issue of how large an impact they have. A Surgeon is going to make mistakes that kill people, but just because people are imperfect doesn’t mean effectively banning surgery via sending every surgeon to prison after their first mistake is appropriate. Roll up to a single hospital and mistakes are inevitably common, roll up to a hospital network and serious mistakes happen every day. The only way organizations at that scale can operate is with quite a bit of slack.

I’m not advocating for life in prison for the top brass, but some prison time surely.

Unless we just start issuing fines and warnings to the regular people to deal with manslaughter of criminal negligence.

The paradox here is that aviation for example is filled with cases of negligence causing large numbers of fatalities, while at the same time the industry has become extremely safe. It’s not that negligence has become more common it’s simply rolling the dice more frequently. By comparison having someone install solar panels on your roof is stupid dangerous at scale, but individual homeowners don’t notice that risk. Should we send every homeowner that had solar installed into their homes to prison? If not why should it apply at a larger company.

It’s not that these companies get a special expedition, it’s that everyone gets that same exception. Killing a pedestrian for example rarely results in prison time. People are often punished more for a DUI without an accident than a sober fatality caused by simple negligence.

I don’t think you understand though how bad Boeings case was and that we will never be rid of that kind of risk taking when the trade off for the risk takers is piles of money if it goes right but essentially a slap on the wrist if it goes wrong.

Its major flaw is thin upright things like small trees or poles (although this may be better on vision only cars, I’m not sure). If it sees a person or child in its path, it’s just going to stop.

...and auto pilot won't drive into giant barriers in the middle of well-marked, and mapped, highway divide either, right?

M3 = BMW M3

Model 3 = what you're talking bout

If a remote party can, by design, lock you out of your car and take control of it without your consent, do you even really own the vehicle in the first place?

Others have argued "well, you don't own the car, the bank does", but unless Tesla is somehow unable to do this with cars not owned by a lienholder, that's kinda beside the point as far as I'm concerned.

A lot of Teslas are also just leased.

As an aside, how often is it for the manufacturer/dealer to own the bank that issues auto loans. I got mine from Capital One, and I assumed most auto loans outside of the sketchy loanshark used car dealers were issued by the big national banks

The used market is likely different but for new cars from Dealerships, GM Financial, Toyota Financial, Ford Credit etc are Billion Dollar subsidiaries.

Edit: reading some other comments ... I'm talking about the traditional financed purchase of a car, not a lease. Agree that for a leased car (which is quite common now though I've never done it), the ownership stays with the leasing entity.

When you live in a title-holding state, the title will be issued to the registered owner/operator of the car, regardless of lien holder. Though your lien holder will receive a separate document verifying their connection to the loan, you will be in possession of the title itself.

There are only nine title-holding states: Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New York, Oklahoma, Wisconsin. In the other 41 states, titles are issued to the lien holder of your vehicle until the loan is fully paid off.

From: https://www.rategenius.com/resources/titles/#:~:text=There%2....

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Motor_Credit_Company

There have been quite a few years Ford made more profit as a "bank" than they did from making and selling the cars. If you get a new Ford from a dealer and request finance/lease options, its pretty typical for Ford Credit to provide the backing.

We really need to move to strong crypto.

It just feels like a betrayal. Your car is loyal to the manufacturer, not to you. It will act in a manner directly opposed to your best interests as the owner if company that sold it to you orders it. I understand that's true for most software these days, but that doesn't make me any happier about it, and it really feels worse when the software in question is inextricably tied to and in control of an expensive piece of physical hardware that you purchased.

That is why there are legal contracts. This is just automated repossession.

There is value in adding friction to enforcing law/contracts: I don't know if FSD-repo crosses the line for me, but I know automating enforcement is bad for society.

What if everytime Tesla cameras detect the car speeding, or has crossed double-lines, it helpfully charges the fine to the linked credit card? After all, its just automated ticketing, right?

A lien-holder determined that the lender wasn’t paying the bills, so they manually made a decision to repossess the car. Just like with any other brand of a car, they reached out to the dealership (in this specific case, manufacturer is the same as the dealership, because Tesla sells directly with no franchises) and requested a way to access the vehicle. Normally it is done via a key copy. In this case, they used a digital version of it. Not that it matters meaningfully at all, but the car didn’t drive across town to the repo parking lot, current summoning feature cannot do that (the distance limit for the feature is a few hundred feet iirc).

And why does it matter if it was made easier to actually repossess the vehicle? It isn’t related to the automated ticketing analogy at all. There was no automatic detection, only automated enforcement. Just like with speeding tickets, i am totally ok with the cop not wasting his and my time writing me the ticket manually or making me wait for it by email, if it instead can be automated with a digital ticket/infraction in the system that i can check out when i get home.

To be more clear on why i think it is a bad analogy. Automated ticketing is automating human decision-making, which is an ambiguous blackbox process open to interpretation. As you said, doing so leads to a lot of unintended consequences. Actually physically repoing a car (after a manual decision to repo the car was made by a human) isn’t automating decision-making. The decision has already been consciously made, and there is not much room for interpretation when it comes to the physical process of repoing a car. The only variable is if the lender decides to hide the car or do something equally dumb, so it is not a good variable to have. And remotely disabling the car based on a manual human evaluation just seems to make the process of repoing it less prone to unintended bad variables.

The problem here is that Model 3s are apparently "loyal" to their manufacturer rather than the owner, regardless of who that owner is (whether that be a lienholder, the car's "user", or anyone else that's not Tesla).

That Tesla used that misplaced loyalty to give the car back to the lienholder in this case is irrelevant to my point.

"I know what this person's key was when I sold him the car. Here, have a copy."

VS.

"I have full control of this person's car, even though I'm not the owner. Here, let me remotely disable it for you."

    Directive 4: [Classified]

As an example, almost every new Ford sold in the USA since 2019 has standard 5G/GPS remote connectivity; even the cheapest entry level cars at Ford like the new Maverick can remotely over 5G unlock doors and remote start the engine (just like the 'owner' can in the Ford pass app, now standard spec on virtually all Fords.). The manufacturers of course love the extra usage metrics and can also over the air sell upgrades like 5G hotspot access and so forth. Many cars now have 5G/GPS receiver for metrics even if no connectivity or nav features whatsoever exposed to user.

My point is; aside from the use of "summon", this kind of locate, remote unlock and start by manufacturer is available on almost all new cars sold today, no matter how cheap - the 5G remote access tech has become increasingly ubiquitous. This is not something unique to the way Tesla creates it cars at all, especially in 2021.

> https://www.ford.com/support/how-tos/fordpass/fordpass-remot...

Still in the UK, although I suspect that holds more generally, when you buy something using a loan you own it. What you bought may be a security for the loan but that's different. Leasing a car or using a lease/purchase scheme is also different since leasing means you rent but don't own.

In general:

Lease - Finance company owns the asset, you are obliged to service the payments. You may have an option to transfer title at the end of the period (depending on jurisdiction).

Loan - You own the asset, secured against the asset.

(There are some UK/US-specfic product types due to difference in things like tax law)

Leasing (in general) is popular as it has tax-advantages for smaller businesses/individuals around depreciation, which can lead to good pricing for end lessee.

(source: Made software for the asset finance industry for a decade or so in the UK/EU + US)

This is the law. It is working as intended. It's also moral - If you enter into a contract to buy something on credit, you should uphold your end of the contract. Specific instances have been wrong, and we can argue the merits of this particular case, but car manufacturers assisting the new owners of assets that have been repossessed in securing their asset is at worst morally neutral.

Many people are surprised by this. They assume repossession means the loan is paid off - until they discover they've lost their car and are still on the hook for more or less the current market value.

Source: Trying to get a bank to remove the lien after it’s fully paid off can be a real source of frustration.

The way all of this works varies by state though. Some states issue a title electronically when the lien is released.

Kinda nice when you trade in a car you still owe a bit of money on, as you don't really need to bring anything with you other than the key and your drivers license; the dealer does all the work getting it cleared and transferred.

I guess it's different mostly in name though, they still have strong rights to the vehicle.

You are the owner, they simply have a lien on the vehicle which is noted on the title. Once you pay off the loan, they send you information to get the lien removed and a clean title.

I recall buying a used car where the bank lien had to be removed prior to transfer.

P.S. Looking around a bit there is a lot of variation on how this works depending on locale. So I guess lease vs. finance is just another way things can differ out there.

No doubt it would be fascinating to see how each state does it. I only have experience with a few.

Bottom line, the government just makes it obscure and difficult to determine the real dynamics between the two parties, and the weird interaction it may have with existing laws governing theft/ownership.

Some states in the US also handle mortgages like this.

No, the listed owner on the title is the owner, no matter who has possession of the title.

Car loans are secured on a car. If you want to just borrow money with no security you can get a (likely far more expensive) unsecured loan if the bank judges this to be a good risk, or take an overdraft on a current account or use a credit card, all unsecured debt.

1. Unsecured loan - if you have the credit facility available then you can borrow an unsecured amount of money and purchase a car. Neither the seller nor the bank have any ownership interest in the car. The loan isn't secured on the car. You are free to sell the car on and transfer its title to anyone else. If you default on the loan then different proceedings may take place to recover the money owed, but that may not necessarily include re-possessing the car (if it's valued under GBP3000.00). The loan company can come after any of your assets.

2. Hire Purchase - the seller lends you through a credit company the price of the car (and interest). The seller transfers the title of the to the credit company. You do not become the "owner" of the car, instead you rent it until such time the total amount of the loan is paid off. You don't have any right to sell or transfer ownership of the car. If you do the unfortunate buyer of the car may wake up one morning to find that it's been repossessed. This is why as a buyer performing HPI checks for any outstanding hire purchase or secured loans on the car are fairly important.

There are also other schemes such as leasing which make it more obvious that if you don't keep up with the payments then the seller or finance company can come along and repossess the car.

In those states, you have the title and the bank has a lien on the title.

As advocates, companies are fickle and unreliable.

Presenting as advocates, companies always stress how aligned their interests are with customers'. We'll, that's true until it isn't. Once it isn't, it flips.

That's useless. Better to keep in mind that companies aren't your advocates. They're your salesman.

A Google, FB or Tesla just isn't structurally built for that.

From what limited knowledge of law enforcement I have (and it's very little, I admit), it's reversed: everyone by default is legally obliged to assist a law officer, on their request, to enforce the law and order; there are some limits beyond which explicit court orders are required, but those limits are rather broad.

Are bailiffs law officers in that sense?