Man Accidentally Drove Away in Someone Else’s Tesla Using the Car’s App

Re:Man Accidentally Drove Away in Someone Else’s Tesla Using... by terhechte on Wednesday March 15, 2023 @12:05PM (#35170432)

Story Time: In an older, much less technical world, the VW Golf 1 and Golf 2 had only N different keys for all models. So instead of having a unique key for each Golf, VW had (I forgot the number) 1000 or 10000 different keys that were assigned randomly. I thought this was a myth until back in 99, my friends white, old Golf 2 was parked next to another white, old Golf 2. When we wanted to enter, there was sleeping guy in there. His Golf was parked next to ours. It was evening, he was tired, instead of driving home (the Golfs were parked outside a club) he had opened the Golf gotten in and fallen asleep. Just that he had entered the wrong Golf, because (even though very unlikely) there were to similar-looking golfs with the same keys next to each other (and it was dark).

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Re:Man Accidentally Drove Away in Someone Else’s Tesla Using... by 2020aj on Wednesday March 15, 2023 @12:11PM (#35170528)

Funny story: house locks work the same way (I think usually ~1024 possible key configurations, depending on the lock). When my wife and I were dating we discovered that our apartment keys worked in each other's locks!

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Re:Man Accidentally Drove Away in Someone Else’s Tesla Using... by thakoppno on Wednesday March 15, 2023 @12:41PM (#35170974)

Was it your wife’s idea to move in together?

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Re:Man Accidentally Drove Away in Someone Else’s Tesla Using... by buzzert on Wednesday March 15, 2023 @01:01PM (#35171280)

It was meant to be!

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Re:Man Accidentally Drove Away in Someone Else’s Tesla Using... by colechristensen on Wednesday March 15, 2023 @12:30PM (#35170790)

Much worse, Ford had a small set of fleet keys where every fleet vehicle of a set of types would have the exact same key for several model years.

I bought an old cargo van which had been a Comcast installation vehicle and they had sabotaged the lock on the rear door because of this.

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Re:Man Accidentally Drove Away in Someone Else’s Tesla Using... by cptcobalt on Wednesday March 15, 2023 @12:56PM (#35171197)

I seem to recall that there's a Defcon talk to this extent—one of the many that talk about locks and keys—that shares that (some) police cruisers across the US use the exact same keys, proven by showing the showing a monroney label on a still new police car which listed a barrel type had an already publicly-known key pattern.

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Re:Man Accidentally Drove Away in Someone Else’s Tesla Using... by bombcar on Wednesday March 15, 2023 @01:36PM (#35171902)

This is the case - New York cop cars and New York cabs had the same key because the latter were often old copies of the former.

And all elevators in the USA have the same key, and you can buy a key set with almost all tractor keys.

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Re:Man Accidentally Drove Away in Someone Else’s Tesla Using... by Volundr on Wednesday March 15, 2023 @03:16PM (#35173333)

I had an 86 Honda Civic and have a similar story. I was just getting out of class and heading to work, walked out to my car, started it, looked behind me to back out and realized the stuff in the back seat wasn't mine. Turns out someone had a very similar civic that was even missing the same black plastic strip on the side panel mine was. And my keys worked in their cars.

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Re:Man Accidentally Drove Away in Someone Else’s Tesla Using... by olyjohn on Wednesday March 15, 2023 @04:17PM (#35174154)

Now if you still had an 86 Civic, it's highly likely that just about key from any Honda from that same era will open it now. The keys all wear down and so do the tumblers in the locks.

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Re:Man Accidentally Drove Away in Someone Else’s Tesla Using... by Volundr on Wednesday March 15, 2023 @06:17PM (#35175481)

Man, I wish I still had that civic. I loved that thing. Selling it was a huge mistake.

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Re:Man Accidentally Drove Away in Someone Else’s Tesla Using... by moltar on Wednesday March 15, 2023 @08:44PM (#35176728)

I still see them sometimes in Southern Europe. Great condition too usually. I’m a fan of old civics too :)

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