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. Even the brakes are fully drive by wire so the driver can't stop the car.
The cars autodrive engages and sends the trapped family to an ICE detention facility. In a panic the driver tries to turn off the car and finds that button is software controlled as well. The family find they are disconnected from their own car and are left with the choice of smashing a window and jumping out of a moving car, or to be sent to a processing facility for their concentration camp.
Is there any design feature stopping this from from hapening today?
Edit: In hindsight, it seems like this was the obvious design goal all along. The user has been completely disconnected from control of anything and it is to my understanding 100% drive by wire.
Edit 2: Another possibility is simple deactivation so people can't drive out of an area. Imagine ICE sweep an area and deactivate all software controlled cars.
Maybe Trump wants to punish a region showing defiance and disable cars, or cause them to drive to pickup locations.
Edit 3: I'm also reminded of the internal cameras that can use facial recognition to identify undesirables and can either be remotely disabled and report undesirables for ICE pickup, or self-drive as stated earlier. It seems everything about this car is designed for dual use. Weaponizing a consumer good under the guise of features and convenience.
I'm downvoting for your edit, because you sound like a conspiracy nut.
As others have pointed out, there are manual overrides for these things, as mandated by law.
The fact that they are hard to find has nothing to do with nefarious intent. Tesla wanted their cars to feel sleek and futuristic. Having a big clunky red handle labelled "emergency door release" or whatever would ruin the aesthetic.
Similarly, the "computerized everything" aspect of the vehicles can be explained entirely by Tesla's branding as "the car of the future". People who don't trust computers might be put off, but tech-ignorant techno-optimists would be drawn to it.
Teslas were built according to this design long before Musk aligned himself with Trump. It seems highly unlikely that Musk was secretly designing immigrant deportation machines when his main customer base was people with "No Human Is Illegal" yard signs.
Finally, Teslas are luxury vehicles. And now they are luxury vehicles for conservatives. If Musk's plan was to use his vehicles for mass deportation of immigrants, he would be an idiot for trying to sell a $100,000 Cybertruck to José who works for less than minimum wage in the meat processing plant and his wife Maria who makes even less at the industrial laundry. The only immigrants driving Teslas are 45 year old Indian tech bros who think Elon Musk is great and young women should stop dressing so immodestly.
So sure, maybe, possibly, this could happen a few times theoretically. But if you look at it with any actual context in the real world, you'll see that, no, this is not going to happen, and no one is planning for it to happen.
Having sat my ass in a few, they most definitely are not luxury vehicles. Maybe the S or X (I haven't been in one so cannot assess), but not the others.
To be clear, I do not own one nor have I ever owned one.
And I'm downvoting you for saying "conspiracy nut" in the age of American Fascism and naked imperialism.
Its in the streets. In your neighbourhoods. The naked abuse of power laid bare. You are still saying "It can't happen here."
There is a difference between acknowledging the bad things that are happening and taking steps to push back, and panicking and thinking up every possible bad thing that could happen and treating it as real - which is what you are doing.
Teslas make up a small minority of vehicles on the road, and are luxury vehicles which now carry a conservative reputation. The idea that someone would be locked in their Tesla in order to be deported is, at best, an unwarranted distraction thought up by a spiraling doomer - not a serious concern for anyone living in the real world.
OCD in a nutshell
"Panicking" is bad faith rhetoric. As is "doomer" and pretty much everything you just said.
I'm not saying it's a bad thought. I'm saying it doesn't hold up to scrutiny... like... at all. So all you are doing is fearmongering.
Look at the front page of any newspaper today in the world. Then come back to tell me I'm fearmongering.
Don't be an apologist for fascists.
I have.
You're fearmongering.
This is like saying Elon Musk is planning to raise Godzilla from the depths of the oceans to round up immigrants. Saying "that is not a realistic thing to be worried about" isn't being an apologist. It is having basic common sense.
No. This is saying ICE is rounding up immigrants. They absolutely are without question. I am also saying the people leading this, including Trump and Elon have particularly novel tools at their disposal that could be used in an unprecedented way.
That a megalomaniacle fascist billionaire built cars with clear dual use features is a clear and present danger that people need to be aware of. The risk is here.
If you had an ounce of common sense you would have said "yes. Good point, I hope it doesn't come to that." And we'd be done.
^ This is conspiracy nutjob statement.
I tried helping him too. He ain't getting it.
We can't pretend we haven't seen American technology built with dual use, enshittification and geopolitical strategic power in mind. The US government themselves decry Chinese technology as a threat, when it only does exactly what American tech does. Now the safeguards of courts and democracy that prevented abuse of this are largely gone and this technological capability is controlled by openly fascist psychopaths, the threat is as real and in your face as it gets.
Well, you can pretend. Clearly everything is fine and there is nothing to see here according to you.
Not the person you originally replied to, but you're toeing the line of conspiracy nut. It sounds like it comes from a general lack of knowledge on a subject you have had no need to look into. Which is perfectly fine. But it's very far from reality. I have a tesla and the scenario of locking me in and dropping me off at an ICE center is impossible. I have an older one that lacks full self driving hardware so there's no computer code that could execute most of what you described. Now this comes from my direct knowledge of having owned one. This might have been more appropriate for a "nostupidquestions" style community.
Good for you. And for everybody else? Anecdote does not equal evidence.
Your ignorance does not equal reality. What you quoted wasn't an anecdote. It's a fact. As I said above, you not knowing that fact is perfectly fine. Getting snippy with me trying to provide some knowledge on the subject is just weird.
It's fine to not address the question asked about all the cars that do have auto drive and whine about your one irrelevant fact. Just don't be under the impression you are contributing to the conversation, for or against in any meaningful way. Calling someone ignorant is just bad faith discussion.
I did address the question in a parent comment. This chain is responding to someone else calling you a conspiracy theorist. The only one whining is you. As I mentioned before it's perfectly alright to not have that knowledge if you've never had need of it. As someone with the knowledge I tried to elaborate for your benefit. You chose to embrace your ignorance and push on with whining. You have very little understanding of what "auto drive" actually is. Again, that shouldn't be something to be ashamed of. Getting all pissy when someone tries to provide that knowledge is exactly what I'd expect from the type of idiots who would support the situation in your initial post. Be better than them.
~~Bad faith insults and put downs, while providing no insight into the question asked or discussion being had, is something to be ashamed of. I'd normally say ad hominems are beneath you, but you have proven that false repeatedly.~~
~~You have provided no knowledge.~~ Edit: (I'm going to eat my shoe on this one as dude did provide good faith discussion with relevent info in a previous post. I got my replies mixed. I am a neo-maxi zone-dweebie)
Did you even check my other comment that explicitly answered your question? Cause it explicitly answers your question.
I got my posters mixed up. You did provide good faith discussion. I'll edit my above post. Mi scusi.