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Tesla recently announced all new vehicles coming off the line would fully support its cocky-driving technology, at least eventually. The visitor as well included some details on how customers who purchase cocky-driving vehicles are immune to use their cars. The company's claims will almost certainly be tested in court, given how Tesla is attempting to execute a fairly massive power grab.

Tesla's design page for the Model S contains the following whopper:

SelfDriving

And then. According to Tesla, buying a Model South means y'all are agreeing to but utilize the vehicle'south cocky-driving capabilities to generate revenue if y'all use Tesla's own baked-in system. This is a groovy window into Elon Musk's long-term plans, and it speaks to why he felt comfortable building out the Supercharger arrangement while simultaneously letting Tesla owners charge upward for costless (it'southward unclear if Model iii owners will pay a monthly or yearly fee for the same privilege). Musk knows cocky-driving cars are expected to transform the transportation industry, and he's setting up an early on claim to lock Tesla owners into simply driving on his network.

Whether this is legal is an interesting question. Every bit Slate notes, it's the latest salvo fired in a decades-long trend to dilute the very concept of ownership and transform concrete products into "licensed" versions that are treated more than like software. And so how can Tesla know what you're doing with your vehicle? That's easy — it tracks the machine extensively, both to provide software updates and monitor driver beliefs. Last year, Tesla raised eyebrows by sending waves of emails asking sure customers not to spend so much time recharging at Superchargers. In a well-discussed spat with the New York Times, Musk revealed Tesla had verbal records of where the tested vehicle had stopped, started, and how much information technology had been driven (and at what speeds and operating temperatures).

Tesla's new hardware provides an improved view of what is around the car

Tesla tin tell if you're using a self-driving car past monitoring how much time y'all spend driving it (or that the car spends in operation). That'due south never been an effect earlier, but information technology could easily go one now. And therein lies the rub: To Tesla, your vehicle isn't merely a collection of hardware, it's a money-earning machine with extremely expensive and proprietary software. Simply every bit John Deere has argued that tractor owners don't actually own their vehicles, Tesla is rolling out the same rhetoric and applying information technology to self-driving cars.

If issues related to software buying and licensing aren't resolved, the future looks downright callous. The implicit argument being made here is that the use of algorithms magically transforms products from "owned" to "licensed." Then long as such products were a distinct minority of the things people used on a daily basis, this wasn't a huge concern. Given that the stated goal of IoT evangelists is to put sensors and software in basically everything, it'due south going to be a existent trouble going frontward.

Car manufacturers are already deploying technology that allows them to turn a vehicle off remotely if someone misses a payment. How long until nosotros meet even tighter restrictions imposed on people who the manufacturer thinks have breached its Terms of Service? Forcing an end user to just drive for a specific network should exist equally illegal equally forcing employees to buy their appurtenances through a company store. If you pay Tesla $70K or more than for the privilege of driving a Model Southward off the lot, yous've already paid the visitor everything it ought to be entitled to. I'd sooner pay the company the equivalent of retail gasoline prices to refuel the battery than allow it to dictate how, when, and if I make money by using my vehicle.