Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Agreed.

Your opinion is an unpopular one, albeit one I share.

There are far too many cases where security is getting removed in the name of convenience, and this is no exception.



It's important to look at this in the context of overall auto theft trends. Auto theft has dropped by more than 50% over the past decade, driven mostly by the broad use of smart keys. (http://www.iii.org/issue-update/auto-theft). The lion's share of the thefts are of older cars (mentioned in the above cite) -- thefts of 2013 vehicles number in the hundreds.

Further, a Tesla has a GPS, sophisticated processor, and a 4G WAN. It would be easy enough to have the car report back to the owner if it's being driven without sensing the key, and give the owner the option to route a theft report and live location of the vehicle to police with one click. That's something I wished for in my revenge fantasies when my car was stolen a decade ago.

We could do more, sure -- but it's hard to argue that we are making cars less secure, or even that car security should be a major care-about for the buyer.


The main issue with newer cars is people stealing your stuff from your unlocked car.

The Tesla app does show the car location on a map; they don't have a "report to police" option, but they aren't that far away from it.

BTW the Tesla modem is 3G.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: