> "Tesla is the same pattern applied to consumer vehicles"

It really isn't. Unlike John Deere, Tesla is actually pretty good on right-to-repair. All of their technical and repair manuals are available for free to anyone. The service/diagnostics software ("Toolbox") is also available to anyone, albeit for a (not entirely unreasonable) fee.

(There is also a service mode built in to the car which can do many basic diagnostics for free)

>> Tesla is the same pattern applied to consumer vehicles

No i'd push back on this because the entire workshop manual is available for free without even registration required. You can literally google and land in the relevant sections and it is of a far higher quality than ford, VAG or bmw as three examples i'm pretty familiar with. I haven't seen the John Deere stuff.

Tesla does have "special tools" for some repair procedures, a practice as old as the auto industry but they don't rely on them to the same extent as BMW for example. Anecdotally, the special tools i'm aware of are genuinely useful - for example, the tool for disconnecting seatbelt anchors saves time vs the traditional bolt - where special tools on other marques are often clearly to workaround a failure of packaging or engineering resulting in tight access for a regular tool.

Their online API access is a little bit annoying, or at least unfriendly to casual home user, specifically the workflow to register an OIDC client, but not insurmountable.

> The underlying tension is that "you own the car" means something very different from "you own the software running the car."

How is this different from the 2000s, or the 90s, or even before, when the normal thing to do with commercial software was to purchase a license to use said software and a physical medium containing a copy? You'd also then not "own the software", but you owned the right to install a copy on your own computer and use it. That worked without having to hand over the keys to your own computer.

Sure, the physical delivery medium is gone, but that's just a detail. Why do we now think that just because we license software for use, we can't be in ultimate charge of our own devices?

Tesla absolutely does not apply the same patterns as John Deere. Everyone can fix Teslas. Parts are easy to obtain. Never had issues with them. John Deere on the otherhand is the absolute evil of right to repair.

Agrred, but it is remote root access is the danger, they already have root access to the physical dangerous things.

No, one can do that anyway. There is basically no real way to stop folks from modifying their cars. It can be made more difficult, sure.

This is about selling tools and access. It's another profit pipeline for car OEMs.

I don’t think that’s the reason, seeing as a car is already endangering everyone around it by existing. More likely about keeping the tooling to diagnose issues proprietary and expensive.

That kind of thing is always the stated justification but never the real reason.

Almost invariably when that excuse is trotted out, there are are usually many things that are much more common that are also far more dangerous. For example, texting while driving or driving with bald tires in the wet are both 100x more dangerous than anything almost anybody would do by modifying the car's software.

Four 9/11s worth of people die every year from drunk driving. If we can't even get that under control, I don't see why being able to modify your own car is a big deal.

Really? Which car manufacturer officially provides you a root access to your vehicle?

Definitely not always. It used to be that a mechanic or a skilled owner could tune, modify, repair or replace absolutely anything in your car. That was basically since the invention of the car, up to somewhere in the 2000s. And even then, various hackers and pirates made sure almost anyone could get their hands on the software. In fact, many mechanics these days use 3rd party software because the manufacturer refuses to sell them their version or even that version doesn't have all the features.

That is the recent (and gradually worsening) situation but it is not in and of itself a justification. Effectively you're saying "it's currently this way therefore it's okay for it to be this way".

Manufacturers have increasingly restricted control over products as they've gradually been digitized. Prior to the digital era anyone could do anything to personal property (regulations notwithstanding ofc); more expensive items typically came with circuit diagrams for the purpose of repairing them.