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Comment by decimalenough | Hacker News Reader

I know this opinion is anathema on HN, but this is one reason I like Teslas.

Keyless unlock over Bluetooth keyed to the owner's phone is very difficult to spoof, making it hard to steal the car.

If you manage to steal the car somehow, it's wired to the gills, meaning it can tracked and bricked remotely (the apparent fate of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov's Cybertruck).

And if you do manage to take it offline and bring it to another country, the navigation won't work and you'll have a very hard time finding spares outside the official dealer network.

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I have a Tesla. It is trivial to steal; you just get my phone and you have my car. It is tied to the car through Bluetooth that auto unlocks AND drives without any other security measures beyond just being close to it with the devise. You don't even have to unlock my phone. Getting my phone would be the harder part, but it just would take a lapse in paying attention (like left in on the table to get a drink refill).

The comforting part (unless you consider the immense privacy issues) is, as you mention, how tied the auto is to Tesla and my account. I could have the car disabled and tracked probably less than 10 minutes of discovering it was taken. I could also lock/erase my stolen phone remotely which would then disable driving the car again once it was put into park for the first time.

There is the option of PIN to drive. Evaluate your threat model and decide if you want to enable it.

I saw a video of some alpine explorer who recorded a video of himself to be uploaded later. He was on some stupid long 500 mile trek through the mountains when the police texted him. They were paving the parking lot where he'd left his car and requesting that it be moved, so he was hiking towards better signal so that he could start the engine and someone local could move it a few feet.

You could steal it with a tow truck. Which would be an order of magnitude more difficult but serious car thieves have them. I imagine the mechanical components would be valuable. Definitely out of reach of the young,dumb criminal though

I prefer my French dumb car. If someone steals it, meh the insurance will pay out and I buy another one. Not that anyone is going to steal it. It’s just invisible.

And it’s more comfortable and after 6 years lifetime it cost less than half of just the depreciation on a model S including fuel.

> I prefer my French dumb car.

You are smart.

I have a 2001 Mazda 626 and a 2002 Ford F-150 7700 in the driveway, and there are days I forget to lock the doors. Which is an unwise thing to do in my neighbourhood. But even after half a decade living here I have yet to find any evidence they’ve been rifled through, much less attempted to be stolen.

Plus, I recently ran the numbers, and ignoring fuel and insurance, adding up purchase price + all repairs and maintenance - including brand-name tires! - has both vehicles together amortize under $1,000/year. And that is _BOTH, COMBINED._ I know some people in my own tax bracket who pay more than a $2,000 a month just for a single vehicle.

Now granted, AC is still dead on both, and will cost a pretty penny to resurrect (heavy corrosion in the lines). But for getting from point A to point B, those are some pretty cheap fucking rides.

You get everything described above in a used Tesla Model 3 that goes for $20k in the US.

The French dumb car cost me $4000

Sure, I'm just saying that you don't need to fork out $100k or whatever it costs for a Model S these days to get those features.

No CarPlay still? My $4000 french turd has it...

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