Renault ships a brickable car with battery DRM that you're not allowed to own | Hacker News Reader

Renault ships a brickable car with battery DRM that you're not allowed to own

boingboing.net

146 pointsedoloughlin129 comments

I'm surprised everyone is ignoring the obvious elephant in the room: The car receives a signal to lock itself down. Therefore someone can impersonate the car dealer and lock your car down (as long as their encryption is set up in a broken way, which it almost always is).

No one is ignoring the "obvious elephant;" it's just not the most important discussion point.

Assume the Bad Guys have figured out how to send the brick-yourself code to an arbitrary Zoe. Which do you think is going to happen more often: bricked because you couldn't afford your monthly payment, or bricked until you transfer 100 BTC to the haxx0r?

I feel like you're trolling by mentioning "haxx0r" and bitcoin, but here goes anyway.

The fact that Renault is trying to sell a tangible, vendor-locked, remote-privileged/DRM-reliant device is more interesting than the "what if some jerk hacks the protocol?"

>Which do you think is going to happen more often: bricked because you couldn't afford your monthly payment, or bricked until you transfer 100 BTC to the haxx0r?

The former and by large a large margin.

Is that substantially different than GM's OnStar? It's already been used to slow down/shut off stolen vehicles.

This is mandatory, whereas OnStar is optional.

OnStar is a feature that can be disabled. This is straight up DRM.

The comment I was responding to wasn't about DRM, it was about the possibility of someone else hacking into it. That same issue applies to every person who hasn't disabled OnStar (and I mean physically disabled, since GM can turn them back on by court order, I assume a "hacker" could too).

It looks like this is a lease, but instead of using an expensive repo. man to haul away the car when you can't pay your bill, the car stops charging instead. When your account becomes current, the battery unlocks. Progress marches on! The Boing Boing and EFF "articles" here are only so much outrage porn.

Note that you really do not want to buy an electric car at this point; leasing is really the only option. Technology is changing so fast that if you should buy an EV you risk holding the bag should it become radically obsolete in the next three to five years. There's also a chance the battery will degrade faster than anticipated.

You're saying that leasing is better than buying because cost of obsolescence is borne by the lessor.

This is an economic fallacy so common that it deserves a memorable name.

If a product became obsolete so quickly that everyone chose to lease it, then the lease price would rise to the level where leasing and buying were equally good.

For example, if the cost of a product went to $0 after 3 years, then--all factors being equal--the cost to lease it for 3 years then return it to the lessor versus the cost to buy it and throw it in the garbage after 3 years would be equal.

I'm saying something a little bit different, but I was not being very clear. Yes, the cost of leasing is born by you, the lessee. However, the risk of fluctuations in value of the car itself is born by the lessor, for which you pay a volatility premium. The lessor places a bet on the future value of the car ahead of time when they lease it, just as you would implicitly place your own bet should you buy it.

Electric cars are so new that they may be one of the few cases where leasing makes sense; some people may not want the downside risk of buying, and are willing to pay a bit more for that. Battery technology is ever-improving.

Electric cars are so new

Hate to be pedantic, but electric cars have been around for over 100 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#1890s_to_1910s:_E...

This really doesn't contribute. Everyone knows that what's new is the particular technologies, not the idea of using electricity.

If you hate a behavior you're engaging in, then try not to engage in that behavior.

That assumes that everybody is equally smart and well-informed.

I don't know that it's true, but it seems reasonable to assume that many electric car customers are treating it like a normal car purchase without thinking about obsolescence, and allowing the natural desire to own an object rather than rent it to push them in that direction.

In an ideal world filled with sane, rational humans, buying and renting should cost about the same. But we don't live in such a world.

Yes, and it's likely that the cost of the lease would be signifcantly higher to account for the risk of default.

The risk of default in an auto loan is just as high, if not a bit more, as loan payments are typically higher than lease payments. But yes, you pay more for a lease than if you bought the car outright, assuming you couldn't get a higher return on your money elsewhere.

The ability to remotely lock down the car, though, probably lowers the default rate and eases recovery of the car, so leasing this car should have lower "bad debt" costs than leasing a non-DRM'd car, making the lease comparatively cheaper than other cars.

I find this risky on the part of Renault. We still have the ENAC principle ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exceptio_non_adimpleti_contract... ). When Renault locks the electric car, they are reneging on their contractual obligations. So given that they want to recover the money, how will that work ? In court you can say "I'm not paying for (a) the period that the car was disabled, ever (b) nor am I paying anything until the car is re-enabled", and that's a defensible position. Given that the car costs exactly the same (in loan repayments) to Renault, whether it's driving or locked down, this seems beyond stupid. I wonder who their legal advisor is.

Reneging on contractual obligations is something you should only ever do if you're not expecting any payments anymore.

(Of course this would be the situation in Northwest Europe, I'm not sure how this works in the US, so YMMV. And of course, you can bet it's unlikely in the extreme a collection agency will see it like this). This does not constitute legal advice, and I am especially not advising anyone to do anything. I am just voicing a concern. Contact a lawyer before you do anything (there is free legal representation for people having trouble with payments to financial institutions in most locations, use it).

Then again the lessor may lower the lease price and absorb a little more of the risk in the hope of increasing sales and gaining market share, ie a loss leader strategy.

Except that lease $ payments are fixed and agreed at point of contract.

The parent is suggesting that on day 0 of the lease the lessor doesn't know if the EV will be worth less than they project, due to accelerated obsolescence from a new technology emerging.

You're right in the macro, that if this happened leases would go up, but those that were already in contract would be "protected" and I think that's his/her point.

The situation with electric cars is a little more complicated , as there's a $7500 tax credit for them. If I lease an electric car I can get the full value of that $7500 over the 2 or 3 year lease. If I buy it, that value is spread out over the entire life of the car.

Personally I'd prefer to lease an electric car, and am going to soon. Even if it's more expensive than buying one, the extra cost is like buying an option to give at back after 2-3 years, which is worth something, especially with relatively new battery technology.

Why does it follow that you get to benefit from the tax credit and not the entity that leases the car to you?

The entity that leases the car does get the benefit - but then passes it on to the consumer in lower monthly payments.

Ah, I see, you're an optimist. :)

The article is one of the stupidest things I've ever read that wasn't a Youtube comment. "Not allowed to own?" What kind of ridiculous statement is that? Can I complain that I'm "not allowed to own" my apartment because my landlord chooses to operate a rental building instead of a condo building?

if you should buy an EV you risk holding the bag should it become radically obsolete in the next three to five years.

Not if, when. You can see this with electric motorcycles right now. The difference between the 2014 Zero and the 2012 Zero is night and day.

This article seems a little harsh. Does leasing/renting the battery out make the car more affordable? Because aren't batteries still a huge cost driver for these vehicles? What is the difference in sticker price? And can drivers be incentivized to share their driving data - maybe lower insurance or insurance per mile, a lower battery leasing fee, etc? Just saying that this 'brickable car' may be worth it for some. No need to write it off just like that.

And would you really want to own an expensive battery that has to be replaced eventually at great cost?

I don't think it's harsh enough. Renault wants to 'sell' a product to a consumer that he will never truly own.

>And can drivers be incentivized to share their driving data - maybe lower insurance or insurance per mile, a lower battery leasing fee, etc?

This reminds me of the fictional television set that used its built-in camera to take a photograph of its users' living rooms and lowered or raised the price of streaming movies based on how many people were in the room (as insurance that you're technically not broadcasting it to a group that they've determined as needing a paid license). Sure, it's intrusive and you're potentially paying more for a stream than ownership of the media, but maybe there's a bright side.

And really, do you want to buy a blu ray that's possibly, eventually going to have to be replaced by a more expensive format?

I don't know if it is really legit, but it seems there is a patent application from Microsoft, presumably using the Kinect, to count the number of people watching.

http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...

It wouldn't surprise me. Microsoft wanted to ship their new game console with audio/video sensors that constantly record. I wouldn't be shocked if they decide to ignore the consumer backlash and send back "some" data via an encrypted channel.

edit: Thanks for the interesting link to that patent.

Someone had to try it. That's how the world works, someone thinks it up, it's stupid, they make no money, people don't do it again. Honestly I am shocked it took so long.

More or less like Adobe cloud?

No, not at all like that.

Why not?

> Renault wants to 'sell' a product to a consumer that he will never truly own.

So exactly like when you purchase an ebook from Amazon, a game from Steam, or dozens other services where you think you own something but in reality you don't. I'm not saying it's good, but why do people get angry when it's more "real"? And at the same time are OK with it when it's something virtual?

>So exactly like when you purchase an ebook from Amazon, a game from Steam,

No, not like that. And definitely not "exactly like" that. Bridging the tangibility gap makes this into a different manner.

I think a lot of it has to do with expectations.

Personally, I don't buy DRM'd ebooks from Amazon, unless I happen to get them at a tremendous discount and consider it a throwaway item. (I think I have purchased 1 DRM'd ebook for my Kindle in the 3 years I have had it). I also only purchase steam games in a similar way- when highly discounted- mostly through the Humble Bundle deals. This is because I know what to expect, and I make other choices.

Amazon, Steam, etc. are not in fact capable of taking away the data I bought, no matter what they do with their servers.

Also I'm optimistic law will catch up and fix the first sale doctrine eventually, so that they won't even try to take away the data.

> Amazon, Steam, etc. are not in fact capable of taking away the data I bought, no matter what they do with their servers.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, could you elaborate? As of now, if e.g. your Steam account is suspended or the Steam servers shut down, you will no longer be able to play any of the games on that account (offline mode and DRM circumvention notwithstanding).

You may have access to a subset of the data on your disk (the games you previously downloaded), but they're still wrapped in DRM.

As an aside, Steam is also capable of removing games from your account, which they do e.g. in the case of a chargeback.

> I'm not sure what you mean by this

I meant circumvention. I paid for it, they're not taking it back.

Most of the games are in fact not wrapped in Steam DRM. Just by the way, as playing them is equal to pirating anyways. If your service is suspended you "can't" play them (even though you can).

This is getting slightly off-topic, but it's only a minority[1] of games that lack the Steam DRM wrapper and they're primarily indie titles. Nearly all (if not all) AA/AAA titles on Steam require Steam to be running.

[1] http://www.gog.com/forum/general/list_of_drmfree_games_on_st...

Since Amazon has remote deleted Kindle books in the past, your statement is clearly incorrect. They have since "promised" not to do it again. The capability remains.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...

And I'll have it back in under an hour.

Unlike this battery system where I'm probably unable to fix it.

Well, I get angry about those things too. There's no way I'll "buy" a game from Steam for example.

A recent court case in Germany started to edge these disingenuous business practices into illegality. Hopefully things will continue to move in the right direction.

There are three obvious differences between this and software DRM. One is that this isn't a piece of non-critical software. You can live with your copy of 1989 being deleted from your kindle; something not so easy with a car.

Two is that a temporary loss of permissions to play a video game won't result in potentially permanent damage to that software; letting a modern battery run dry by refusing to charge it could.

Three, you're not saddled with a $15,000 plus hunk of metal, plastic, and rubber if your rights to use the software are revoked.

How does this DRM even work? What if the battery can't communicate with Renault, because you're in a country or region they don't have coverage (for example the mountains)?

You can get a SIM card that works in 160 countries for $15. And I wouldn't be surprised if the number of people who own an electric car but never drive it on an area with cellphone coverage is literally zero.

I had a car once that relied on the bank sending it a "payment was made" message to the car every two weeks. To say it was not reliable was an understatement. For a good two weeks after the original purchase, I could not rely on the car due to faults with their system working in an area with spotty cell coverage (which still exist even in the US).

To the last day of my obligation to that lender, I would have problems with it, typically due to weather, problems with the module itself, or any number of other factors.

I would hope that Renaults system is better than that... but I will be hard pressed to trust such a system ever again. Having your car shut down remotely due to faulty DRM really sucks.

The whole point is that they do not want to sell it. They want to rent it. They are quite explicit that this is not a purchase arrangement.

> Just saying that this 'brickable car' may be worth it for some.

Yes, and I'm sure that taking out huge mortgages on their houses was worth it for some people, especially just before 2007. But that doesn't mean that offering mortgages with no upfront payment is moral, or beneficial for the society. People can't properly value risk and most don't think long-term, so businesses can often trick them into doing things for short-term gain, long-term harm.

you're comparing unsustainable loans with a system to make a patently better (on most fronts) mode of driving available to the masses that can't afford a Tesla.

I'm just saying that all loans (given to the public) have a tendency to become unsunstainable.

Renting the battery is rather the opposite of a loan.

By removing the option to buy, and adding the DRM, Renault will have cornered the market in batteries for the car. Perhaps you'd like to buy a 3rd-party battery? Tough luck. Think that the battery rental rates are too high and you'd prefer to rent from someone else? Bad luck again, Renault will be the only ones in the market.

if the objective of this is to make the car cheaper, you shouldn't really expect Renault to abuse this. If it isn't, then someone else can come in and offer a cheaper package.

I feel like if I were to make a same form-factor battery for a car I'd get sued on design patents. Cars have always had super tight vertical-integration. It might change, but this situation is pretty close to the status-quo.

Cheaper at the onset does not imply cheaper overall. Renault is already fleecing their customers with one of the highest maintenance costs of all makes (higher than BMW for instance).

Silly; they claim if you lose your job and can't make battery payments, you can't even drive your car. If you lose your job and can't make gas payments, same effect. This is just another model trying to make an electric car affordable. Why all the vitriol?

If you lose a job and can't afford to pay for the car(but still might have some savings to pay for gas) it usually takes a few months between you missing a payment and you losing the car to the bank or a debt collector.

With this technology your car can be disabled as soon as a single payment is missed.

So you have gas money but not battery money? Huh?

You have $10 a month to charge the battery money, but not $200 a month pay for the car money.

What's the rental fee? Is it more or less than the $100-200/month most people spend on gas?

Could be the same, but people scrape together gas money with greater urgency than they mail checks to pay bills, which I believe drives the change. Now people will be equally motivated to make their monthly payment.

In a bind, you can get that $100-200/mo much lower.

Perhaps they can offer a system where partial battery payments will get you reduced usage.

They would do that only if they have to fight a competitor, for sure. The whole idea of this rental is to follow the quite successful model one sees with ISP or mobile operators. Currently, they sell a car and that's it. They don't get more money if you use it for 20 years (my car, which is from another french brand, is that old).

And other cars are disabled as soon as a single gas payment is missed.

The payment here is for the battery, not for the car as a whole.

Credit card auto payments are great. That is, until you get a new card with a different number or expiry. No matter how careful I am, I miss updating details with one company. I get an account locked, and an overdue fine. Having my car locked down would make the 2 yearly process somewhat worse. Great stuff.

Why is it OK for a newer technology to be restricted just because that's how it is for an older technology? We didn't start charging for emails just because snailmail cost money..

Its not ok or not-ok; its a marketing model (lease the battery) to bring down the purchase price of an electric car, who's major cost component is the battery. Go ahead, buy a Tesla if you can afford it.

For the same reason it's OK for vendors to set their own sales terms. If you don't like it, don't buy Renault, choose from one of the other electric vehicles on the market.

Why all the vitriol? Because your hands are tied once you've bought the car. And even if you trust Renault (or any other company) and are pretty sure they won't abuse your weaker position today, can you trust them tomorrow?

How about a better analogy?

If you lose your job and can't pay for gasoline, you can't drive.

If you lose your job and can't pay the electricity bill, you can't drive. Why add the extra battery DRM on top of it?

This is actually sounding like some sort of accounting gimmick, that combines a lease (power) with a purchase (shell). It may have the effect of some cost benefit to the end user. They are trying to sub the "rental" for the "gas payment" ($8/gallon==lots) to not make the stupidly uncompetitive on price. The main risk of this strategy, then would be if people "carjacked" the battery and a black market of non-traceble inter-operable parts emerged. Also, a grey market or secondary market that limited the "ticket sale" to only the commodity shell. This has the also obvious abuse potential (forced maintenence $$, engineered obsolecense, etc). Also, the value of the residual car? Going to take a huge hit. Athough this last point would be mitigated somewhat if the rental was not much worse than petrol costs (op-ex, otherwise incurred).

It's worth noting that while Renault is not in the US market and we won't get the Zoe EV, Renault and Nissan are partners and this tech could wind up in the Nissan Leaf. (edit: depending on future battery lease models)

If you bought the 40,000Whr tesla model S, they give you a 60,000Whr battery and use similar "DRM" to limit it to 40,000.

Is this a fact? It seems like the cells are so valuable that they are selling multiple tiers of battery so they will have a lower cost model. There's real money to be saved in not putting 20,000Whr in the car.

They weighed the cost of having variations during manufacturing and installing larger batteries after the car has already been delivered or resold and decided that it would be cheaper and give the car a higher resale value if the battery capacity could be upgraded remotely at any time.

Source?

Who comes up with these ideas? I can't even picture a somewhat educated group of people, sitting around a board room table, thinking that this is a remotely good idea.

Who says they are trying to come up with good ideas? They are trying to make money.

It makes it much easier to reposess the battery (and car if applicable) if the payments stop. Although I would not buy such a car myself, I reckon many potential customers wouldn't care. At the same time, those who care will probably either be anti-drm (a minority) or have a higher risk of missing a payment (not the target audience).

The DRM stuff aside, the obligatory battery rental is probably because the battery itself is expensive, and it allows them to hide the price of that.

"Give 'em the razor; sell 'em the blades"

maybe if Gillette razors were made of diamonds this would make sense. I honestly don't think they'll be making much off of this scheme.

I think it's mostly a scheme to suck some money from the State. There are various things involved, but I guess the biggest are the research tax credit, and the special grants for electric cars. I suppose it helps sheltering the profits from normal cars to avoid normal corporate tax. It also helps green washing the brand in the news.

People who watch what is going on in the software world ?

If this makes the total cost of ownership up front significantly cheaper while keeping overall costs to operate equivalent over the time I plan on keeping the car, this is a completely rational idea. I'm not sure what everyone is so upset about. Sometimes there is a solid economic / utility argument to be made for a certain subset of consumers that will help increase sales. If you don't want it, don't buy it.

I hope no one buys this. Hit back at Renault where it hurts the most.

I think no one buys it anyway. I saw two of them here in Bordeaux and one of them was the store demo model.

They seem to be killing this car intentionally. You can't use wall plugs to charge, and the battery rental stuff is also a mess. Apparently they were trying to sell 40k in 6 months, and only ended up selling 10k.

The fact that they were able to hock 10k makes me sad for the state of the global society.

Crew and fleet cars, like rentals or corporate cars I would think.

can you explain why? DRM might be important for some people, but weighed against their primary mode of transportation, I feel like it's a values concession I'd be slightly willing to make (making it clear I'd be willing to go for an alternative).

I more or less cover it in this reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6732192

The world needs to stop giving in to corporate control schemes.

Can a standard wall plug normally charge an electric car?

Yes. However some people have had trouble with using long extension cords. http://theunderstatement.com/post/18030062041/its-a-brick-te...

Don't see where in that link the extension cord issue is mentioned.

I don't think anyone can fault a car manufacturer for this issue. Long extension cord with too small gauge wire will cause voltage drop. It's the same for any electrical load.

Actually now that I think about it, I guess they could include dynamic power factor correction in their charging hardware and software. But it seems like a silly extra expense just to correct for someone buying a cheap extension cord. I think my 100 foot 10awg cord that I used to power the neighbor's stuff after Hurricane Sandy was under $100.

"Complete discharge can happen even when the car is plugged in if it isn’t receiving sufficient current to charge, which can be caused by something as simple as using an extension cord. "

Just to clarify the conversation.

Yep, using the same care in choosing an extension cord as you would for work equipment and space heaters would be advisable with electric cars. Do not buy the cheapy cord.

Disclaimer : I'm as concerned as you about data privacy, money etc. I'm not technically a Renault employee, but it just happen that I'm working for them as a consultant (in a non related field). So I'm not representing Renault [insert legal terms here], I'm only trying to transcript the response when I expressed off record some of the concerns to one of Zoe's engineer. Here is more or less what he said about: - Data privacy: Renault worked with the CNIL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNIL) to legally comply with French/European data privacy laws. All data sent to Renault remains anonymous, Renault does not associate the "ID" of the car with owner's personal information. - Battery: He used the same gas pump analogy. When I asked him why a renting system for a part of the product, he replied "simply to make it cheaper": Renault could have added the price of the battery (around 8000 euros) to the price of Zoe, but this is not a smart marketing move.

Meanwhile, I'll forward the conversation and your concerns to Renault's communication team. Let's hope they make a public statement about all this. Cheers.

How dare they ship a proprietary car! The blueprints should be open source and it should be assembled by volunteers. /sarcasm

Renault ships a brickable car...

Nothing new yet.

...with battery DRM that you're not allowed to own

Ah, news! On the upside, this car is somewhat theft-proof. (Nothing can be totally theft proof.) Next, it should have a 360-degree dash cam that's monitored 24-7 by an organization funded by a consortium of insurance companies and 3 letter government agencies. All the above sounds scary while bringing benefits. (The scary that brings benefits with it is the truly scary stuff, as it has a good chance of sticking around.)

So don't buy the car. Lots of alternatives out there!

So? Dont treat the automotive market the way you treat the tech market. single companies have a much, much lower affect on the market when it comes to cars.

This will be a rather flippant remark, but very occasionally we, the public, need one to sum things up in a useful soundbite.

DRM --> Don't Renault Me

Maybe it will catch on. Renault Marketing and PR would hate that -- which is precisely the point.

This has EVIL written all over it, in so many ways I don't even...

Security Researchers in the SDR community are going to have a field day with these kinds of features. Companies like Renault need to bring in better consultants. This is not going to work.

How long until someone finds themselves in a life-threatening situation because their car refuses to start because it has been remotely deactivated?

How often has someone found themselves in a life threatening situation five minutes after the repo man towed their car away? I suspect the incidence rates will be similar.

About a hundred years after the first time someone found themselves in a life-threatening situation because their car refused to start because they couldn't pay for gas.

There's a real and fundamental gap between "physically unable to run" and "physically able to run, but blocked from doing so by someone else's actions".

If gasoline is available, but the owner of the gasoline refuses to dispense it because you can't pay, then you are in the second category.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_dilemma

(Car analogies: the bane of hackers everywhere.. especially when talking about cars ^^)

The gas is available and you already paid for it (via the power bill) - DRM reaching out to kill the system is a third party action.

Haven't you ever watched macgyver? All life threatening situations include a second source of gasoline and a garden hose to siphon it with.

Can't wait until some russian releases a crack to disable the DRM on this battery.

CaaS. Car as a service. What will the corporations think of next?

It's called leasing. It's there for some time now ;)

With self-driving cars this could actually make some sense.

That's called a taxi.

It seems to be called a "pod", actually: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...

(I wonder if the Internet connection makes it an iPod. ;-))

Autonomous taxis would largely revolutionize car ownership. Why own your own car, when you can pay a fraction of the price to have one available whenever you need it, and never when you don't?

You wouldn't download a car!

Hack the shit out of it, say "Re NO"!

It's time for someone to root the battery!

Yay another car that i will never buy.

There are no cars in the future.

That would be the opposite of progress.

Well, I'm not buying that.

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