Originally Posted By: whip
I heard that Tesla upped the range of cars in Florida during the hurricanes and you can upgrade the power after you purchase. That means it's all in the software. Has anyone heard of after market programming to access the extra power and range?
Correct, it's in the software. It's probably more cost-effective for Tesla to just use one battery pack to simplify production and then simply disable cells in software or whatever. This isn't anything new; my BMW and both of my Audis, for example, could very easily have other features enabled with a laptop and the right cable. I enabled the European-setting of the DSC's M Dynamic Mode in my M3 since it was less restrictive. Took all of 90 seconds.
I doubt the aftermarket is going to come out with a "hack" because Tesla likely has something in the car's purchase agreement or the EULA that makes it illegal to break their encryption, reverse engineer, or otherwise alter the programming. Given the car's "uplink" to Tesla's servers, I suspect they could also detect these hacks pretty easily. You can bet that if the hack cuts into Tesla's sales, they would go after them in court.