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August 17, 2018 01:25 am

The Man Who Jailbreaks Teslas

harrymcc writes: Normally, a totaled Tesla is worth so little that they sell for peanuts at salvage auctions. But Berkeley, California engineer Phil Sadow buys trashed Tesla cars and gets them up and running again -- a feat which has required him to figure out how to root their software so he can run diagnostics normally unavailable to a tinkerer such as himself. Over at Fast Company, Daniel Terdiman tells the story of Sadow's work, which Tesla is apparently nonplussed about but has not tried to prevent. Slashdot reader Ingineerix also submitted the story, sharing an excerpt from the report: In a cramped warehouse in an industrial neighborhood in Berkeley, California, a Tesla Model 3 is ready to go. It's powered up, its display screen is on, and it's pumping out data. But there are some strange error messages. For one, the passenger door window is uncalibrated. For another, the autopilot electronic control unit is missing. These would be troubling signals for most Tesla owners. For Phil Sadow, though, they make perfect sense. After all, his Model 3 is lacking some very important components: its windows, its wheels, and the entire body frame. For the last three years, Sadow, a 49-year-old electrical engineer who also goes by the moniker Ingineer, has been rebuilding and selling salvaged Teslas. He's also taught a global community of fellow enthusiasts to do the same, charging an hourly rate as a consultant on other tinkerers' repair projects. All told, he says, he's rebuilt -- or helped other people rebuild -- almost 400 vehicles over the last three years.

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