Tesla’s War on Autonomous Hacks

From college send-offs to retirement dreams, life is filled with many important milestones.

And making sure you have a plan in place to protect the people you love

can give you confidence for whatever comes next.

State Farm Life Insurance can help protect your family's financial well-being through life's milestones.

Your State Farm agent can help you choose flexible coverage you can adjust as your family's needs change.

Contact your local State Farm agent today.

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

You don't change the game without asking big questions like what would you like the power to do?

My answers motivated me to help lead the first U.S. women's national team

and bring home two FIFA Women's World Cup trophies.

Bank of America champions U.S. women's soccer legend Michelle Akers

and everyone who dares to ask, what would you like the power to do?

Bank of America, proud to be the official Bank of U.S. soccer Bank of America NA member at FDSE.

Modern enterprise, that's a lot of moving parts.

Comcast Business helps you orchestrate it all.

With SD WAN working its scale to keep 150 hospital locations connected and working as one.

Plus SASE and Zero Trust Security protecting financial data across a bank's 2,000 branches.

And AI-powered networking that optimizes traffic across five continents.

No one does business like Comcast Business.

Hello everyone and welcome to Kilowata podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving and much, much more.

My name is Bode and I am your host and on today's episode we are going to be going over news.

So let's go ahead and actually, you know what, before we get into it, we had an email from Joe.

Joe listened to the episode with Allison and Ron and he just had some battery tips that he wanted to share with everyone.

So let me, because I am an old man now, make my text bigger so I can read this.

All right, here are some battery tips.

Number one, the happiest lithium batteries stay as close to 50% charge as possible.

Shorter charge and discharge cycles also help maximize battery health.

So that's good to know.

Number two, you don't need to fully charge or fully discharge your EV battery.

The idea that you must do so to calibrate the battery or avoid a memory effect is outdated and incorrect.

And just so you know, I know what Joe does for a living, so these are good tips.

So here we go.

In relation to what we just talked about with calibrating the battery and fully discharging and charging the battery.

He says the memory effect was a real issue with very old nickel based batteries from the 1970s,

but it doesn't apply to modern lithium ion batteries.

Today's EVs have a sophisticated battery management system that accurately track and maintain charge levels without requiring full cycles.

All right, number three, if you typically charge to 80% and return home with around 70%,

consider lowering your charge limit.

Keeping the battery in a narrow, more moderate range reduces long term battery degradation.

If you charge to 90% and arrive home at 10%, you're using your battery as intended.

Don't stress about it.

Enjoy the full range of your vehicle offers.

And I think this is number four because I've lost count.

You don't need to avoid DC fast charging out of fear of accelerated wear or degradation.

The cars system manages temperature and charging rates to protect the battery effectively.

While this can vary from model to model, we will still need to see how fast charging vehicles hold up.

It seems most established EVs don't see much acceleration in degradation so far.

So Joe, thank you so much for sharing that with us.

And hopefully everybody got some good battery tips out of that.

Moving on to our EV news.

Volkswagen is killing the ID4 in the United States.

So instead of building the ID4 at its Chattanooga plant in Tennessee,

Volkswagen is going to build the three-row Atlas SUV, which if you don't know is an internal combustion engine vehicle

that gets a very unimpressive 18 miles to the gallon.

So pour one out for the ID4.

Next up, we're going to talk about Polestar.

Polestar has posted its best financial quarter ever, which is great for the company.

They sold about 13,100 vehicles globally, which is up 7% year over year.

A big driver of their demand is better distribution.

Polestar expanded its showroom footprint by 50%.

So they went from around 154 showrooms or points of sale to 230 locations.

That's thanks in part to Polestar being able to tap into Volvo's dealer network.

And they expect to have 250 sales points or showrooms or dealers or whatever you want to call it by the end of the year.

So good job Polestar.

They're also leaning into their growth mode.

So the new models are coming out, which include the Polestar 5, which is a wagon version of the Polestar 4.

And they have more vehicles planned through 2028.

As far as production goes, Polestar is shifting strategy just a little bit with the Polestar 3.

They are phasing out Chinese production of that model.

And then they are bringing the Polestar 3 here to the US for manufacturing.

And the Polestar 3 will only be manufactured in the US and then sent to other countries as you order them.

You know, Polestar is certainly not exploding in sales when you consider they sold 13,000 vehicles.

But still, I mean, they're growing.

They're growing.

So I think that's awesome.

One of the other reasons why they're growing is they have some very aggressive offers, especially if you own a Tesla.

Right now Polestar is cutting prices of their EVs in the United States up to $21,000 off, which is nutty.

So you have to qualify for this.

You have to own a Tesla to qualify for the full amount.

I should say you have to own a Tesla and then you have to finance a 2025 Polestar 3.

If you don't own a Tesla, I'm sure there are some incentives that Polestar is offering you,

especially if you're coming from another EV.

But if you have a Tesla, you can get $21,000 off up to $21,000 off if you buy a Polestar 3.

And I saw somewhere, well, I actually was talking to somebody yesterday when I was doing an interview for a show that's going to be aired later.

And offline, he was telling me that he has a Polestar 3.

No, yeah, Polestar 3.

And he got a great lease deal.

It was like $5.79.

And then I saw a news article confirming that, so zero down in like $5.79 for a lease,

if that's what you're going for, not a bad deal.

Now, as far as, you know, if you want another vehicle like a Polestar 4,

because we don't have Polestar 2s here in the U.S. anymore.

If you want to Polestar 4 and you're a Tesla owner, you can get up to $14,000 off if you're looking, like I said, at a Polestar 4.

Deals like this are available till the end of April.

And I would, you know, visit Polestar dealers for details,

because I'm sure there are other things available to folks who don't have Teslas and are wanting to switch over to a Polestar.

From everybody that I have talked to that has driven or owns a Polestar, it's hard to go wrong.

I mean, there are certainly problems with the vehicle, you know, small issues, annoyances,

but I don't think that any car is perfect and they're going to have small annoyances.

Overall, people really seem to like their Polestar.

Shopify has the world's best converting checkout, up to 36% better than other e-commerce platforms.

What you do with those extra sales is up to you.

Switch to Shopify today at Shopify.com-slash-listen and get a $1 trial, Shopify.com-slash-listen.

From college send-offs to retirement dreams, life is filled with many important milestones.

And making sure you have a plan in place to protect the people you love

can give you confidence for whatever comes next.

State Farm Life Insurance can help protect your family's financial well-being through life's milestones.

Your State Farm agent can help you choose flexible coverage you can adjust as your family's needs change.

Contact your local State Farm agent today.

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

All right, everybody, that is our EV news.

And I genuinely thought that was going to take more time.

So why don't I just take a moment to plug the Patreon or Supercast.

If you don't like getting ads or having ads in your feed,

then you can, for as little as a dollar, get rid of those ads.

I don't know very many or any, if I can think of them,

podcasts that are still offering a dollar for the support level,

just because you don't get very much of that dollar when it comes down to it.

But I'm trying to keep everything affordable for anybody who wants to take part.

So for a dollar, you remove the ads on eight shows a month.

It seems sometimes I miss the episodes enough.

It feels like it's eight shows a year, but it's eight shows a month that you would get no ads on for one dollar.

I think most people can afford that.

So if that's something you're interested in, all the money goes back into the show,

none of that money goes into my pocket, you can go to supportkilowatt.com.

And I promise you that I release more than eight shows a year.

All right, let's move on to our Tesla news.

Tesla has a new interior color for the Model Y Premium trims.

And it's nice. I like it a lot.

It's called Zen Gray and it's going to replace the black and white interior.

Here's the thing though.

It's only available for cars built at Giga Shanghai.

So if you live in Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, Philippines,

pretty much any place, any market where they get their cars from Giga Shanghai,

you can order this color.

I think it looks great.

To me, in the pictures, it looks a little darker than the white,

but really it just looks elegant.

And I'll be honest, I have seen some people with white seats

and they end up turning this color.

The seats end up turning something similar to this color eventually.

It's very hard to keep the Tesla white seats clean.

Based on my daughter's car and some other people that I know are struggling with that.

So Zen Gray, good color.

Tesla has started rolling out FSD in the Netherlands.

FSD supervised in the Netherlands, which we knew this was coming.

We didn't know exactly when for sure, but it is out.

It's rolling out to beta testers.

It's going to go to a wide release soon after that.

You do have to be in the beta testing program in the Netherlands

and you do have to have a vehicle equipped with AI-4 to get access to it,

which would be interesting to see if anybody in Europe

as they roll FSD unsupervised or supervised, excuse me,

out in Europe, it'll be interesting to see when AI-3,

if AI-3 will be included in that rollout.

I would imagine that it might, but I can't imagine charging somebody.

Like if Tesla came to me and said, hey, for $400,

we'll give you what we have for FSD, I'd pay the $400.

But I'm not paying, what is it now, $8,000 for FSD on a hardware 3 vehicle.

I'm just not doing it.

Even if, you know, I mean, maybe if they promised me AI-4,

it might be a little bit more, but yeah.

I'm trying to be positive.

I'll just keep my mouth shut.

Move on.

Back here in the United States,

Tesla did roll out FSD supervised 14.3.

Elon made a lot of outrageous, well, I would say outrageous.

He made a lot of bold claims.

And honestly, you know, the big thing that people are noting

is that reaction times for the vehicle got 20% faster.

And I think that's great, but I don't know that, you know,

it met the whatever Elon said about it.

I can't remember exactly how he put it,

but it brings a lot of pieces of the puzzle together for FSD.

I'm not sure it did that based on people's reviews

and what they've said about it, but, you know, it's here.

There's a few new safety features that I think are interesting

when it comes to bad weather.

So if the system detects what it thinks could be a hydroplaning risk,

so not just rain, but actually slippery roads,

it will actually automatically lock out the more aggressive driving modes.

So instead of getting like hurry and Mad Max and even standard,

you're going to get put into chill or sloth mode

until road conditions improve.

And I think that is a really good way for Tesla to handle this.

It's going to reduce sudden acceleration, lane changes,

and, you know, whatever traction might be compromised.

But early beta testers are still seeing some issues, as you would imagine.

The system can be like overly sensitive

when it comes to triggering the hydro, anti-hydroplane mode.

And it actually will happen on an over a light drizzle

and, you know, there's really no risk of hydroplane

other than that the ground is wet.

That's not a hydroplaning danger.

So this is leading some drivers to disengage FSD

just to be safer and keep up with the flow of traffic and things like that.

But in the end, this is a positive move.

And I commend Tesla for doing it.

They are going to need to fine tune this over time,

and I'm sure that they will do that.

Interesting story.

If you want to know a moment in my career

that I was actually very concerned,

it was, we were going to a fire.

I was driving the ladder truck.

The ladder truck is 48 feet long.

It weighs 78,000 pounds.

It's early in the morning, probably five, maybe 4.30 in the morning,

something like that, just a couple of years ago.

And it's raining super hard.

And I'm not driving overly fast.

And if you don't know what hydroplaning is,

it's basically you start,

you kind of just start floating on the water.

Your tires aren't touching the ground.

It's a very simple explanation,

but your tires aren't really touching the ground.

So when you hydroplane,

you don't necessarily have a lot of control.

There's a lot of things that you can do to make it worse.

The best thing you can do is just kind of relax your hands on the wheel

and let off the accelerator

and just kind of let things correct themselves.

It's not to say you should let go of the wheel entirely

and take your feet off the gas,

but accelerating or hard braking

isn't necessarily going to help you out in those situations

because you're not touching the ground.

Anyway, we're coming up on a turn

and the truck started hydroplaning.

And so I did what I was supposed to do.

And we're just kind of,

we're just kind of floating

and we're not going super fast,

but fast enough in a truck that weighs 78,000 pounds

and is 48 feet long

towards the curb, which is there's this nice neighborhood sign

and we're just kind of heading towards that.

And eventually we were able to stop

what felt like inches before we hit the curb,

but it was probably more like feet before we hit the curb

because I don't remember having to back up

and to go into the neighborhood,

but it felt like we were just,

I had no, there was just nothing,

we were just in it for the ride basically.

The only time that I can think of,

that was probably the worst time I can think of

were the truck that was driving hydroplane.

It happened a few times,

but it's never been anything that made me

so concerned that I was going to wreck

a million dollar plus fire truck.

I mean, it costs a million dollars to buy this truck

12 years ago, 13 years ago, 14 years ago,

whatever we bought it in.

This truck to replace it costs

more than two million dollars now to replace.

So I was not looking forward

to having to have that conversation

with chiefs that I wrecked a million dollar truck.

Anyway, moving on,

continuing about full self-driving.

So we talked a little bit about

Tesla released 14.3,

Elon said that this is going to be

a lot of the pieces to the puzzle

for solving autonomous driving,

and then they released 14.3

and then Elon gets on Twitter

and says that FSD 15,

not a point release, but FSD 15,

will far out exceed human levels of safety.

So why is he saying that?

What's so special about version 15

of full self-driving?

Elon says that it's a much type

10 times parameter model.

And basically this is 10 billion parameter

neural net, which right now

we're looking at a billion parameters

model neural net and version 15,

I was almost at episode 15,

version 15 will have 10 times that

at 10 billion parameters.

You know, it's actually, you know,

they're testing it.

So we'll kind of see where it goes.

I don't know that we'll see it anytime soon.

But if everything goes according to plan,

this larger model would make it

more nuanced, more human-like

when it comes to decision-making

and could make a real shift towards,

you know, true autonomy.

But I feel like I have to say

that Elon says this all the time.

Like with version 12,

which was in November of 2023,

he said supervised, this is a tweet,

supervised full self-driving is,

I think it's a tweet.

This is a quote from him that I got

from the article, which was an electric article.

Supervised full self-driving is

vastly safer than human driving.

That said, version 12,

which has end in neural nets,

will far exceed human safety

even when unsupervised.

That was November of 2023.

I don't think we saw that.

And, you know,

maybe I'm wrong,

but I don't think that was solved

or was vastly safer than human driving

in 2023.

Now in 2025, he said something similar.

Here's what Elon had to say about

version 14 in August of 2025.

Version 14 will be better than human for sure,

meaning a better driver.

But I don't know if it will be 10x.

When he says 10x, he means 10 times better than a human.

He goes on to say maybe 2x to 3x.

So 2 to 3 times better to a human.

He then says version 15 has a shot

of being 10 times better than a human.

So that was an interesting,

you know, little message.

And then two days after that,

he added that version 14,

while capable of being much safer

than a human driver,

will take a few months to debug post-release.

So I'm not sure if somebody got into his ear

and like, hey, this thing is barely fully baked

or isn't even quite fully baked.

Maybe you don't say that it's 2 to 3 times better

or safer than a human driver.

But, you know, we can all agree

that for the most part, you know,

Tesla is improving their software with each version.

There are times when they, you know,

release the version

and it gets a little bit worse.

But eventually they will kind of release updates

and it'll get a little bit better.

So we're not bashing Tesla on

on how they are

iterating their software.

It's more like the messaging I think is hard

because it's hard to quantify

because Tesla doesn't make this data

publicly available, right?

We don't know how Tesla

is determining these data points

and we don't know what they are,

what they're including.

But more importantly, we don't know what they're not including.

So while they can say that, you know,

FSD is safer than,

FSD gets into one accident

every however many million miles, right?

That's great, but what are they calling an accident?

You know, they can say that FSD

only disengages,

he can drive so far without disengaging.

Well, that's great.

What are you calling a disengagement?

Are you saying the software disengaged automatically

because it got into a situation and didn't know?

Or are you saying,

or are you including, I should say,

the fact that somebody who's driving the vehicle,

supervising the vehicle, if you will,

is actually like, sees something that they're like,

I don't like where this is going and then they disengage.

Does that count as a disengagement?

If I had to guess, it probably doesn't, but I don't know.

And nobody but Tesla knows.

So because they don't publish

how they determine their safety claims,

we don't really know, you know,

they do have some information out there to be fair,

but we don't, when they're putting this all together,

we're not seeing a transparent,

like this is how everything went together.

We're not getting a peer review of their data.

We're not getting any third party verification

of their safety claims.

So at this point, we just have their word for it.

And, you know, I think we can probably agree

that their word is optimistic.

Do you see, did you hear how he said optimistic?

I'm actually kind of like sitting up in my chair

and tilting my head when I'm saying this,

if you can just, you know, imagine that in your head.

Optimistic.

I'm also opening my eyes a little bit wider than normal.

Do you know what I'm saying?

Can you picture like an ugly bald guy doing this?

If you can't, watch Lord of the Rings go to the orcs,

picture one of them saying optimistic,

that's what you got.

Picture them sitting in front of a computer

with a big monitor and a little monitor

and a microphone in front of their face.

Them saying optimistic.

All right, with that, let's move on.

I hate having to talk about Tesla's optimistic

of versioning, I don't know, optimistic features.

Because I really want, I think it's amazing the way it is.

You know what I mean?

Like I think if they were just like,

hey, here's what it does right now.

And I know I've said this a ton of times,

but I feel like I just need to say it again.

This is what the car can do right now.

This is great.

Not like, hey, version 15, it's going to do so much better.

You know what's coming out soon,

right around the corner, not too far from now, is AI5.

So when we get to version 15,

is AI4 going to be in the same boat that AI3 is now?

Like this is the problem I'm having.

I don't think it's fair to make these promises

when we're really not in the best place.

To, I don't think it's fair to make these promises

when you're kind of already leaving some folks behind.

Now Tesla still has an opportunity to upgrade,

because Elon said that they would,

so I imagine there's lawsuits if they decide not to,

they can upgrade hardware or AI3 vehicles to AI4,

maybe even AI5, maybe they'll do that, who knows.

But the thing is like,

I think they would have a lot less detractors and haters

if they just promoted what the car can do now.

And that's still pretty amazing.

Let's not worry about what version 15 is when you're on 14.3.

Unless you're planning on just skipping

all the other numbers in between 3 and 10,

then we can maybe, or 3 and whatever.

You know, I guess it could be 14.12 if they really wanted to.

But from now until version 15,

let's be a little bit more realistic with our messaging.

That's all.

Maybe not.

Not to say you can't be optimistic,

but be optimistic with the features that you have today.

And stop promising things

that are just being kicked down the road tomorrow.

Did you know that you can hack your Tesla

to get free full self-driving?

Did you know that sometimes your podcast host

goes off script and rants for 3 minutes?

Because both of those things are true.

So, as far as the hacking your Tesla

to get free full self-driving,

you can do that,

but Tesla recently disabled that hack.

And it affected over 100,000 people

that were just in China.

Not everywhere else.

They disabled 100,000 full self-driving

and equipped vehicles, I should say.

Teslas that were hacked to get free full self-driving.

Over 100,000 of those just in China,

which is nutty.

So, the way that they were able to make this work

is they purchased a device

for anywhere between 700 and $2,000.

That device plugged into the CAN bus,

which is not an easy thing to get to in a Tesla.

Or at least it's not easy for me.

You have to remove some stuff to get to it.

And then this device will unlock the complete FSD suite,

which is cool.

Owners with this device got an in-car notification

and an email warning

that modification violates Tesla's terms of service

and it could compromise vehicle safety

and it could be a cybersecurity risk.

Which I'm gonna be 100% honest.

I agree with Tesla.

I would not hack my Tesla.

I would not hack my car ever.

I know there are people out there who like to mod

and get all sorts of cool tuning stuff out of their cars.

That's just not a thing for me.

I want my car to run as intended

for as long as humanly possible

and I don't want anything that's gonna affect that.

Especially something that I'm buying,

a device that I'm buying from a company

that may or may not be reputable

and then I'm plugging that directly into my car

that's connected to the internet.

That doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

If you've heard that, I do think if you want to do this

if you're a person that likes this kind of thing

go nuts.

You're just accepting all the risk

that could potentially come your way.

Now, there are some people who,

and I can't imagine this isn't very many

but the article didn't mention that there were some people

who purchased their Tesla in, let's say, the United States

and they are cleared for full self-driving in the U.S.

and then they move to a different country

had their vehicle shipped to that country,

registered said vehicle, now they're driving around

but they don't have access to FSD

because they live in a country that doesn't offer FSD

so they buy this device

and then now they have access to FSD again.

Well, it sounds like that Tesla was like,

okay, cool, we're disabling your FSD

with your hacked Tesla

but we're also not going to let you

continue with the FSD that you purchased

because you violated the terms of service.

Now, I don't know if that's true or not

but if it is, I mean, I kind of think

that there might be a better way

of handling that on Tesla's side

but I do understand why they would do it.

So, all right everybody, that is it for me

if you want to send me an email

it's bodi-b-o-d-i-e at 918digital.com

you can find me on LinkedIn

which is just bodigrim-b-o-d-i-e-g-r-i-m-m

on Friday, I'm recording this on Saturday

on Friday I actually recorded two interviews

that I'm going to play at the end of the month

so I can go and visit my mom.

I had these interviews scheduled so tightly

that one of the folks

that was the second interview

they jumped in a little bit early

because they're good podcast guests

and they were like, well I'm going to show up early

and they did, both actually showed up early

except for I was in the middle of the interview

with the other one

and not a big deal, it was actually kind of cool

and I wish they would have stuck around

because it would have been a funny introduction

but anyway

even though I didn't release a podcast yesterday

I did record two

just so you know

yeah I think that's it

I hope everybody

is having a really good weekend

my wife is out of town

so I got to spend some time just me

and my two kids

we got to

we did a school event on Friday

and then we got to

go to a movie today

and we went to dinner after the school event on Friday

so it's kind of been a fun

just hanging out with my children

so yeah

overall it's been a good weekend

the Mario Odyssey movie

I thought was good

but if you are

not a die-hard Mario fan

maybe you just wait till it comes out

on streaming

because that might be a better way to go

I didn't like it as much as the first one

first one I loved

although there was some funny parts in it for sure

alright everybody

I will stop rambling

and I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your weekend

see you soon

it's no secret in 2026

AI skills are essential to survival

General Assembly's AI training courses

help you or your team develop the skills

to confidently use AI at work

and thrive in the AI era

public courses, private workshops

bulk credits, bundle discounts

and right now SeriousXM listeners get $50 off

any General Assembly workshop

with code Serious50

don't just survive the AI era

thrive in it

visit ga.co.seriousxm

that's ga.co.seriousxm

make healthcare easier, more affordable

and more effective

we're making it clearer for you to know exactly

what your benefits cover

and to help you better manage your health

we're coordinating care between your doctors

and your technology

we believe better, simpler healthcare

is always possible

that's healthy optimism

that's Optum

visit Optum.com to learn more

we're working in more than 100 countries

powering 90% of the Fortune 500

and millions of small businesses

and behind it all

thousands of experts answering your call

at 2am, like it's 2pm

one partner

that's it, powering how business gets done

for companies around the globe

when you add it all up

no one does business like Comcast Business

it could be shocking

but letting just anyone replace your windows

biggest mistake ever

be a happy homeowner and leave window replacement to the best

renewal by Anderson

now through April 30th buy one window or door

and get the second 40% off

plus $200 off your entire purchase

with a minimum of 4 and special financing

visit renewalbyandersonhome.com

today

from Dr. Charles Stanley

Daily Devotions

and resources designed to strengthen your faith

and bring hope into everyday life

whether you're searching for encouragement

biblical wisdom or practical guidance

Intouch.org is here

to help you grow closer to God

discover truth that speaks to your heart

visit Intouch.org today

that's Intouch.org

Thanks

Tesla’s War on Autonomous Hacks

Volkswagen Id4

Polestar 4

Polestar 3

Polestar 2S

Tesla Model Y

About this episode

Original notes