This issue was recently discussed in an a Wired article about John Deer tractors: http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/
It is also related to the 'right to repair' legislative efforts taking place in NY and MN: http://www.digitalrighttorepair.org/fair-repair/ In short, you may own a hunk of metal, but have no rights to actually repair it or operate it because the control/ECU are licensed and copyrighted, and/or need a special password to access. If aftermarket parts or you bypass the password, you may run afoul of the DMCA. On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 11:05 PM, Ben Goren via EV <ev@lists.evdl.org> wrote: > On Apr 27, 2015, at 8:52 PM, Michael Ross via EV <ev@lists.evdl.org> > wrote: > > > being the devil's advocate... > > > > This is clearly not great for the poor or the DIY'r, but the new car > buyer > > may have much better cars to choose from, I expect instead of 200K miles > > being common, 100K was a great thing when I was young, I am sure with EVs > > there will be an expectation of 300K and 400K life. > > That's got basically nothing to do with locking people out of their own > vehicles, and everything to do with basic engineering -- materials science > especially, as well as new manufacturing techniques to permit the use of > stronger, lighter, and more efficient materials and designs. > > My 1964 1/2 Mustang that's going to become a plugin hybrid? It's going to > make more power, get better mileage, and have a better chance of lasting > longer than basically anything you could buy from the dealer in the '60s. > The block itself may well wind up having been manufactured in the > '60s...but the rotating assembly is going to be either forged or nodular > iron, it's going to have fuel injection, and so on, giving the drivetrain > basically all the advantages of both '60s and modern technology and none of > the disadvantages of either. > > The auto manufacturers are just following in the footsteps of the inkjet > printer manufacturers: sell the printers for the price of a full set of ink > cartridges...and sell the cartridges at some sort of insane > thousand-to-one-or-so markup. And put a $0.0001 chip in the cartridges that > ensures that you can't refill them and can only use the manufacturer's > cartridges in the printer. > > My advice to car buyers? > > Don't buy anything model year 1966 or newer. If you have a newer car that > left the factory withOUT computer controls, don't sell it. > > Either that, or just get it out of your head right now any notion that you > actually own the car.... > > b& > -------------- next part -------------- > A non-text attachment was scrubbed... > Name: signature.asc > Type: application/pgp-signature > Size: 801 bytes > Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail > URL: < > http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20150427/7386fdf3/attachment.pgp > > > _______________________________________________ > UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub > http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org > For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA ( > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA) > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20150427/cad18730/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)