# You own a self-driving Tesla. Would you send it out for taxi duty? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 21, 2016, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-own-a-self-driving-tesla-would-you-send-it-out-for-taxi-duty/769235 "2016-10-21T12:48:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2016, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-own-a-self-driving-tesla-would-you-send-it-out-for-taxi-duty/769235/21 "2016-10-25T12:08:36Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Why do you consider it unenforcable? Self-driving is essentially a software product. Software licenses come with all sorts of limitations, often far more narrow than this one, and are generally enforcable. “Non-commercial” licenses in particular are very common. I suspect he means unenforceable in the practical sense of “how in the hell is Musk going to have any idea whether you’re also driving for Lyft/Uber?” ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2016, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-own-a-self-driving-tesla-would-you-send-it-out-for-taxi-duty/769235/22 "2016-10-25T15:46:35Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > I suspect he means unenforceable in the practical sense of “how in the hell is Musk going to have any idea whether you’re also driving for Lyft/Uber?” He’s wrong about that. Tesla can track all their cars, and a car that’s driving for Lyft or Uber has a _very_ different behavior pattern than one that’s being driven for the use of a single person or family. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2016, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-own-a-self-driving-tesla-would-you-send-it-out-for-taxi-duty/769235/23 "2016-10-25T22:36:08Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > I suspect he means unenforceable in the practical sense of “how in the hell is Musk going to have any idea whether you’re also driving for Lyft/Uber?” Lyft/Uber have their own requirements and aren’t going to just allow someone to sit at home while their car does the work (once self-driving is commonplace, they won’t have drivers at all). Besides, it would open themselves to lawsuits from Tesla and others. Sure, in principle it would be hard to enforce against a particular individual pimping out their car for ridesharing. But no one really does that (nor does it make any sense, since rideshare networks require substantial infrastructure to be useful). I’m sure it will be a prominent part of the license agreement that they can revoke your license if they’ve determined you’ve broken the terms. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-own-a-self-driving-tesla-would-you-send-it-out-for-taxi-duty/769235/24 "2016-10-27T16:22:49Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Lyft/Uber have their own requirements and aren’t going to just allow someone to sit at home while their car does the work (once self-driving is commonplace, they won’t have drivers at all). Besides, it would open themselves to lawsuits from Tesla and others. I bet they will. I expect that Uber will have its own fleet for baseline use, but will still contract out for surge use. Lots of the value added by those services is the ability to manage both sides of the market. When there’s more demand, you increase prices, which pulls more cars onto the road. If they try to run their businesses with a static fleet, they’re either going to have lots of cars sitting idle or not enough capacity for rush hour. What kind of lawsuit do you imagine Tesla could bring against them for doing so? > [@](#): > > Sure, in principle it would be hard to enforce against a particular individual pimping out their car for ridesharing. But no one really does that (nor does it make any sense, since rideshare networks require substantial infrastructure to be useful). I don’t know why you think this would be hard to enforce. It would be trivially easy to enforce (unless it’s illegal to do so. See below.). Tesla can tell if someone’s car is being used this way. The behavior is very different from normal personal use. It would be as simple as a database query that results in the car displaying a “Sorry, your self-driving feature is disabled. Please contact Tesla to re-enable it” error when you try to send it out. > [@](#): > > I’m sure it will be a prominent part of the license agreement that they can revoke your license if they’ve determined you’ve broken the terms. I wonder how this will work since it’s built into the car. There are _lots_ of laws covering how cars are sold and serviced, and you can’t just add arbitrary license terms to the sale of a physical thing. If I buy a car from Ford, and they include a license that says that I have to, say, get oil changes from them, they can’t decide to turn off my built-in navigation system if I go to Jiffy Lube. Just because the nav system is software, that doesn’t give them the right to do whatever they want with it. So far I think the best examples of this kind of thing are printers and coffeemakers that try to make their machines only work with “approved” ink/coffee. They can generally put technical limitations in place, but they _can’t_ retroactively remove functionality punitively. If you can figure out how to get around their restrictions, good for you. ---
**Author:** ![Me\_Billy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e480ec/32.png) [@Me\_Billy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Me_Billy)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-own-a-self-driving-tesla-would-you-send-it-out-for-taxi-duty/769235/25 "2016-10-27T17:05:37Z")
No way! Many people these days do not respect the property other people - will damage things and could care less. I don’t even loan anything [tools, etc.] anymore. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-own-a-self-driving-tesla-would-you-send-it-out-for-taxi-duty/769235/26 "2016-10-27T18:12:13Z")
I would have to look at the details of the arrangement. Who’s liable for accidents? How can I recover damages if people abuse the car? How much do I actually make on the rental? In terms of passengers messing up the car, I suspect that passengers at certain times and places are better than others. If your car is out picking up drunken bar patrons at 2 am, it seems a lot more likely that you’ll have puke in the car than if you’re carrying business professionals commuting to the office. So I might set a 6 am to 6 pm schedule for the taxi service or prohibit certain areas, which I assume the software will be able to handle. I don’t drive because of vision issues, so a self-driving car is really my best option. If I can offset the cost of that car by allowing public use, I am still making a step forward. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-own-a-self-driving-tesla-would-you-send-it-out-for-taxi-duty/769235/27 "2016-10-27T20:22:23Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > I bet they will. I expect that Uber will have its own fleet for baseline use, but will still contract out for surge use. I just meant in the early period, when a few cars on the road are self-driving but Uber hasn’t switched their whole fleet over. It makes sense in the long term, but the cars will have to be compatible with their network. > [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > What kind of lawsuit do you imagine Tesla could bring against them for doing so? As mentioned, the cars are going to have to be compatible with Uber’s network–i.e., respond to dispatch calls and the like. That means they would have to reverse engineer some things about the Tesla. I’m not sure exactly what a lawsuit would look like but it’s certainly not hard to find other examples when reverse engineering is involved. > [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > The behavior is very different from normal personal use. Not necessarily. Tesla themselves said that car sharing with friends and family is fine. At what usage threshold would Tesla start to notice something amiss? Furthermore, what about using a Tesla as a delivery vehicle for, say, bread or coffee? Instead of driving around to a zillion addresses, I fill the car up with deliverables and send it around the city to make dropoffs. That doesn’t seem to be against the terms of service (and is a very reasonable use case), but I’d think it would be very hard to distinguish from a ridesharing service. > [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > I wonder how this will work since it’s built into the car. I think Tesla would argue that it’s not built into the car. You get the hardware–cameras and such–regardless, and Tesla doesn’t take that away. They just make it useless by disabling the software. They’ve already removed numerous minor features from the software. But really, I don’t see it being a problem. As I said, I just don’t see Uber or Lyft trying to go behind Tesla’s back, and no one is going to do ridesharing at an individual level. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2016, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-own-a-self-driving-tesla-would-you-send-it-out-for-taxi-duty/769235/28 "2016-10-28T22:07:21Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > I think Tesla would argue that it’s not built into the car. You get the hardware–cameras and such–regardless, and Tesla doesn’t take that away. They just make it useless by disabling the software. They’ve already removed numerous minor features from the software. I’m sure they’d argue that. It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out in a court. I certainly don’t like the precedent that, if I buy a physical item that happens to include software (which is rapidly approaching anything that costs more than $5), the manufacturer can include arbitrary terms for its use, and if they don’t like what i’m doing, they can effectively brick my device. If Tesla can turn off the self-driving service if they feel like it, what’s to stop them from turning off the navigation? Or the remote door locks? Or the fact that it drives at all? “Well, sure, you bought a carriage with an engine and a set of wheels. And you can still sit on the seats and heat them by running the engine, and using the wheels, you can push it anywhere you’d like!” ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2016, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-own-a-self-driving-tesla-would-you-send-it-out-for-taxi-duty/769235/29 "2016-10-30T18:52:14Z")
No, and we won’t do AirBnB either. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2016, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-own-a-self-driving-tesla-would-you-send-it-out-for-taxi-duty/769235/30 "2016-10-30T19:16:49Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Lyft/Uber have their own requirements and aren’t going to just allow someone to sit at home while their car does the work … Why not? They’re making money, and the car owner is assuming nearly all the risk. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2016, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-own-a-self-driving-tesla-would-you-send-it-out-for-taxi-duty/769235/31 "2016-11-04T04:12:27Z")
No, because I would want to keep things in my car, I would likely _have to_ keep things in my car (license, registration, various manuals), and, therefore, I would not want to allow randoms into my car where they could steal, deface, or replace those things. That, plus theft or defacement of the car itself, would be more than enough to dissuade me from allowing my car to go out at night unsupervised. (“It’s ten o’clock. Do you know where your car is?”) ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2016, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-own-a-self-driving-tesla-would-you-send-it-out-for-taxi-duty/769235/32 "2016-11-04T04:25:05Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > Why not? They’re making money, and the car owner is assuming nearly all the risk. As far as I know, drivers are expected to help out with things like luggage or elderly/handicapped people. And although many people want to ride in silence, some people expect there to be someone to make light conversation with. When Uber has their own fleet of self-driving vehicles, the’ll clearly have some means of dealing with this, but for the time being I’d think they’d want a driver present. > [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > If Tesla can turn off the self-driving service if they feel like it, what’s to stop them from turning off the navigation? Or the remote door locks? Or the fact that it drives at all? I’m certain they can do this stuff already. I know for a fact that they can unlock the car remotely. I agree that we could see some interesting court cases to flesh out exactly what they can and can’t do. We’re used to this behavior with phones and computers. Not so much with cars, but that’s clearly changing. ---
**Author:** ![gladtobeblazed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/85f322/32.png) [@gladtobeblazed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gladtobeblazed)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2016, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-own-a-self-driving-tesla-would-you-send-it-out-for-taxi-duty/769235/33 "2016-11-05T00:54:23Z")
It’s not worth the risk. What if they leave drugs behind and I get pulled over? ---
**Author:** ![stosh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@stosh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stosh)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2016, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-own-a-self-driving-tesla-would-you-send-it-out-for-taxi-duty/769235/34 "2016-11-05T14:45:58Z")
What kind of insurance would you have to have ? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-own-a-self-driving-tesla-would-you-send-it-out-for-taxi-duty/769235.md?page=1)