Scenario: Undocumented immigrant family in Minneapolis get in their Tesla car to go to work, school or shopping. The doors lock and are disabled via software OTA. Because they are not mechanical, the family can’t open the doors. They try to roll down a window, but that too is software controlled. The buttons do nothing. They are trapped.
The car then disables the steering colums via OTA software so the wheel goes limp. It is a drive by wire steering with no mechanical, rack and pinion physical link for the driver to control. Even the brakes are fully drive by wire so the driver can’t stop the car.
The cars autodrive engages and sends the trapped family to an ICE detention facility. In a panic the driver tries to turn off the car and finds that button is software controlled as well. The family find they are disconnected from their own car and are left with the choice of smashing a window and jumping out of a moving car, or to be sent to a processing facility for their concentration camp.
Is there any design feature stopping this from from hapening today?
Edit: In hindsight, it seems like this was the obvious design goal all along. The user has been completely disconnected from control of anything and it is to my understanding 100% drive by wire.
Edit 2: Another possibility is simple deactivation so people can’t drive out of an area. Imagine ICE sweep an area and deactivate all software controlled cars.
Maybe Trump wants to punish a region showing defiance and disable cars, or cause them to drive to pickup locations.
Edit 3: I’m also reminded of the internal cameras that can use facial recognition to identify undesirables and can either be remotely disabled and report undesirables for ICE pickup, or self-drive as stated earlier. It seems everything about this car is designed for dual use. Weaponizing a consumer good under the guise of features and convenience.
I see downvotes already. Can I please get a compelling argument why my scenario is not possible?
I’m downvoting for your edit, because you sound like a conspiracy nut.
As others have pointed out, there are manual overrides for these things, as mandated by law.
The fact that they are hard to find has nothing to do with nefarious intent. Tesla wanted their cars to feel sleek and futuristic. Having a big clunky red handle labelled “emergency door release” or whatever would ruin the aesthetic.
Similarly, the “computerized everything” aspect of the vehicles can be explained entirely by Tesla’s branding as “the car of the future”. People who don’t trust computers might be put off, but tech-ignorant techno-optimists would be drawn to it.
Teslas were built according to this design long before Musk aligned himself with Trump. It seems highly unlikely that Musk was secretly designing immigrant deportation machines when his main customer base was people with “No Human Is Illegal” yard signs.
Finally, Teslas are luxury vehicles. And now they are luxury vehicles for conservatives. If Musk’s plan was to use his vehicles for mass deportation of immigrants, he would be an idiot for trying to sell a $100,000 Cybertruck to José who works for less than minimum wage in the meat processing plant and his wife Maria who makes even less at the industrial laundry. The only immigrants driving Teslas are 45 year old Indian tech bros who think Elon Musk is great and young women should stop dressing so immodestly.
So sure, maybe, possibly, this could happen a few times theoretically. But if you look at it with any actual context in the real world, you’ll see that, no, this is not going to happen, and no one is planning for it to happen.
Having sat my ass in a few, they most definitely are not luxury vehicles. Maybe the S or X (I haven’t been in one so cannot assess), but not the others.
To be clear, I do not own one nor have I ever owned one.
And I’m downvoting you for saying “conspiracy nut” in the age of American Fascism and naked imperialism.
Its in the streets. In your neighbourhoods. The naked abuse of power laid bare. You are still saying “It can’t happen here.”
There is a difference between acknowledging the bad things that are happening and taking steps to push back, and panicking and thinking up every possible bad thing that could happen and treating it as real - which is what you are doing.
Teslas make up a small minority of vehicles on the road, and are luxury vehicles which now carry a conservative reputation. The idea that someone would be locked in their Tesla in order to be deported is, at best, an unwarranted distraction thought up by a spiraling doomer - not a serious concern for anyone living in the real world.
OCD in a nutshell
“Panicking” is bad faith rhetoric. As is “doomer” and pretty much everything you just said.
I’m not saying it’s a bad thought. I’m saying it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny… like… at all. So all you are doing is fearmongering.
Look at the front page of any newspaper today in the world. Then come back to tell me I’m fearmongering.
Don’t be an apologist for fascists.
I have.
You’re fearmongering.
This is like saying Elon Musk is planning to raise Godzilla from the depths of the oceans to round up immigrants. Saying “that is not a realistic thing to be worried about” isn’t being an apologist. It is having basic common sense.
No. This is saying ICE is rounding up immigrants. They absolutely are without question. I am also saying the people leading this, including Trump and Elon have particularly novel tools at their disposal that could be used in an unprecedented way.
That a megalomaniacle fascist billionaire built cars with clear dual use features is a clear and present danger that people need to be aware of. The risk is here.
If you had an ounce of common sense you would have said “yes. Good point, I hope it doesn’t come to that.” And we’d be done.
Not the person you originally replied to, but you’re toeing the line of conspiracy nut. It sounds like it comes from a general lack of knowledge on a subject you have had no need to look into. Which is perfectly fine. But it’s very far from reality. I have a tesla and the scenario of locking me in and dropping me off at an ICE center is impossible. I have an older one that lacks full self driving hardware so there’s no computer code that could execute most of what you described. Now this comes from my direct knowledge of having owned one. This might have been more appropriate for a “nostupidquestions” style community.
Good for you. And for everybody else? Anecdote does not equal evidence.
Your ignorance does not equal reality. What you quoted wasn’t an anecdote. It’s a fact. As I said above, you not knowing that fact is perfectly fine. Getting snippy with me trying to provide some knowledge on the subject is just weird.
It’s fine to not address the question asked about all the cars that do have auto drive and whine about your one irrelevant fact. Just don’t be under the impression you are contributing to the conversation, for or against in any meaningful way. Calling someone ignorant is just bad faith discussion.
I did address the question in a parent comment. This chain is responding to someone else calling you a conspiracy theorist. The only one whining is you. As I mentioned before it’s perfectly alright to not have that knowledge if you’ve never had need of it. As someone with the knowledge I tried to elaborate for your benefit. You chose to embrace your ignorance and push on with whining. You have very little understanding of what “auto drive” actually is. Again, that shouldn’t be something to be ashamed of. Getting all pissy when someone tries to provide that knowledge is exactly what I’d expect from the type of idiots who would support the situation in your initial post. Be better than them.
Bad faith insults and put downs, while providing no insight into the question asked or discussion being had, is something to be ashamed of. I’d normally say ad hominems are beneath you, but you have proven that false repeatedly.You have provided no knowledge.Edit: (I’m going to eat my shoe on this one as dude did provide good faith discussion with relevent info in a previous post. I got my replies mixed. I am a neo-maxi zone-dweebie)A version of your scenario ran on Black Mirror, if I’m not mistaken.
As for why this won’t happen, or at least not yet:
Actually, if a Tesla could be proven do that, it would be done as a car company. Who in their right mind would buy something like that? And I guarantee it would be public knowledge, as I find it hard to believe that all regulatory bodies in the world (eg Norway) would collude to hide such a feature.
Plenty of actual reasons why elon and his swasticar sucks. No need for hypotheticals on top.
You realize tesla was already caught remotely disabling a guy’s car because he was modding it?
They can do all of this already. They can set the accelerator to 100% remotely if they want to, would take zero effort and then they can say it was a malfunction.
Now we are all being pin point tracked with our phones and recorded already of course, but the Tesla has GPS they can access and find you at any time too.
To be fair, every car can do this now even if its gas, because of all the bullshit electronics In cars. Its super easy to disable a normal gas car by shutting down the coil packs.
Do you have a link? I only recall some dubious claim of a Cybertruck dude, but there were counterallegations he was just some rapper who wanted cheap publicity. I don’t remember what the conclusion of that incident was.
I am aware that DMCA was specifically designed to stop modders/hackers from benefitting from their property and extorting repair bills by forcing users to go only to tesla dealerships for a lot of work. No right to repair.
“Actually, if a Tesla could be proven do that, it would be done as a car company. Who in their right mind would buy something like that?”
You are hilarious. You think consumers have logic? They voted for Drumpf again after 4 years of hell. People STILL BUY teslas after musky did a full on nazi salute in public. If tesla were shown to kill immigrants on command, Americans would flock to buy even more of them.
Tesla does a lot of business overseas. A lot less these days, but there’s still water in that well, which would dry up pretty fast though following such a scenario. I don’t know the numbers, but if they sell more than half their cars on US soil I’d be very surprised.
Now picture this news leaking out in Europe, like Norway for instance. That would be reason enough for government mandated firmware hacking, and Tesla as a commercial entity would be done.
Let me ask you this instead. Do you see ICE capable of such a technically sophisticated, precision operation at scale? ICE is a blunt instrument currently being used to punish Democrat states - the fact they’re looking for illegals in Illlinois and Minneapolis when Texas and Florida have at least 10x more is what’s hilarious for me. And honestly, if I drove a Tesla in the US today, I’d be more worried about being shot in the head by ICE through the side window than being kidnapped by my car.
Like I said previously, plenty of reason to dislike both Tesla and ICE, no need to add hypothetical Black Mirror scenarios to the mix.
very true!
A quick search tells me this is only model 3 from Shanghai because they insisted. Do you know what models and years have this mechanical latch, because there is a lot of press about accidents made worse due to their absence. Edit: I see cybertruck also have a hidden emergency latch. Why hide it? Edit 2: More on latches here. https://cleantechnica.com/2025/10/05/the-hidden-lever-a-psa-what-teslas-door-handles-reveal-about-its-safety-culture/
Yes, but that speaks to my point, not against it.
What part of brand (brain) damage do you think Trump and Musk will stop at? We haven’t seen it yet. As for hypotheticals, I’m talking about the real here and now design decision that disconnects the driver from all controls and the potential for its abuse. You’re eagerness to dismiss the potential for abuse, considering the current environment is disturbing.
I don’t know enough about Tesla models to reply, that’s just a fact I filed away at some point under strange design decisions - you must agree that having a door latch that damages your car window on use is strange.
But I feel like you’re looking at this from a purely US-centric view (I’m not US based myself, just to be clear). Tesla can’t afford not to sell overseas, so it can’t afford the loss of reputation. Besides, there’s potential for abuse in all cars with a central computer and a connection to the Internet these days: lock doors & broadcast location is a trivial feature to implement. It just doesn’t make sense practically for ICE to pursue this,at least in my opinion.
All true. But the car does seem to be designed for weaponization. You talk about the hit to reputation, but what hit would they take? An OTA assasination is just an everyday car accident. Plausible deniability. A kidnapped family won’t tell the press anything. Undesirables were disappeared by ICE. There is no one to tell the story, thus no story to tell.