[jaxx75]

The difference is that tuning an IC engine is pushing components into/past its designed safety/mechanical thresholds. Does 'tuning' a Tesla actually do this? If it is designed to perform at this level after paying Tesla, how could they deny warranty coverage with Magnuson-Moss in mind?

[jayd16]

Do they bin batteries and parts? Is the price based on a calculation of failure rates and warranty service costs? Or is it just a cash grab? I'm not sure.

[userbinator]

The difference is that tuning an IC engine is pushing components into/past its designed safety/mechanical thresholds.

It's not uncommon to find models with a wide range of power outputs but the exact same mechanical parts, and the only difference is the program in the ECU. Before electronics, the difference might be in a few small parts[1]. If you spend long enough staring at parts catalogs you can easily spot such things.

[1] One of the examples that immediately comes to mind is with diesel engines --- you can change the fuel injectors to tune power over a very wide range, limited only by your acceptance of fuel consumption and emissions. All the load-bearing parts of the engine (block, rotating assembly, etc.) are exactly the same: http://forums.aths.org/Attachment20581.aspx

[potatochup]

The biggest concern I have with black boxes like this is how its going to interact with updates. Presumably they are intercepting messages on the CAN bus. The CAN bus is fairly easy to crack if you know what you are doing, but it also could change with the software version. The black box has probably hardcoded the message IDs that they are intercepting, but if the messages get reshuffled around in a software update it'll be sending out some data for some random other message which could have safety implications.