I don't know about electric cars, but for gas powered cars there are open source ECUs [0][1]. There are also tuners that directly modify the car's firmware to improve performance. Finally, you can connect a computer to the CAN bus [2], which allows you to capture and replay commands, as well as craft your own commands. This is how Comma's openpilot [3] works: it connects to the CAN bus and sends commands for all supported functionality.
I think I know what you are asking but it is complicated.
For safety, regulator, historical and frankly common sense reasons, a car is not one system. It is a system of system that communicate via a CAN BUS, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN_bus. This is still true for electric cars. Can this be hacked? Like everything else, yes.
Can you side load a new ROM like an android device? Not that know of and hope that never becomes a reality because your phone crashing is different than you car crashing (figuratively and literally). Can you enable/disable features? Yes, usually through ECU hacking. On my P3 Volvo, I bought a cheap stripped down Chinese clone of Volvo's diagnostic tool called DiCE. Once the ECU is decrypted, which is done through brute force, you can use something like https://d5t5.com/article/vdash-volvo-diagnostic or P3Tool to change level settings like the theme of LED dash or engine tuning.
My Tesla used to crash fairly often, and thankfully only once this year. Usually in my driveway but there were two occasions that it crashed while in traffic waiting to make left turns. The touch screen interface component was the subject of all of these so called "crashes": the car is still drivable, but there is a large loss of feedback -- car signal tones are no longer present -- there isn't feedback to know if the car's signal lights are actually engaged or not, no speedometer, climate system stops operation etc. It takes about 2 minutes to restart and recover. Thankfully the Tesla touch screen console is only part of larger system as described.
This isn't really Tesla specific. I've been in a handful of rental cars that had the infotainment system crash. Which wouldn't be a huge problem if they hadn't eliminated all the physical buttons to do basically anything at all.
Something that seems to trigger it across makes and models is to adjust media controls while the backup cam is on-screen.
Thanks for the awesome reply. Do you work as a car electronics engineer or in some neighbouring positions? I’m curious how did you validate whatever “hacks” or tools you learned/obtained because, as you said, car crash is different from phone crash.
I have a Hyundai Tucson and I don’t really dare to touch anything except plugging in a cheap scanner for error codes.
BTW do you know any technical car hacking forums, in WWW or Onion?
Also, in these days of Secure Boot technologies, it's going to be a lot harder to create custom ROMs without having to reverse engineer the whole thing. At least in the past, you could inspect the executable code.
There are of course after market ECU tweaks and parts that, for example, will change your throttle response with a physical piece of hardware—Pedal Commander is a simple example.
I'm not aware of anything for electric _cars_ other than aftermarket ECUs and smaller patches, version up/downgrades or cross-market reflashing, but together with a few other people I've built https://librescoot.org/ as an open source replacement firmware for electric scooters (mopeds, not standing scooters). The actual ECU firmware has also been reverse engineered, but for legal reasons has been deprioritized - if anyone here is well-versed in STM32 reverse engineering and feels like taking on e-scooter ECUs, let me know :)
No. Aftermarket ECUs absolutely exist for almost all internal combustion engines. Other aftermarket modules are rare. Integration of them into a complete system even more so.
I believe these systems are quite coupled with the hardware itself, making it quite difficult to port any custom ROM or such on them. I am not aware of any projects with the goals of creating an open-source Android ROM for a car. Even Phone ROMs are slowly dying off, with the exceptions of Lineage and GrapheneOS.
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What kind of features did you have in mind?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_control_unit
[1] https://rusefi.com/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN_bus
[3] https://comma.ai/openpilot
For safety, regulator, historical and frankly common sense reasons, a car is not one system. It is a system of system that communicate via a CAN BUS, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN_bus. This is still true for electric cars. Can this be hacked? Like everything else, yes.
Can you side load a new ROM like an android device? Not that know of and hope that never becomes a reality because your phone crashing is different than you car crashing (figuratively and literally). Can you enable/disable features? Yes, usually through ECU hacking. On my P3 Volvo, I bought a cheap stripped down Chinese clone of Volvo's diagnostic tool called DiCE. Once the ECU is decrypted, which is done through brute force, you can use something like https://d5t5.com/article/vdash-volvo-diagnostic or P3Tool to change level settings like the theme of LED dash or engine tuning.
You may be interested in https://github.com/jaredthecoder/awesome-vehicle-security#re...
Something that seems to trigger it across makes and models is to adjust media controls while the backup cam is on-screen.
I have a Hyundai Tucson and I don’t really dare to touch anything except plugging in a cheap scanner for error codes.
BTW do you know any technical car hacking forums, in WWW or Onion?
Thanks a bunch!
There are of course after market ECU tweaks and parts that, for example, will change your throttle response with a physical piece of hardware—Pedal Commander is a simple example.
American Polestars can, for example, enable their adaptive headlights using OrBit.
https://spaycetech.com/
But it seems Polestar is doing their best to make my warranty useless by closing local dealers and offering shitty service anyways.
I should give this a whirl.
2025 BMW G80 M3 has an aftermarket ECU? Audi RS3? Mercedes E 63 S?
Immobilizer baked into the gateway and transmission and ignition, etc. etc.
https://www.ecumaster.com/products/interconnectors/
https://www.ecumaster.com/products/emu-black/