Whether this was the reason or not, it should be alarming that Tesla can remotely deactivate any car in their fleet without warning.

Even if you trust Tesla completely, a malicious actor could gain access to this feature and wreak havoc.

More and more if you buy a car on credit there will be a tracker installed so the repo man can find it if you start missing payments.

> We represent Tesla, Inc. ("Tesla") and are writing to formally address the unauthorized use of Tesia's intellectual property in musical content distributed under your name. Specifically, this concerns your use of the Tesia Cybertruck name and imagery in one or more songs, including but not limited to the track titled...

It's right in the letter in the video.

This is not exactly skeptical analysis of such an extraordinary claim. I can put the same image on my screen and print a letter like that with no involvement from Tesla.

The message on the screen of the Cybertruck literally says "COMPLY WITH CEASE & DESIST TO REACTIVATE".

You should watch the video. It shows the C&D received for using Tesla IP in musical lyrics, which says "your vehicle has been remotely described due to violations of the T&C".

Who cares why they deactivated it? They shouldn't be able to, for any reason. That's not how vehicle ownership is supposed to work.

If you look at the video it isn't even clear that it has been deactivated by human intervention. It is the same message you get when the thing just has a software failure AFAICT.

Edit: I didn't realize that if you keep watching the video, he posts the legal correspondence. My bad. I just fast forwarded and found myself in a rap video and figured that was the whole story

I did look at the message, it looks like they abused functionlity that was intended for some other purpose, specifically to spite this particular vehicle owner.

This is just false - if there's a software failure you do not get a. message saying "COMPLY WITH CEASE & DESIST TO RE-ACTIVATE"