Tesla Fleet Telemetry

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Fleet Telemetry is a server reference implementation for Tesla's telemetry protocol. It is the best way to get data from Tesla vehicles at regular intervals. Owners can allow registered applications to receive telemetry securely and directly from their vehicles. This reference implementation can be used by individual owners as is or by fleet operators who can extend it to aggregate data accross their fleet.

The service handles device connectivity as well as receiving and storing transmitted data. Once configured, devices establish a WebSocket connection to push configurable telemetry records. Fleet Telemetry provides clients with ack, error, or rate limit responses. The application also provides an event stream to determine the vehicle connection state, which can be used as a proxy for vehicle online state.

By configuring fleet_telemetry_config, individual owners and fleet operators can easily control the timing and conditions of vehicle data transmission (live / on change / at frenquency).

Configuring and running the service

Setup steps

1. Create a developer application via developer.tesla.com.
   • In the "Client Details" step, it is recommended to select "Authorization Code and Machine-to-Machine" for most use cases. "Machine-to-Machine" (M2M) should only be selected for business accounts that own vehicles.
2. Generate an EC private key using the secp256r1 curve (prime256v1).
   • openssl ecparam -name prime256v1 -genkey -noout -out private-key.pem
3. Derive its public key.
   • openssl ec -in private-key.pem -pubout -out public-key.pem
4. Host this public key at: https://*application-domain.com*/.well-known/appspecific/com.tesla.3p.public-key.pem.
5. Generate a Partner Authentication Token. (docs)
6. Register the application with Fleet API via the register endpoint.
7. Configure a fleet-telemetry server. Full details are described in install steps.
8. Validate the server configuration using check_server_cert.sh.
   • From a local computer, create validate_server.json with the following fields:
     • hostname: The hostname the fleet-telemetry server.
     • port: The port the fleet-telemetry server -- Default 443.
     • ca: The full certificate chain used to generate the server's TLS certificate.
   • Run ./check_server_cert.sh validate_server.json
9. Ensure the application's virtual key has been added to the vehicle(s). See documentation here: https://developer.tesla.com/docs/fleet-api/endpoints/vehicle-commands#key-pairing.
10. Configure and run the vehicle-command proxy with the application private key.
11. Configure vehicle(s) with the fleet_telemetry_config endpoint.
12. Wait for synced to be true when getting fleet_telemetry_config.
13. Vehicles will connect and stream data directly to the hosted fleet-telemetry server. To diagnose connection or streaming problems use the fleet_telemetry_errors endpoint.

Install on Kubernetes with Helm Chart (recommended)

For ease of installation and operation, run Fleet Telemetry on Kubernetes or a similar environment. Helm Charts help define, install, and upgrade applications on Kubernetes. A reference helm chart is available here.

Install steps

1. Allocate and assign a FQDN. This will be used in the server and client (vehicle) configuration.

2. Design a simple hosting architecture. We recommend: Firewall/Loadbalancer -> Fleet Telemetry -> Kafka.

3. Ensure mTLS connections are terminated on the Fleet Telemetry service.

4. Configure the server (Helm charts cover some of this configuration)

{
  "host": string - hostname,
  "port": int - port,
  "log_level": string - trace, debug, info, warn, error,
  "json_log_enable": bool,
  "namespace": string - kafka topic prefix,
  "reliable_ack": bool - for use with reliable datastores, recommend setting to true with kafka,
  "monitoring": {
    "prometheus_metrics_port": int,
    "profiler_port": int,
    "profiling_path": string - out path,
    "statsd": { if not using prometheus
      "host": string - host:port of the statsd server,
      "prefix": string - prefix for statsd metrics,
      "sample_rate": int - 0 to 100 percentage to sample stats,
      "flush_period": int - ms flush period
    }
  },
  "logger": {
    "verbose": bool - include data types in the logs. Only applicable for records of type 'V'
  },
  "kafka": { // librdkafka kafka config, seen here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/confluentinc/librdkafka/master/CONFIGURATION.md
    "bootstrap.servers": "kafka:9092",
    "queue.buffering.max.messages": 1000000
  },
  "kinesis": {
    "max_retries": 3,
    "streams": {
      "V": "custom_stream_name"
    }
  },
  "rate_limit": {
    "enabled": bool,
    "message_limit": int - ex.: 1000
  },
  "records": { // list of records and their dispatchers, currently: alerts, errors, and V(vehicle data)
    "alerts": [
        "logger"
    ],
    "errors": [
        "logger"
    ],
    "V": [
        "kinesis",
        "kafka"
    ]
  },
  "tls": {
    "server_cert": string - server cert location,
    "server_key": string - server key location
  }
}

Example: server_config.json

5. (Manual install only) Deploy and run the server. Get the latest docker image information from our docker hub. This can be run as a binary via ./fleet-telemetry -config=/etc/fleet-telemetry/config.json directly on a server, or as a Kubernetes deployment. Example snippet:

---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: fleet-telemetry
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: fleet-telemetry
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: fleet-telemetry
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: fleet-telemetry
        image: tesla/fleet-telemetry:<tag>
        command: ["/fleet-telemetry", "-config=/etc/fleet-telemetry/config.json"]
        ports:
        - containerPort: 443
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: fleet-telemetry
spec:
  selector:
    app: fleet-telemetry
  ports:
    - protocol: TCP
      port: 443
      targetPort: 443
  type: LoadBalancer

Vehicle Compatibility

Vehicles must be running firmware version 2023.20.6 or later. Some older model S/X are not supported.

Personalized Backends/Dispatchers

Dispatchers handle vehicle data processing upon its arrival at Fleet Telemetry servers. They can be of any type, from distributed message queues to STDOUT logger. Here is a list of the currently supported dispatchers::

• Kafka (preferred): Configure with the config.json file. See implementation here: config/config.go
  • Topics will need to be created for *prefix*_V,*prefix*_connectivity, *prefix*_alerts, and *prefix*_errors. The default prefix is tesla
• Kinesis: Configure with standard AWS env variables and config files. The default AWS credentials and config files are: ~/.aws/credentials and ~/.aws/config.
  • By default, stream names will be *configured namespace*_*topic_name* ex.: tesla_V, tesla_errors, tesla_alerts, etc
  • Configure stream names directly by setting the streams config "kinesis": { "streams": { *topic_name*: stream_name } }
  • Override stream names with env variables: KINESIS_STREAM_*uppercase topic* ex.: KINESIS_STREAM_V
• Google pubsub: Along with the required pubsub config (See ./test/integration/config.json for example), be sure to set the environment variable GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS
• ZMQ: Configure with the config.json file. See implementation here: config/config.go
• Logger: This is a simple STDOUT logger that serializes the protos to json.

NOTE: To add a new dispatcher, please provide integration tests and updated documentation. To serialize dispatcher data as json instead of protobufs, add a config transmit_decoded_records and set value to true as shown here

Reliable Acks

Fleet Telemetry can send ack messages back to the vehicle. This is useful for applications that need to ensure the data was received and processed. To enable this feature, set reliable_ack_sources to one of configured dispatchers (kafka,kinesis,pubsub,zmq) in the config file. Reliable acks can only be set to one dispatcher per recordType. See here for sample config.

Detecting Vehicle Connectivity Changes

On the vehicle, Fleet Telemetry client behave similarly to how the connectivity engine for vehicle commands. Therefore we can use Fleet Telemetry connectivity event to assume when a vehicle is online. Note that it is a proxy, but if configured properly Fleet Telemetry connectivity time should match vehicle connectivity state in 99%+. To enable connectivity events simply add the connectivity records in the list of events in server_config.json file:

  "records": {
      "connectivity": [
          "kafka"
      ]
    }

Metrics

Configure and use Prometheus or a StatsD-interface supporting data store for metrics. The integration test runs Fleet Telemetry with grafana, which is compatible with prometheus. It also has an example dashboard which tracks important metrics related to the hosted server. Sample screenshot for the sample dashboard:-

Logging

To suppress tls handshake error logging, set environment variable SUPPRESS_TLS_HANDSHAKE_ERROR_LOGGING to true. See docker compose for example.

Protos

Data is encapsulated into protobuf messages of different types. Protos can be recompiled via:

1. Install protoc, currently on version 4.25.1: https://grpc.io/docs/protoc-installation/
2. Install protoc-gen-go: go install google.golang.org/protobuf/cmd/protoc-gen-go@v1.28
3. Run make command

make generate-protos

Airbrake

Fleet Telemetry can publish errors to airbrake. The integration test runs Fleet Telemetry with errbit, which is an airbrake compliant self-hosted error catcher. A project key can be set for airbrake using either the config file or via an environment variable AIRBRAKE_PROJECT_KEY.

Testing

Unit Tests

To run the unit tests: make test

Common Errors:

~/fleet-telemetry➜ git:(main) ✗  make test
go build github.com/confluentinc/confluent-kafka-go/v2/kafka:
# pkg-config --cflags  -- rdkafka
Package rdkafka was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `rdkafka.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'rdkafka' found
pkg-config: exit status 1
make: *** [install] Error 1

librdkafka is missing, on macOS install it via brew install librdkafka pkg-config or follow instructions here https://github.com/confluentinc/confluent-kafka-go#getting-started

~/fleet-telemetry➜ git:(main) ✗  make test
go build github.com/confluentinc/confluent-kafka-go/v2/kafka:
# pkg-config --cflags  -- rdkafka
Package libcrypto was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libcrypto.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
Package 'libcrypto', required by 'rdkafka', not found
pkg-config: exit status 1
make: *** [install] Error 1

~/fleet-telemetry➜ git:(main) ✗  locate libcrypto.pc
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/openssl@3/3.0.8/lib/pkgconfig/libcrypto.pc

~/fleet-telemetry➜ git:(main) ✗  export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$PKG_CONFIG_PATH:/opt/homebrew/Cellar/openssl@3/3.0.8/lib/pkgconfig/

A reference to libcrypto is not set properly. To resolve find the reference to libcrypto by pkgconfig and set et the PKG_CONFIG_PATH accordingly.

libzmq is missing. Install with:

sudo apt install -y libsodium-dev libzmq3-dev

Or for macOS:

brew install libsodium zmq

Integration Tests

To run the integration tests: make integration To log into errbit instances, default username is noreply@example.org and default password is test123

Building the binary for Linux from Mac ARM64

DOCKER_BUILD_KIT=1 DOCKER_CLI_EXPERIMENTAL=enabled docker buildx version
docker buildx create --name go-builder --driver docker-container --driver-opt network=host --buildkitd-flags '--allow-insecure-entitlement network.host' --use
docker buildx inspect --bootstrap
docker buildx build --no-cache --progress=plain --platform linux/amd64 -t <name:tag>(e.x.: fleet-telemetry:local.1.1) -f Dockerfile . --load
container_id=$(docker create fleet-telemetry:local.1.1) docker cp $container_id:/fleet-telemetry /tmp/fleet-telemetry

Security and Privacy considerations

System administrators should apply standard best practices, which are beyond the scope of this README.

Moreover, the following application-specific considerations apply:

• Vehicles authenticate to the telemetry server with TLS client certificates and use a variety of security measures designed to prevent unauthorized access to the corresponding private key. However, as a defense-in-depth precaution, backend services should anticipate the possibility that a vehicle's TLS private key may be compromised. Therefore:
  • Backend systems should sanitize data before using it.
  • Users should consider threats from actors that may be incentivized to submit falsified data.
  • Users should filter by vehicle identification number (VIN) using an allowlist if possible.
• Configuration-signing private keys should be kept offline.
• Configuration-signing private keys should be kept in an HSM.
• If telemetry data is compromised, threat actors may be able to make inferences about driver behavior even if explicit location data is not collected. Security policies should be set accordingly.
• Tesla strongly encourages providers to only collect data they need, limited to the frequency they need.
• Providers agree to take full responsibility for privacy risks, as soon as data leave the devices (for more info read our privacy policies).