Researchers say they have discovered how to “jailbreak” a Tesla.

Three students and an independent researcher at the Technische Universitat Berlin apparently found a way to hack into the hardware of Tesla’s infotainment system to get features normally held behind a paywall.

With this method, drivers could get such expensive upgrades as heated car seats, automatic parking and even self-driving technology — all for free.

Researchers said that you need physical access to the car to jailbreak it.

“We are not evil outsiders, but we’re actually the insider, we own the car. And we don’t want to pay these $300 for the rear heated seats,” researcher Christain Werling told TechCrunch.

The students used a technique called voltage glitching to hack Tesla’s infotainment system. By tampering with the voltage supply to the processor, the students were able to trick the car’s CPU into accepting manipulated code and enable the blocked features.

While a driver could steal free upgrades using this method, the researchers also noted that it would let hackers gain access to the driver’s personal information such as call logs, recent locations and calendar appointments.

However, such a hacker would need to physically hack the car to access this information.

The researchers are expected to detail how they accomplished the hack next week at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas. 

• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.