Brammo does this as well. Selling a software 'upgrade' that runs the motor outside of it's manufacturers recommendation seems like a good way to stick your company with replacing a bunch of burned out motors.
Good luck. Although there are ways to make this very difficult for consumers to modify, it probably won't take too long til someone figures out how to bypass/hack it.
I don't know. Firmware can be cryptographically signed. Some anti-tamper devices even burn physical fuses. A car is expensive to brick, so not a lot of people would play around with it.
For instance, here's what free-software devs say about nVidia drivers:
"Little hope of reclocking becoming available for GM20x and newer GPUs as firmware now needs to be signed by NVIDIA to have the necessary access."
