Tesla is planning to remove the steering wheel nag, which alerts drivers to apply torque on the steering wheel, with a new Supervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) update coming next week.
Yesterday, we reported on CEO Elon Musk giving an outline of the upcoming FSD software updates.
The CEO says that Tesla is preparing to launch fully retrained models in FSD v12.4 as soon as next week.
Musk used his usual hyperbole, like “mind-blowing”, to describe the update, but he didn’t go into much detail about it otherwise… until now.
The CEO has now confirmed that Tesla plans to remove the steering wheel nag with the upcoming Full Self-Driving v12.4:
“Steering wheel nag” is what Tesla drivers call the alerts the vehicle sends to remind drivers to apply pressure on the steering wheel. Tesla doesn’t have a way to detect hands on the steering wheel, so it can “confirm” drivers keep their hands on it – by detecting torque being applied on the wheel.
Tesla sends out those alerts every minute or so, depending on your driving speed on FSD.
The alerts can get annoying and redundant because Tesla now uses its cabin-facing camera to detect driver attention and it will send out alerts if it detects that the driver is not looking at the road for more than about three seconds.
Electrek’s Take
This was always a very poor driver monitoring system, anyway. I wouldn’t have a problem with it going away if it wasn’t for the infamous loophole in the camera-based driver monitoring system.
There will be more abuse, but it wasn’t like there wasn’t any in the first place with defeat devices.
It is certainly a ballsy move for Tesla, considering NHTSA is opening a new investigation into its recall that involved more alerts for Autopilot/FSD.
Either way, regardless of Tesla’s level nag, the drivers should always keep their hands on the steering wheel and be ready to take control at all times when using Autopilot or FSD features.
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