Tesla adds more alerts to Autopilot as part of NHTSA ‘safety recall’

Tesla has agreed to add more alerts to its Autopilot system to prevent driver misuse as part of a NHTSA “safety recall” of 2 million vehicles that concludes its Autopilot investigation.

For two years now, NHTSA has been investigating the safety of Tesla’s Autopilot features, especially as it relates to accidents involving “stationary first-responder vehicles” following 11 crashes with police and firefighters vehicles parked on highways.

Today, Tesla and the agency announced that they resolved the investigation with a “safety recall” of the roughly 2 million vehicles equipped with Autopilot in the US.

Tesla fans will rightfully be quick to point out that the fix for the “recall” is just another over-the-air software update, but they might not be fans of the update itself this time.

In the NHTSA defect notice, Tesla says that it doesn’t agree with NHTSA’s conclusions and only agreed to this update to end the investigation:

While not concurring with the agency’s analysis, in the interest of resolving EA22-002, Tesla determined on December 5, 2023, to voluntarily administer a recall and provide the remedy described below.

There are not too many details about the update itself in the notice, but it sounds like Tesla is going to increase the number of alerts and warnings that drivers get when activating Autosteer, the main feature in Autopilot.

Here’s how Tesla describes the update in the recall notice:

At no cost to customers, affected vehicles will receive an over-the-air software remedy, which is expected to begin deploying to certain affected vehicles on or shortly after December 12, 2023, with software version 2023.44.30. Remaining affected vehicles will receive an over-the-air software remedy at a later date. The remedy will incorporate additional controls and alerts to those already existing on affected vehicles to further encourage the driver to adhere to their continuous driving responsibility whenever Autosteer is engaged, which includes keeping their hands on the steering wheel and paying attention to the roadway. Depending on vehicle hardware, the additional controls will include, among others, increasing the prominence of visual alerts on the user interface, simplifying engagement and disengagement of Autosteer, additional checks upon engaging Autosteer and while using the feature outside controlled access highways and when approaching traffic controls, and eventual suspension from Autosteer use if the driver repeatedly fails to demonstrate continuous and sustained driving responsibility while the feature is engaged.

These alerts are often referred to by Tesla owners as “Autopilot nag,” and despite being for safety, it is often seen as “annoying”.

We haven’t seen exactly what the new nag looks like yet, but we are apparently about to find out because Tesla says that it is starting to push the new update today.

Electrek’s Take

For Tesla, it’s not a bad resolution to the NHTSA investigation. It’s another low-cost, over-the-air software update.

Sure, the news cycle will latch to “Tesla forced to recall 2 million vehicles” for a few days, but it will pass.

However, for owners who use Autopilot properly, this is a bit of a bummer. I’ll wait to see the update, but it sounds like we are getting a lot more nag. The alerts can be annoying. It’s even hard to get past them at times even with the hands on the steering wheel since you have to apply a certain amount of pressure to make them go away.

Hopefully, it’s not too bad, but we will have to wait and see.