Tesla disables seat controls when the users of its vehicles adjust them excessively under the automaker's standards to prevent any seat abuse.
The touch-screen control panel of the new Tesla Model S all-electric sedan (L), at the car's unveiling in Hawthorne, California on March 26, 2009. Musk said the state-of-the-art, five-seat sedan will be the world's first mass-produced, highway-capable electric car. The car has an anticipated base price of 57,400 US dollars but will cost less than 50,000 after a federal tax credit of 7,500 dollars.
Tesla to Disable Seat Controls
As per a news story by The Verge, the new seat control feature of Tesla will begin to be available to the new vehicles fresh from the factory of the Elon Musk-founded car maker.
The new feature of Tesla measures the number of times a user adjusts the in-car seats. Once it becomes "excessive" for the standards of its metrics, the controls will be disabled for a couple of minutes.
So, Tesla EV owners will have to wait during that time until they can mess up with the position of their car seats once again.
But before the seat controls become unusable for a short time, the new feature would warn its users that they have been adjusting their seats too much, as detected by the "seat abuse" metrics.
However, when users went on to ignore the warning and went on to proceed with the seat adjustments, that is when the controls get disabled temporarily.
Tesla's New Seat Motors
It turns out that Tesla has been stuffing its new vehicles with a new set of seat motors, specifically for the Model Y and Model 3.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk uses his mobile device as he sits in the car arriving to the construction site for the new plant, the so-called "Giga Factory", of US electric carmaker Tesla in Gruenheide near Berlin, northeastern Germany. - The site still has only provisional construction permits, but Tesla has been authorised by local officials to begin work at its own risk. Tesla is aiming to produce 500,000 electric vehicles a year at the plant.
The new seat motors on the EVs of Tesla are manufactured by a 110-year-old Germany-based firm, Brose, which has been supplying car components for years now.
What sets the Brose motor seats from both the in-house Tesla one and the Chinese Yangfeng counterpart is its additional "seat abuse" metrics, according to a report by Jalopnik.
The news outlet further noted that a Tesla hacker and researcher, GreenTheOnly, discovered that new feature on the seats of the Model Y and Model 3.
Tesla 'Seat Abuse' Metrics
The new "abuse" metrics feature primarily detects if someone is adjusting the in-car seats more than it could handle.
The Tesla hacker disclosed the metrics that the seat controls features subscribes to, noting that adjusting the seats for a total of 90 seconds in just 5 minutes would set off a warning.
On the other hand, its controls would be disabled temporarily if the seat positions have been changed for 120 seconds under the 5 minute time.
The Verge noted in the same report that you will have to do "a lot of fiddling" with the in-car seat controls to have it disabled temporarily.
As such, as much as the new feature sounds somewhat an annoying limitation-in normal use, it should not be triggered in the first place. Except, of course, if you have a child playing with your Tesla seats.
Related Article: Elon Musk says the Associated Press Writes 'Bogus' Tesla Articles After Fan Receives Message from Writer
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Written by Teejay Boris
