Last week there were reports Tesla was being forced to “recall” approximately 300,000 vehicles in China over concerns that owners could accidently activate cruise control. Safety regulators said this could cause a sudden acceleration in the vehicle.
The solution was a simple one however – add an audible alert for when the feature is activated. At least it is simple if you have connected vehicles like Tesla does.
Just a few days later and the automaker has deployed software update 2021.4.18.5 to its fleet in China that corrects the “issue.”
If you are a current Tesla owner, you probably know that to activate basic traffic-aware cruise control (TACC), you simply pull down on the gear stalk once. When doing this there is no audible alert like when Autopilot is engaged. Instead all that happens is an icon on the screen turns blue.
That has now changed with the latest software update. When activating TACC, a single audible alert has been added. Although it is unknown at this time if the change will make its way to other markets, it would make sense that it will in a future update.
The solution would not be so simple if you owned a car from a legacy automaker. A trip to a dealership would be required where staff would have to force the changes to your vehicle. Not only would this cost you your time and money to take time off work to get the fix completed, it would have also cost the automaker millions in direct and indirect costs.
You can watch a video of the new chime in action below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoZPgutdqWg
