A driver charges his car at a Tesla Supercharger station, Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022, in Miami. A tweet from Elon Musk indicating that Tesla might allow some owners who are testing a "Full Self-Driving" system to disable an alert that reminds them to keep their hands on the steering wheel has drawn attention from U.S. safety regulators. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating a tweet from Elon Musk indicating Tesla might allow some customers who are testing the company's "Full Self-Driving" system to disable an alert that tells them to keep their hands on the wheel.
The tweet caught the agency's eye because it is currently investigating whether Tesla's autopilot feature was involved in 11 crashes with emergency vehicles since the company started beta-testing the system in 2021. The electric vehicle maker said earlier this year that 15 percent of the 160,000 Tesla vehicles on U.S. roads are participating in the beta.
Musk has noted multiple times in the past that Tesla vehicles are not ready for fully automated driving. Tesla's website also states that both the Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems require a “fully attentive driver who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment.”
Why Tesla would get rid of the alert then is unclear. As part of the broader investigation into the feature, NHTSA has asked Musk to clarify what exactly he meant in the tweet.
NHTSA previously pointed out that numerous Tesla crashes have occurred in which the driver had their hands on the wheel but was still not paying attention, even with alerts telling them to pay attention.
Musk's tweet was a reply to a fan on twitter who proposed that drivers with more than 10,000 miles on the "Full Self-Driving" mode should be able to turn off the so-called "steering wheel nag."
Musk tweeted back, “Agreed, update coming in Jan.”
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison wrested the title of the world’s richest man from longtime holder Elon Musk early Wednesday as stock in his software giant rocketed more than a third in a stunning few minutes of trading. That is according to wealth tracker Bloomberg. A college dropout, the 81-year-old Ellison is now worth $393 billion, Bloomberg says, several billion more than Musk, who had been the world’s richest for four years. The switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle. Forbes still has Musk as the richest, however, valuing his private businesses much higher.
Online broker Robinhood Markets will join the S&P 500 index Online broker Robinhood Markets will join the S&P 500 index as its stock rides higher on a cryptocurrency wave.
Ali Kashani, CEO of Serve Robotics, dives into their $63.3M acquisition of Vayu Robotics and how it's accelerating the future of autonomous delivery systems.
Chipmaker Nvidia is poised to release a quarterly report that could provide a better sense of whether the stock market has been riding an overhyped artificial intelligence bubble or is being propelled by a technological boom that’s still gathering momentum.
A group of book authors has reached a settlement with AI company Anthropic after suing for copyright infringement. A federal appeals court filing Tuesday said both sides have negotiated a proposed class settlement, with terms to be finalized next week. Anthropic declined to comment. A lawyer for the authors called it a "historic settlement." In June, a federal judge ruled that Anthropic didn't break the law by training its chatbot on copyrighted books. However, the company was still facing trial over acquiring those books from online "shadow libraries" of pirated copies.
