The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has issued a special order to Tesla, demanding extensive data on the company’s driver assistance and monitoring systems, including a previously undisclosed configuration known as “Elon Mode.” The order, dated July 26, was made public on the agency’s website this week, reports CNBC.
Standard Tesla vehicles equipped with Autopilot or Full Self-Driving (FSD) features prompt the driver to engage the steering wheel through visual and auditory cues. Failure to comply results in the deactivation of these advanced features for the remainder of the drive.
However, with “Elon Mode” enabled, these reminders, colloquially known as “nags,” can be bypassed. It was first discovered by hacker @greentheonly in June, who described the feature as “a special [Autopilot] mode where there are no nags. The braking is less intense and probably some other changes under the hood I did not fully explore.” How to enable “Elon Mode”? According to @greentheonly his method to enable it “is hard” (by hacking), but the easiest way is “to know the right people.”
There's an elon mode setting in the car that removes steering wheel nag and changes some other settings.
And it could be controlled remotely (but is not user facing)— green (@greentheonly) June 15, 2023
NHTSA’s acting chief counsel, John Donaldson, expressed concerns in the order about the potential safety implications of such configurations. Donaldson wrote, “It may be possible for vehicle owners to change Autopilot’s driver monitoring configurations to allow the driver to operate the vehicle in Autopilot for extended periods without prompting the driver to apply torque to the steering wheel.”
It’s clear that “Elon Mode” is not a regular setting that can be turned on by the average Tesla owner, and requires some with skill to hack the system, like @greentheonly.
Tesla was given until August 25 to provide the requested information and complied within the deadline. However, the company’s response has been granted confidential treatment by NHTSA and is not publicly available.
Despite Tesla’s claims that its driver assistance systems are not autonomous, CEO Elon Musk has often implied otherwise. Over a recent weekend, Musk live-streamed a test drive using a developmental version of Tesla’s FSD software, version 12.
