On January 26, the U.S. auto safety regulator reportedly said on Tuesday that they had gathered more information from Tesla to further understand whether the company's decision to allow passengers of 580,000 cars to play games through the center control screen was a safety hazard.
Last December, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) began conducting a preliminary assessment of the Model S, Model X, Model Y and Model 3 produced in 2017-2022 to see if the "passenger gaming" features on these cars would "distract drivers and increase the risk of accidents."
They have confirmed that "this feature has been available to users since 2020 through vehicles equipped with the 'Passenger Game' feature". Prior to this, the game feature "only available when parking".
NHTSA wants to obtain all crash record reports related to the feature and asked Tesla to provide an incident chronology and research report to support its risk assessment of "using in-vehicle equipment for front-row non-driving-related tasks."
The agency also wants data that "the game runs at the same time as driver interventions or active safety measures."
Daimler-owned Mercedes-Benz recalled 227 vehicles in the United States on November 29 last year because their infotainment systems "may allow television and Internet displays to be activated while driving, causing driver distraction." ”
In response to the NHTSA investigation, at the end of December last year, Tesla responded that it would no longer allow vehicles to run video games while driving, and Tesla said that the company locked the "passenger game" function through a software update, making it unusable during the operation of the vehicle.
But the incident still attracted the attention of the US auto safety regulatory authorities, and I don't know what kind of turmoil Tesla is facing this time.