Tesla announced on February 4 that it would remove its Boombox feature after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it could make the vehicle’s mandatory pedestrian alert sounds inaudible, thus posing a potential safety risk. The feature was present in some 579,000 Teslas but it will be disabled as part of Tesla’s voluntary recall; the company will roll out an over-the-air update to remove the feature.
Musk said that with this decision, the NHTSA was like the proverbial Fun Police - this refers to them stopping the potential fun Tesla owners were having with the Boombox feature, which, it has to be said was quite unique in the industry and we can certainly see how it could be a source of entertainment.
This recall is now Tesla’s eleventh recall since October of last year, and while the company has addressed all the problems discovered, this still had an impact on its share prices, which have fallen 19 percent in 2022 alone, according to Bloomberg - their value dropped by 3.1 percent on Monday before trading began.
The Boombox feature was made available starting in December 2020 with one of Tesla’s over-the-air software updates. It wasn’t to all owners’ tastes, but some really enjoyed finding creative uses for it, as the slew of jokes and pranks you will find on YouTube seems to suggest.
Tesla says it is unaware of any injuries or accidents that may have occurred as a direct use of the Boombox feature. In fact, Tesla’s initial position on this was that it made the vehicle playing these unusual sounds while on the move even more conspicuous then if it was just relying on the pedestrian warning sound.
Let us know in the comments if you have this feature in your Tesla, if you used it and how you feel about it going away.
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