You know the drill. You start your car, buckle up, take off the parking brake, and shift into forward or reverse, depending on which way you need to go to start your drive.
Not if you’re driving the upcoming Tesla Model S, though. In that case, you start up, buckle, and the car guesses whether you want it to go forward or backward. You tap the gas and hope it has guessed right.
At least, that appears to be the case, based on some confusing communications in the first day since the car was revealed to the press.
The next Model S sedan’s controls and instrument layout appear beautifully simple. There’s a steering yoke (not quite a wheel, it’s closer to something you’d see on small aircraft) with a few buttons on it, a touchscreen, and two pedals. That appears to be all.
The Plaid edition of its Model X SUV cousin appears to have largely the same interior. No one in the press has driven either car yet – we’ve only seen photos – so it’s possible that we’ve failed to notice a parking brake release button somewhere. But, as near as anyone has been able to tell, the cars have only those control interfaces.
Where’s the shifter?
Which means that they completely lack a shifter to put the vehicle into park, reverse, neutral, or drive. The automotive press and Tesla fans spent part of yesterday asking the simple question…how we gonna start that thing? Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to answer:
Ah, that…well, that doesn’t explain it very well, does it? Electrek obtained an internal document from Tesla, which gave a bit more context: “The vehicle uses its Autopilot sensors to intelligently and automatically determine intended drive modes and select them. For example, if the front of Model S/X is facing a garage wall, it will detect this and automatically shift to Reverse once the driver presses the brake pedal. This eliminates one more step for the drivers of the world’s most intelligent production cars.”
It seems doubtful that an automaker that sold half a million cars worldwide last year would debut a new feature without extensive testing, so we assume the system is fairly effective at not hitting garage walls. But Musk’s reassurance that drivers can override it via the touchscreen is not particularly reassuring, particularly given that Tesla is currently locked in a fight with the federal government over whether to recall tens of thousands of Teslas because their touchscreens can go dark unexpectedly.
Federal requirements call for a shifter
The “guessing” system may even be illegal – Gear Patrol points out that a federal law requires a shifter with a neutral setting between the forward and reverse positions. The federal government may have other questions about the design as well – CNET reports that, when asked, regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said they couldn’t confirm whether or not the steering yoke met federal safety standards.
Part of the problem here may have nothing to do with design or engineering. At some point in 2020, Tesla laid off its entire public relations department without public notice, simply replying “we no longer have a PR team” in response to inquiries. Thus, we’re left with Elon Musk’s tweets in lieu of someone responding to press inquiries full-time with detailed explanations.
There’s no question the cabin of the next Model S is a beautiful design. But there are a lot of questions about how it works, and whether it’s safe…and no one to answer them. We’ll bring clarification when we have it, however messily it arrives.
