Tesla will remove the steering wheel nag from Full Self Driving next week

Tesla is planning on releasing the next update for Full Self Driving (which, despite the name, isn't that) as soon as next week, according to CEO Elon Musk. The FSD 12.4 release will contain fully retrained models, which implies it will be a bigger update than the mere version increment implies.

This will also remove the steering wheel nag, which alerts the driver to apply torque on the wheel about every minute while FSD is in operation. Again, the information comes straight from Musk himself.

Yes

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 9, 2024

The steering wheel nag exists because Tesla has no way of detecting whether your hands are on the steering wheel, unless you apply pressure to it. The nag became redundant a while ago when Tesla started to use its cabin-facing camera to assess driver attention, and it will issue alerts if it detects you haven't been looking at the road for more than about three seconds.

So with this system in place, the nag was simply that - a nag, which can get incredibly annoying after a while. Hopefully its removal doesn't mean lower safety on the roads, and it will be interesting to see how authorities such as the US NHTSA respond to this move, as back in December it forced Tesla to warn drivers more to keep their attention on the road, not less.