More passenger safety features to come to Tesla models

Tesla vehicles have proven themselves to be some of the safest on our roads. Tesla models also have in-cabin safety features for occupants when the vehicle is parked. 

Now, Tesla may also be upgrading the inner cabin safety features according to a recent interaction between a Tesla owner and Elon Musk on Twitter.

TeslaDiva99 on Twitter shared a recent event that had occurred while she left her teenager and a little one in the car, thinking the car would stay on, while she went to the store. 

According to the user, the car’s infotainment screen had turned off which the teenager touched to re-activate it. 

She then posed the question to Elon Musk around leaving the cabin HVAC (heating ventilation and air conditioning) system if the car can detect passengers left in the vehicle.

To this Tesla’s CEO replied, clarifying that the car’s cabin temperature is maintained within a safe range even when the infotainment system appears to be off. 

That’s to protect infants, pets and other occupants that may remain in the cabin while the car is parked.

He also noted that this was an area of improvement and given that most Tesla models delivered in recent years have in-car cabin cameras, they could be used to detect occupants and leave the car in infotainment screen on.

This level of product feedback and development is unheard of in the automotive industry. It’s also not the first time Elon Musk and the Tesla team take owners’ feedback to further improve what already is a benchmark in the EV when it comes to technology.

A feature improvement to detect infants, pets and other cabin passengers in parked mode would further improve safety in Tesla’s vehicles over most cars on our roads today.

Tesla already offers dog mode and camp mode in its vehicles for the comfort and safety of the vehicle’s occupants. 

Having the cabin camera allows Tesla to roll out features that will further improve on the existing features. 

From Elon Musk’s response, it should be able to be rolled out to a large proportion of the Tesla current fleet via an OTA (over-the-air) update when it’s ready. We look forward to seeing this rolled out in Australia in the near future too.