NHTSA May Require PWS to Be Retrofitted on All Electric Vehicles

NHTSA is investigating whether EVs should be retrofitted with pedestrian warning systems

Teslarati

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating whether hybrid-electric and electric vehicles from 1997 to present should have external speakers installed for pedestrian safety. The investigation was officially opened on January 27th, according to Teslarati.

In 2018, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 141 passed. This new safety standard required electric vehicles and hybrid-electric vehicles with a weight of 10,000 pounds (4,536 kilograms) or less to have a pedestrian warning system (PWS). A PWS is an external speaker on the vehicle that plays a sound when the vehicle is traveling at low speeds. This ensures pedestrians can hear vehicles if they’re nearby.

Sounds of the PWS While Driving

EVs and hybrid-electric vehicles can be extremely quiet, especially at low speeds. EVs can go unheard when approaching stop signs, crosswalks, and intersections, especially if there are other environmental sounds as well.

In July 2022, a petition was received by the NHTSA that urged the organization to require all EVs and hybrid-electric vehicles to have external noisemakers installed on them. Any vehicles without them, regardless of their manufacture date, would be considered to have a safety defect, according to the NHTSA’s Office of Defect Investigation.

“The petitioner asserts that hybrid and electric vehicles to which the standard does not apply should be found to contain a safety defect. In support of the petition, the petitioner includes findings contained in a bill introduced in the House of Representatives in 2009, the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, H.R. 734, 111th CONG. (2009).”

The passing of the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2011, says all vehicles should have a feature for “alerting blind and other pedestrians of the presence and operation of nearby motor vehicles to enable such pedestrians to travel safely and independently in urban, rural, and residential environments.”

Should the NHTSA agree and side with the petitioners, roughly 9.1 million cars across multiple manufacturers would be affected. These include Polestar, Tesla, Toyota, Nissan, BMW, Honda, and more.

Tesla’s Pedestrian Warning System

Tesla started installing their PWS in their vehicles in 2019. This was a mandatory change for Tesla, as both the US and EU passed laws requiring electric vehicles to make some kind of noise due to their quiet sound levels at slower speeds. The noise is played continuously until speeds of 19mph are reached, per the US regulation.

“The Pedestrian Warning System (PWS) is an audible tone played when the vehicle is moving slowly (up to 19 mph) in either Drive or Reverse,” Tesla said at the time in a memo to staff. “The sound is played via a speaker mounted in the front fascia and alerts nearby pedestrians of the car’s presence in low-speed situations.”

Tesla started manufacturing vehicles for this long before the regulations went into effect. Tesla enthusiast and YouTuber DÆrik noticed the speaker grill on the front underside of his 2018 Performance Model 3.

PWS Also Adds Boombox Feature

In classic Tesla and Elon Musk fashion, they went the extra mile and added some playful goodies for owners to get a laugh out of. They called this new feature “Boombox,” which allowed sounds to be played using the vehicle’s external speaker. For example, while in park or drive, the vehicle was able to fart, play music, and any noises the user uploaded.

Unfortunately, the NHTSA thought this was distracting and banned the feature while in drive. It's currently available in most regions around the world while the vehicle is parked.

If NHTSA requires Tesla to retroactively install PWS in their vehicles built before 2019, owners will at least have the Boombox feature to look forward to. During Tesla's 2022 holiday update, Tesla also added the ability to use Emissions Testing Mode through the Tesla app. If your vehicle is equipped with the PWS, then the vehicle will play the farting sound through its external speaker. Otherwise, it will be played through the internal speakers - which isn't quite as much fun

Tesla Smoking While Supercharging? A Look at What's Actually Happening

Hot_Engineering3140 on Reddit

Winter is here, and temperatures are dropping, so one of the most common Tesla questions is about to resurface.

If you’ve landed here after frantically searching about “smoke” coming from your Tesla while Supercharging, take a deep breath—it’s completely normal.

Tesla Smoking While Charging

If you’re Supercharging in freezing weather—even with preconditioning—you might notice steam rising from your Tesla. But rest assured, your car isn’t smoking.

Your Tesla’s heat pump is hard at work warming both the cabin and battery to keep you comfortable and ensure optimal charging temperatures. Over time, condensation and ice build-up in the heat exchanger coils.

Why Does It Happen?

When you reach a Supercharger with your vehicle, the heat pump is still running hot, but without the cold air from driving to keep the heat exchanger coils cool, the ice and condensation quickly start to evaporate—creating what looks like smoke.

Since this typically happens near the front of the vehicle, where a car would traditionally have an engine, new vehicle owners can be startled by the discovery. However, rest assured that it’s just water vapor and it’s completely normal in cold weather.

In fact, this behavior can be experienced in any EV with a heat pump in cold climates. So, if you saw steam coming out of your vehicle and panicked, don’t worry—you’re not alone.

Now that you know what’s happening, go ahead and Supercharge with confidence.

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Tesla Improves YouTube App With Smoother Playback

Not a Tesla App

Tesla made a lot of improvements in the 2024 Holiday Update, including more than 15 undocumented improvements that were included in the release. One of these was a stealthy performance improvement to the YouTube app.

Several people have mentioned they’ve seen improved performance on YouTube since this year’s Holiday Update - and there’s an interesting reason why.

YouTube Improvements

The improved YouTube performance in Tesla vehicles comes from an unexpected source—Tesla actually rolled back support for YouTube’s newer AV1 video encoding. Instead, vehicles now default to the older VP9 encoding standard.

While AV1 is highly efficient in terms of bandwidth, it requires considerably more processing power to decode and display videos. VP9, on the other hand, is less computationally demanding but uses more bandwidth to achieve the same video quality. This trade-off means smoother playback and better overall performance, even if it comes at the cost of slightly higher data usage.

Intel Inside

The VP9 video codec that the YouTube app is now using is much easier to decode, making it less taxing on the vehicle’s processor. This change is particularly beneficial for Tesla vehicles with Intel processors, which previously struggled to stream video at just 720p. When using AV1, these vehicles often experienced stuttering, sometimes forcing the YouTube app to automatically downgrade playback to 480p.

With this update, Intel-based Teslas should now be able to stream at 1080p smoothly. Streaming at 1440p is also possible, although occasional stutters still occur as the system keeps up with the decoding process.

Intel-based vehicles are the big winners with this change, but this appears to affect AMD Ryzen-based infotainment units as well, providing even smoother playback.

Chromium Web App

Tesla’s Theater apps aren’t native applications; instead, they run as chromeless web apps, leveraging the open-source browser built into Teslas known as Chromium (the open-source version of Chrome). Although this works quite well, there is a severe limitation - Chromium hardware acceleration isn’t supported on Linux, the operating system Tesla uses for their OS.

As a result, Tesla vehicles rely on software decoding instead of hardware decoding, which would otherwise handle video playback far more efficiently. A potential solution could be for Tesla to transition away from Chromium-based web apps in favor of a Mozilla Firefox-based browser, as Firefox does support hardware acceleration on Linux. This switch could also open the door to better streaming performance and the possibility of expanding Tesla’s in-car entertainment options.

However, Tesla’s choice of Chromium likely stems from Digital Rights Management (DRM) requirements for streaming services like Disney+ and Netflix, which rely on DRM-enabled playback. Firefox on Linux has had inconsistent support for DRM due to codec availability and variations in operating system versions.

We’re hopeful that Tesla will either adopt Firefox or develop a fully native application to improve video streaming, rather than continuing with the current web-based Tesla Theater. This shift could also pave the way for additional in-car applications built on Tesla’s native Linux environment—perhaps even reviving the long-rumored Tesla App Store.

Regardless, this update is a welcome improvement, particularly for YouTube, which remains one of the most widely used Theater Mode apps due to its accessibility, free content, and mix of short and long-form videos. It remains to be seen whether similar improvements are made for Netflix, Disney+, or other streaming platforms.

If you’ve noticed improved performance in Theater Mode, now you know why.

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