Electrek reports that Tesla is bringing the Green Light Chime feature to more owners, promising to soothe the road rage of the majority of traffic participants. Previously limited to customers with the FSD beta, the system recognizes when a traffic light has changed and gives drivers an audible alert when it turns green.
(via Electrek)
The good news is that with the 2022.20 firmware release, Tesla is rolling out the feature to more vehicles with FSD hardware.
While Green Light Chime may only be available for vehicles with HW 3.0 hardware, at least drivers won’t have to pay extra to ‘unlock’ this new feature (or buy the more expensive FSD kit).
The official documentation states that to activate the feature, go to ‘Control → Autopilot → Green Light Beep’ to enable it. The system will then beep when the traffic light turns green.
If you are waiting behind another vehicle, the vehicle will play a tone after moving forward — unless ‘Traffic-Aware Cruise Control’ or Autosteer auto-steering is enabled.
(From: Tesla official website | PDF)
Even so, Tesla emphasizes that the beep is designed to be a notification only, and that it is still the driver’s responsibility to look around and take over the decision.
Electrek’s Fred Lambert points out that sometimes you can be so focused on talking to people that you miss traffic light transitions.
But after experiencing the feature for a while, he finds it quite useful — hopefully, it will be effective in reducing road rage caused by slow starts from the car in front.
Incidentally, the Audi e-tron’s “green light countdown” feature is pretty cool, too. When waiting at a red light, a countdown will appear on the dashboard to tell the driver when the light will turn green.
Unfortunately, this feature is only available in cities with intelligent traffic signal systems (like Sacramento). But as the infrastructure becomes more widespread, Tesla may be able to introduce it in future updates as well.
