Tesla's new feature to disable seat controls if 'excessive' changes done

Elon Musk-owned electric vehicle company Tesla's new vehicles rolling out of the factory will include a feature designed to prevent abuse of the seat adjustment controls. The new seats will track and measure the amount of adjustments users make and will disable the controls if they detect "excessive" changes, The Verge reported. The feature was first identified by @greentheonly, an anonymous hacker and researcher, and subsequently covered by Jalopnik.

Tesla recently began installing new seat motors in some of its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, in addition to the seats it gets from China's Yangfeng and the ones it makes in-house. The new motors come from Brose, a 110-year-old German company that supplies a lot of components to the automotive industry. The difference between the Brose seats and Yangfeng and Tesla's are what @greentheonly calls "'seat abuse' metrics". This functionality will issue warnings to the users if they are making too many adjustments and eventually will disable the seat controls if the warnings are unheeded. Apparently, the car The many times users move their seats forward and backward, as opposed to lumbar support controls -- though the feature could eventually include those controls as well.