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Tesla vehicles boast some of the biggest embedded in-dash screens on the market and practically beg you to sit back, Netflix, and chill. And actually, that’s a feature on the horizon, said Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Twitter.
“Ability to stream YouTube & Netflix when car is stopped coming to your Tesla soon!” the technology visionary tweeted on Saturday, adding that the cabin environment offers an “amazingly immersive, cinematic feel due to the comfy seats & surround sound audio.”
Streaming Netflix on the embedded-display screen has the promise to make waiting at stop-lights a little more bearable for the driver (for everyone else anxious not to miss the light? Not so much). But you know what’s even better than streaming Netflix when the car is stopped? Streaming while the car is driving itself!
That’s also a feature Musk alleges is coming to Tesla models—just as soon as regulators “approve” full self-driving vehicles, of course.
“When full self-driving is approved by regulators, we will enable video while moving,” he added as a comment on his own tweet.
This tantalizing promise is generating excitement amongst the Tesla fan base—not to mention headlines. But temper expectations. Musk is light on details, such as when the company will be granted this approval by regulators.
In fact, there is no such thing as receiving regulatory approval for self-driving cars at the federal level, because regulations for self-driving cars do not exist. At present, the Department of Transportation and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has published only non-regulatory guidance for the development and deployment of self-driving vehicles. Even assessing the safety of autonomous testing technology is voluntary and self-reported by manufacturers.
However, in Tesla’s home state, the California Department of Motor Vehicles published permit requirements for deployment of self-driving vehicles last year. But the list is long and requires things like a “remote operator of the vehicle who is available at all times that the vehicle is in operation, including providing a contact telephone number for the manufacturer” where a “remote operator” is a natural person who: possesses the proper class of license for the typeof test vehicle being operated,” and the company’s promise to “continuously monitor the status of the vehicle and the two-way communication link while the autonomous test vehicle is being operated without a driver.”
That might be hard to do at scale, not to mention submitting the mountains of data, documentation, and procedures regarding safe operation of the vehicle in autonomous mode.
But in any case, Tesla has not submitted an application to California DMV to obtain the necessary permit to deploy a self-driving vehicle, confirmed Marty Greenstein, Public Information Officer for the California DMV.
“There is a regulatory framework in place to make self-driving technology commercially available. No one has applied for it,” he explained in a phone call with FORBES. “They do have a permit to test, but do not have a permit for driverless vehicle testing or deployment to commercialize it.”
Should they submit the paperwork tomorrow, the application undergo evaluation by the autonomous vehicle testing team at the DMV, and given that it would be the first of its kind, it could take a while to get approval. And then they’d need to do the same in every other state.
That means consumers probably won’t be streaming Netflix while the car is in motion anytime soon. At least, not from the driver’s seat.
Many commercially available vehicles are equipped with 4G LTE communications that would enable passengers to stream video to mobile devices while the car is in motion. And in many models, if those mobile devices are mirrored onto a rear-seat entertainment system, whatever is on those screens can also be seen in the embedded in-dash display, although not while the vehicle is in motion. This means if you’re stopped at a red light, guess what you could theoretically start seeing? Yup, Netflix.
