apparently this is a problem...

[Mike Mercury]

"Seat Abuse Metrics"

Tesla has a new feature that will disable your seat controls if you keep messing with them

https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/31/2...lock-out-brose

Tesla’s new vehicles rolling out of the factory will include a bizarre 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 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.

If that sounds weird and annoying, keep in mind, we’re talking about a lot of fiddling with the seat controls. The first warning — “Excessive use of seat track motor detected” — comes after 90 seconds of use within a 5-minute period of time. If you decide to say “screw it” and keep messing with the controls for an additional 30 seconds, the car will disable the seat control tracker altogether with a warning against further “excessive use.”

(For anyone with trouble imagining under what circumstances someone would be screwing around with their seat controls for a full two minutes, allow me to introduce you to a concept known as “children.”)

In a direct message on Twitter, @greentheonly said they discovered the new feature while scanning Tesla’s latest firmware releases in order to compare them to old releases and see what new functionalities were coming. The hacker also had some theories on why Tesla decided on including the new seat control protections:

1. their historical replacement pattern show that motors fail often.

2. they are using worse motors at the factory now, so added this check into factory firmware first.

I’m not sure what the rate of use is for a burned-out seat motor, but Tesla must have some idea if they’re installing these weird new behavior trackers. As a person married to another person who is much shorter than myself, I know that I would be very annoyed if I got locked out of my seat controls. This would likely prevent me from driving my car altogether.

But as @greentheonly observes, this must be a real thing; otherwise, why would Tesla spend the time and energy tracking it and deciding when it makes sense to curtail its use? “[E]ither way 2 minutes out of 5 seems to be a decent amount,” they noted, “so we are not talking about ‘10 seconds and you are out.’”

[Rodnok1]

Having cars that seat motors broke on and were made of gold apparently from replacement costs i could see a lock out lets say for 5 or 10 minutes or an over ride code.
Then again for the cost of Tesla pretty much everything should be bullet proof.
Can you imagine vehicle having to be towed when little Billy had seat jammed full forward and up and it couldn't be driven. I might be upset.

[Aerovette]

I see it as a way to tout impressive distances without the seat controls knocking 10 miles off every time someone moves the seat.

"Billy stop it. We have 3 miles before the next charging station and we won't make it if you move that seat again".

[Bill]

Why I gotta get blamed for everything? I wasn't even there! The check's in the mail! I'm innocent, I tell ya!

[Norm]

Is that the same meme crazy girl?

[Mike Mercury]

Originally Posted by Norm

Is that the same meme crazy girl?

I believe so.