Tesla might launch a voice assistant soon

Hey Elon, can you open the front trunk please? (We're joking, it won't be called Elon. Hopefully.)
By Stan Schroeder  on 
Tesla Model 3 interior
No manual input required, just voice. Credit: Tesla

Tesla might be working on its own version of Siri.

Tesla hacker @greentheonly shared the news (via Teslarati) after finding evidence for it in Tesla's upcoming 2024.14.3 update. Posting on Wednesday, they claim they found the "beginning of what looks like 'tesla voice assistant' that would be activated by a wakeword," meaning the vehicle would always be listening for it. Yes, just like Apple's "Hey Siri."

According to the leaker, the new voice assistant would be narrated by the "Jenny Neutral" voice by Microsoft, though there's no word on what it might be called. We also know nothing about the assistant's features.

Tesla vehicles already have voice controls, activated by pressing the right scroll button on the steering wheel, but there's no way to activate those via a spoken keyword, and the functionality is limited to fairly simple commands.

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Tesla already announced a slew of new features that are coming to its cars via an upcoming "spring update," including a revamped UI, a hands-free trunk opening functionality, automatic shifting, and the ability to preview Sentry Mode recordings on the phone.

But @greentheonly shared a few more features that haven't been officially announced by Tesla. These include support for Amazon Music, more options for the Driver Profiles, including more restricted profiles than what's currently available, and new Track Mode windows with new settings.

Finally, they claim that two new "Wishbone" wheel designs will become available for the new Model 3, in 19 and 20-inch sizes.

We don't know when the new features will become available, but Tesla did call this a "spring" update, so it should happen fairly soon.

Topics Tesla

Stan Schroeder
Stan Schroeder
Senior Editor

Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.


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