One of the new Model S’s spotlight features is its ability to shift automatically into Park, Reverse and Drive. This feature has been exclusive to the redesigned Model S so far, which does not have a gear stalk, but Elon has now said that the Auto Shift feature will become available to all Teslas with FSD in the future.
The car will shift into the gear that it feels you’d like to use while giving you the ability to override it if needed. The feature can be turned on and off in settings, and it is currently limited to selecting the gear when the car is coming out of park. That means that the car won’t shift for you at traffic lights, complex turns or backing into parking spots.
Current Tesla models will of course keep the gear stalk they have today, so it’s not clear whether the on screen shifting will become available on current vehicles as well.
Tesla likes to take hardware features and implement them via software. We’ve seen this numerous times before with Tesla not implementing rain or light sensors and instead opting for cameras, adding software based HomeLink controls and more recently removing radar and replacing it with pure vision. We believe Tesla will even add an app for SiriusXM to all Teslas in the future. In most cases Tesla has done well when transitioning to software-based features and it has resulted in reduced costs for Teslas and simplicity for the driver.
You don’t even need to touch the shifter in new S. Auto detect direction will come as an optional setting to all cars with FSD.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 19, 2021
Keeping this in mind, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see new Model 3s and Model Ys come off the line without a gear stalk in the near future.
If you’d like more information on Auto Shift, be sure to check out our story about how the Auto Shift feature works.
