Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Elon Musk says that Tesla cars will “soon” be able to talk to nearby pedestrians. In a tweet announcing the functionality, the CEO shared a short clip of a Model 3 driving past while its speaker plays a clip saying “Well don’t just stand there staring, hop in.” In his Tweet, Musk says, “Teslas will soon talk to people if you want. This is real.”
We already knew that Tesla has begun adding external speakers to its cars in order to comply with new safety regulations that require electric cars to produce artificial noise. Now it seems these speakers could be used for much more. In a follow-up tweet, Musk indicated that the newly-announced functionality could work with the car’s existing sentry mode alarm system which already uses the car’s…