Tesla Recalls 600K Vehicles Over Fart, Bleating Goat Horn

PALO ALTO, CA — Tesla once again has recalled hundreds of thousands of vehicles, this time over a feature that allows the cars to play bleating goat and fart sounds outside of the vehicle.

The recall involves Tesla's so-called Boombox feature, which allows drivers to play "preset or custom sounds when the vehicle is in motion" through the vehicle's pedestrian warning system.

Electric and hybrid vehicles are required to have pedestrian warning systems because they're quieter than traditional vehicles with internal combustion engines.

Boombox can help make pedestrians more aware of a vehicle's presence, but a vehicle that uses Boombox while in motion could cause the warning system to fall out of compliance with safety regulations and increase the risk of a collision, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in its safety recall report dated Feb. 4.

The Boombox feature was included in a 2020 update. At the time, CEO Elon Musk tweeted drivers could change their horns to sound like a goat, snake, saxophone, fart or holiday jingle.

In a video posted on YouTube, a driver changes his turn signal to a fart sound. The car allowed for various different fart noises inside the vehicle, too, including "short shorts ripper," "falcon heavy" "ludicrous fart" and "neurastink," each with varying sounds.

Another video showed a driver using various horn sounds, including custom sounds, generic applause, a bleating goat, and even the song "Toss A Coin To Your Witcher" from the hit Netflix series "The Witcher."

Tesla voluntarily recalled and disabled the functionality in drive, neutral and reverse modes with a firmware update Jan. 29, the recall notice said. About 578,000 vehicles were included in the recall.

Tesla is not aware of any crashes, injuries or deaths related to the Boombox function, the notice said.

Owners received or will receive an over-the-air firmware update free of charge. Dealers were notified of the recall Feb. 7.

Affected vehicles include:

• Model S (2020-2022)
• Model X (2020-2022)
• Model 3 (2017-2022)
• Model Y (2020-2022)

Musk tweeted Saturday the "fun police made us do it (sigh)."

His company, which recently moved its headquarters from Palo Alto to Austin, Texas, has issued 11 recalls over the last three months, including four over the last two weeks. That includes more than 800,000 vehicles that were recalled last week because a chime sound didn't always play when the driver was unbuckled. Before that, Tesla, recalled nearly 54,000 vehicles that contained software that allowed vehicles to conduct dangerous "rolling stops" through stop signs.