A tweet from Elon Musk indicating that Tesla might allow some owners who are testing a “Full Self-Driving” system to disable an alert that reminds them to keep their hands on the steering wheel has drawn attention from U.S. safety regulators.

In other news, Musk has urged a federal judge to shift a trial in a shareholder lawsuit out of San Francisco because he says negative local media coverage has biased potential jurors against him.

The tweet probe

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it asked Tesla for more information about the tweet. Last week, the agency said the issue is now part of a broader investigation into at least 14 Teslas that have crashed into emergency vehicles while using the Autopilot driver assist system.

Since 2021, Tesla has been beta-testing “Full Self-Driving” using owners who haven’t been trained on the system but are actively monitored by the company. Earlier this year, Tesla said 160,000, roughly 15% of Teslas now on U.S. roads, were participating. A wider distribution of the software was to be rolled out late in 2022.

Despite the name, Tesla still says on its website that the cars can’t drive themselves. Teslas using “Full Self-Driving” can navigate roads themselves in many cases, but experts say the system can make mistakes. “We’re not saying it’s quite ready to have no one behind the wheel,” CEO Musk said in October.

On New Year’s Eve, one of Musk’s most ardent fans posted on Twitter that drivers with more than 10,000 miles of “Full Self-Driving” testing should have the option to turn off the “steering wheel nag,” an alert that tells drivers to keep hands on the wheel.

Musk replied: “Agreed, update coming in Jan.”

It’s not clear from the tweets exactly what Tesla will do. But disabling a driver monitoring system on any vehicle that automates speed and steering would pose a danger to other drivers on the road, said Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing for Consumer Reports.

The trial to Texas?

In a filing submitted late Friday — less than two weeks before the trial was set to begin on Jan. 17 — Musk’s lawyers argue it should be moved to the federal court in the western district of Texas. That district includes the state capital of Austin, which is where Musk relocated his electric car company, Tesla, in late 2021.

The shareholder lawsuit stems from Musk’s tweets in August 2018 when he said he had sufficient financing to take Tesla private at $420 a share — an announcement that caused heavy volatility in Tesla’s share price.

In a victory for the shareholders last spring, Judge Edward Chen ruled that Musk’s tweets were false and reckless.

If moving the trial isn’t possible, Musk’s lawyers want it postponed until negative publicity regarding the billionaire’s purchase of Twitter has died down.

“For the last several months, the local media have saturated this district with biased and negative stories about Mr. Musk,” attorney Alex Spiro wrote in a court filing. Those news items have personally blamed Musk for recent layoffs at Twitter, Spiro wrote, and have charged that the job cuts may have even violated laws.

The shareholders’ attorneys emphasized the last-minute timing of the request, saying, “Musk’s concerns are unfounded and his motion is meritless.”

“The Northern District of California is the proper venue for this lawsuit and where it has been actively litigated for over four years,” attorney Nicholas Porritt wrote in an email.

The filing by Musk’s attorneys also notes that Twitter has laid off about 1,000 residents in the San Francisco area since he purchased the company in late October.

“A substantial portion of the jury pool … is likely to hold a personal and material bias against Mr. Musk as a result of recent layoffs at one of his companies as individual prospective jurors — or their friends and relatives — may have been personally impacted,” the filing said.

Musk has also been criticized by San Francisco’s mayor and other local officials for the job cuts, the filing said.