The electric car manufacturer Tesla had to issue a massive recall this month to fix faulty hood latches that can open while its cars are driving. The problem affects more than 1.8 million cars, which means it’s slightly smaller than the recall in December that applied to more than 2 million Teslas.
The problem, according to the official National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Part 573 safety recall report, affects model year 2021–2024 Model 3s (built between September 21, 2020, and June 2, 2024), model year 2021–2024 Model Ss (built between January 26, 2021, and July 15, 2024), model year 2021–2024 Model Xs (built between August 18, 2021, and July 15, 2024), and model year 2020–2024 Model Ys (built between January 9, 2020, and July 15, 2024).
The problem first became apparent to Tesla in March of this year after complaints about unintended hood opening from Chinese customers. By April, it had identified the problem as deformation of the hood latch switch, “which could prevent the customer from being notified about an open hood state.”
Although the problem is with the hood latch, as with many Tesla safety recalls, the problem can be fixed with an over-the-air software patch. The new software is able to detect if the hood is open and, if so, will display a warning to the driver to alert them to stop their vehicle and secure the hood.
The new software is able to detect if the hood is open and, if so, will display a warning to the driver to alert them to stop their vehicle and secure the hood
This should not be legal. They should be forced to recall vehicles and replace the faulty part instead of kindly asking drivers to pull over when the part fails.
The shit this company gets away with is astounding.
Driving on the highway
Hood pops open. Can’t see anything. Try to brake but crash.
⚠️ Warning! Your hood is open. Please pull over in a safe location and secure your hood.
Tesla: OTA update successful
Yup. No reason to rewrite the playbook.
“Full self driving” detects an imminent collision of it’s own doing. Car beeps and shuts off “full self driving”
Human was “in control” at the time of the crash, not our fault.
Human was supposed to be in control the whole time. In a Tesla and in basically any car, very limited exceptions apply. If some asshole goes to sleep at the wheel that’s the asshole’s fault.
It’s not the actual latch that’s faulty, but the warning the driver should get, if they haven’t closed the frunk properly.
It’s pretty tough to say without looking at comparable recall rates for other companies. My Toyota Corolla had two recalls that I know about while I owned it, and Toyota is known for their reliability. Tesla is just always in the news because they’re always in the news.
To be fair, it’s not an issue with just Tesla, but basically all modern software. The end user has become the beta tester.
Microswitch lever fatigue is what this sounds like and it’s really not the kind of thing that a QA team could ever detect without years of testing. This is just how it’ll go as we add more bells and whistles to all our cars. More obscure new issues will be identified years down the line and added to institutional knowledge for future use.
The latch is fault, and so is the sensor. Sensor doesn’t go off when the latch starts to fail from deformation.
According to the description, it’s just the sensor, not the latch. The microswitch has a lever like many do and that lever can become bent if damaged which would prevent it from warning the user if they failed to latch the hood. Most older cars just had a secondary latch so if you failed to latch it completely, at least the secondary one would catch it…
This right here is why there should be a distinction between software updates and physical recalls. Calling this a recall without actually taking the product in and fixing the product is really deceptive.
That’s not what they’re saying. It’s essentially a “door ajar” warning. The sensor is what’s failing, rather than the physical part.
Oh so here’s a fun thing. All American corporations have this level of freedom. We’re just paying extra attention to Tesla because their CEO can’t keep himself out of politics and the news. Ever notice you only see the CEO of GM/Stellantis/Ford when it’s a crisis or a new CEO? That’s how it works in a functional business. They aren’t any less shady, they’re just better at brand and scandal management.
Ford did this. On multiple years of some vehicles the fuel injector can crack and leak fuel onto the engine and lead to a fire. Their fix is to put in a fucking drain tube to drain the fuel away if that happens rather than replace the faulty part. I’m wondering if there are any legal options to make them just replace the part rather than their half-ass non-fix.
What difference does it make if the problem is solved…? Asking customers to bring their cars in and have a latch replaced unnecessarily is super inconvenient.
I would say more annoying is to getting those alerts more and more frequently. According to the article this is a software “fix” for the lock banding and stopping functioning.
According to the article this is a software “fix”
Exactly. “Fix” being the keyword here. If you have evidence otherwise, please feel free to share with the class.
Personally, I don’t like having to take my car into the shop for no reason, so I don’t appreciate the suggestion.
It literally states the program is due to a deformation of the switch, a physical issue.
I’m sure there are ways to safely engineer around it. I don’t trust any American manufacturer to do so. What guarantee do we have that it won’t continue deforming further after the fix? What happens to the patched sensor software if it does occur?
Do you unironically trust Musk enough to not open your vehicles hood at 80mph?
Really not sure why so many people on this post are having trouble understanding that concept. Maybe they want to justify their $80k paperweight lmao.
It literally states the program is due to a deformation of the switch, a physical issue.
It also literally states that the software update will fix it. You can literally fix hardware issues with software. Could be as simple as recalibrating the switch, I don’t know.
What guarantee do we have that it won’t continue deforming further after the fix?
What guarantee do you have that replacement hardware would permanently solve the problems? There simply are no guarantees.
Do you unironically trust Musk enough to not open your vehicles hood at 80mph?
I don’t drive 80MPH. Regardless Musk is the CEO, not an engineer, and is not as involved in day to day operations as you think he is.
Maybe they want to justify their $80k paperweight lmao.
Mine cost ~$30k so I can’t speak to those folks.
