Tesla is really in a bad way lately, with reports of shrinking demand for its cars in the U.S. market similarly dragging down the automaker’s market share, and a stock price that’s struggled to stay afloat so far this year.
Now it faces a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recall for 1.8 million Model 3 and Model S electric sedans and Model X and Model Y electric SUVs over a risk of the hood not staying properly latched
Back in March 2024, Tesla started receiving customer complaints about potential issues with vehicle front hood or frunk latches operating as intended.
Tesla immediately launched an investigation at its Chinese manufacturing facility, and in mid-April, the automaker discovered “latch switch deformation, which could prevent the customer from being notified of an open hood state,” according to the NHTSA documentation.
Tesla discovered abnormalities “were higher in China for reasons unknown, as compared to lower rates of occurrence in markets in Europe and North America.”
Tesla conducted further engineering studies of the issue last month, and last week the automaker voluntarily decided to issue a recall through NHTSA. So far, Tesla notes only “three warranty claims or field reports for U.S. vehicles” that could be related to the recall.
Luckily so far, Tesla and NHTSA claim to be unaware of any crashes, injuries, or major incidents caused by the frunk latch issue.
The recall impacts 2017-2024 Model 3 vehicles manufactured between September 6, 2017 and July 15, 2024 that are equipped with a hood latch produced in China, and all 2013 to 2024 Model S, 2016 to 2024 Model X, and 2020 to 2024 Model Y vehicles in the U.S.
The update rolls out to an exact total of 1,850,363 vehicles produced, but only 1 percent are estimated to potentially have an issue. The update will be automatically installed on future production cars.
The recall fix involves a software update for impacted vehicles, labeled release 2024.20.3.
Tesla claims it, and future firmware releases, should now detect the open hood and alert the customer through the vehicle’s user interface with a notification of the hood being open. How this isn’t already some sort of automatic alert on Tesla vehicles is for anybody to guess.
Obviously, the hood flying open while driving would not be ideal or safe, so it’s good there’s at least a potential warning ahead of time now.
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Tom
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In the new age of “bafflement”, more and more of these screwball experts are simply baffled about everything.
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aaron
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but they can tell us what happened hundred or thousands of years ago
go figure
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