At the end of a week that began with mass layoffs, Tesla Motors has agreed to recall every single Cybertruck made so far — just short of 4,000 of the butt-ugly things — to fix a problem with the trucks’ accelerator pedals, which could get stuck.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced the recall in a notice on its website. The notice said the pad on the accelerator pedal can come loose and get stuck in the trim above the pedal, which is a problem if you do not actually want to keep going faster and faster. Fortunately, there have been no reported accidents due to the defect.
The notice adds that even if the accelerator pedal becomes stuck, applying the brakes will “cut drive torque … and continued application of the brake pedal will bring the vehicle to a stop as quickly as if the accelerator pedal was not pressed.”
That’s a good thing about how EVs work: The regenerative braking system is integrated with the controls for the electric motor(s), so braking cuts power going to the wheels (and uses the energy to recharge the battery a bit), with the brake discs on the wheels also bringing you to a stop.
The engine control units in virtually all gas-powered cars built after 2000 also automatically disengage the throttle when the brakes are pressed, avoiding embarrassing scenarios where you might be fighting a stuck throttle with your brakes. Didn’t that happen all the time in old TV shows?
That said, you don’t want the goddamn accelerator in any vehicle getting stuck in the first place, since any unwanted acceleration is not good. The cause of the problem, the New York Times explains (gift link), was
soap being used as lubricant during assembly at Tesla’s factory in Austin, Texas. The residual soap “reduced the retention of the pad to the pedal,” the agency said.
Tesla first received a customer complaint on March 31, and by April 12 it had completed its assessment and voluntarily recalled the affected vehicles, the notice said.
Tesla will replace or repair accelerator pedals on all Cybertrucks at no cost to the owners, as of course it should.
This is just the latest fuckbungle for Tesla, which has had all sorts of trouble in the past year, including a whole bunch of recalls, although many of the recalls were handled by sending a software update to the vehicles, not requiring owners to bring them to a service center like this brake problem does.
In February, it recalled more than two million vehicles because the font size on a warnings lights panel was too small. In December, the company recalled more than two million vehicles to change its Autopilot software to provide more prominent alerts that remind drivers to keep their hands on the wheel when using the system, which can perform certain driving functions.
And of course there’s still the problem where some drivers think that software systems named “Autopilot” and “Full Self Driving” actually mean they can let the car drive itself, where on earth did they get that silly idea?
Tesla earlier this month settled a wrongful-death lawsuit brought by the family of Apple engineer Walter Huang, who died in a 2018 crash that occurred when his Model X crashed into a highway barrier while Autopilot was turned on. The National Transportation Safety Board’s 2020 investigation said the software was at least partly at fault: Huang may have been distracted and playing a game on his phone, but the investigation also found that the car’s “forward collision warning system did not provide an alert, and its automatic emergency braking system did not activate,” contributing to the crash. The settlement means Tesla can avoid full public disclosure of all the technical evidence and internal communications, some of which already were referenced in the plaintiffs’ filings, as well as the potentially disastrous precedent in other lawsuits if the case had gone against Tesla.
In any case, it’s very important to remember that any problems with Tesla cars are the fault of the drivers, even when it’s very obviously a factory defect.
Oh, yes, and then there’s the guy whose Cybertruck just plain wouldn’t start — not even the information center screen in the dash — after he took it through a car wash and returned home, but that was solved by a reboot of the vehicle’s computer system. Which took over five hours to complete, during which the vehicle looked dead. But don’t worry, that too was owner error! He didn’t read in the manual that you have to put the truck in “car wash mode” first, and that you should avoid washing a Cybertruck in direct sunlight (yes for real) or it will turn into a 1974 AMC Gremlin (we made that up).
How else is Tesla fully self-screwed? Let us review! In addition to the recalls and the lawsuits, the company has seen its sales decline as other companies have entered the EV business. While EV sales are still growing overall, but more slowly, Tesla actually sold 20 percent fewer cars in the first quarter of this year than in the last quarter of 2023.
On top of that, Tesla is getting creamed by Chinese manufacturer BYD, whose inexpensive but pretty good cars have been selling like crazy not only in China but also in Europe. To address the sales decline, Tesla has sharply cut prices, but the fact remains that apart from the Cybertruck, a decidedly niche vehicle, Tesla hasn’t brought out any new models for the general market since 2020.
To fight off the Chinese competition, Tesla had been planning to introduce a new, affordable compact EV this year, the Model 2, which would be priced around $25,000. However, Reuters reported two weeks ago that Musk had abruptly cancelled Model 2 development and would instead shift the company’s emphasis to building self-driving taxis and all the systems and software for those. Musk briefly stayed a drop in Tesla stock prices by claiming on Twitter that “Reuters is lying,” but since then, he hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with details on what’s actually up with the Model 2, leading to still more jitters among big investors.
In the middle of all that, Tesla is also asking shareholders to approve a $56 billion-with-a-b compensation package for Musk, after a judge threw out an earlier version of the same package in a ruling in January. That vote is scheduled for the company’s annual meeting on June 13, which we assume will also be when Musk finally announces for sure whether the Model 2 is still going forward. Then again, he might just as well announce that a new software update for all Teslas on the road will make them drive into the sea if he isn’t named Donald Trump’s runningmate.
Today’s announced recall of the Cybertruck is the cherry atop that shit sundae, or so it seems; we suppose a whole lot more can still go wrong at Tesla between now and June.
[NHTSA / NYT gift link / CNBC / Jalopnik]
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