Tesla Recalling Every Model S For Seat Belt Check
On Friday, Tesla announced a voluntary recall of every single damn Model S on the planet to check the front seatbelt installed on those cars. According to the automaker, one belt in a car that was sold in Europe wasn’t connected to an outboard lap pretensioner. The car was not involved in a crash, nor was anyone injured because of the defect.
According to Tesla, the automaker has inspected more than 3,000 Model S cars for similar faults and found none.
Regardless, the automaker said it would ask owners to bring in 90,000 Model S cars — literally, all of them — for inspection because having a seatbelt that doesn’t work is probably bad.
On its website, Tesla said owners can check to see if their seatbelt is at fault by pulling on the lap belt with the force of about 80 pounds. That’s roughly the amount of force needed to bend an iPhone.
Tesla says that even if the seat belt in your Model S can withstand your best tug-of-war efforts, you should still bring it into the dealer to have them look at it anyway.
Last month, Consumer Reports stripped Tesla of its “Recommended” rating due to concerns over the automaker’s reliability.
Roughly two-thirds of Teslas are sold in North America. The rest are probably in Norway and definitely not China.
More by Aaron Cole
Comments
Join the conversation
It shouldn't be too hard, they all end up back at the dealer every ninety days with problems anyway.
I'll bet the real reason is so they can modify the settings for the autopilot so that the idiots that are abusing it can't do it now or in the future if they upgrade and get it.
Every Tesla post brings out the haters, even when the company is clearly trying to do the right thing. As a fanboy, though, I wonder about the inconvenience and/or expense of taking your car to a semi-distant service center for this inspection. Their fleet is growing faster than the service centers, and that's become a real pain point, not to mention a concern for potential Model 3 owners.
Might be fun and games in an effort to bring up stock price (by showing how much they care, how responsible they are, and how humble). Doesn't look like it worked if that was the case. It is difficult for me to believe that they would have ownerdo their own check (with just 80#!) if it were a real risk. Doesn't a crash involve thousands of pounds? I would think the test of a bolt installed properly would involve a torque wrench. I just don't get this one.