Due to an inadequate font size on a warning light panel, the cars were recalled. Tesla is going to release a software update to fix the problem.
According to U.S. officials on Friday, Tesla is recalling around 2.2 million cars because the warning lighting panel’s font was too small to meet safety requirements.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration stated in a notice that “warning lights with a smaller font size can make critical safety information on the instrument panel difficult to read, increasing the risk of a crash.”
The recall is only one of many that Tesla has issued in recent years, which is a setback for the leading manufacturer of electric cars in the US. Another setback for Tesla came when the Safety Administration announced in a separate notice that an engineering analysis had been added to a U.S. government probe into steering problems that may have affected 334,000 Tesla vehicles.
More than 2,000 complaints concerning the 2023 Model Y and Model 3 vehicles’ loss of steering control were examined by the investigation, which was launched in July. Drivers of Teslas who filed complaints claimed that they either couldn’t spin the steering wheel or that it took more effort to do so. The majority of individuals who filed complaints regarding this problem stated that they had seen the alert “Steering assist reduced” either before to, during, or following a loss of steering control.
According to the agency, “some drivers reported that their steering started to feel ‘notchy’ or ‘clicky’ either before or shortly after the incident.” The regulator further stated that over 50 vehicles were towed from locations such as driveways, parking lots, roadsides, and crossroads, ostensibly due to steering-related problems, according to information provided by its office of defects investigation.
The safety administration stated that Tesla will be providing a free software update to address the problem. The models that are impacted are the Model S from 2012 to 2023, the Model X from 2016 to 2024, the Model 3 from 2017 to 2023, the Model Y from 2019 to 2024, and the Cybertruck from 2024.
When federal officials claimed that the company had not gone far enough to guarantee that drivers stayed alert when using a system that can steer, accelerate, and brake cars automatically, it was forced to recall more than two million vehicles in December, including its most well-known model, the Model Y sport-utility vehicle. Almost every vehicle the business had produced in the US since 2012 was included in that recall.
The Chinese authorities declared in January that Tesla was going to recall almost all of the 1.6 million vehicles it had sold there in order to modify the assisted-driving systems. It was a roadblock for the business, which is now the only Western automaker in the global electric car market capable of competing with Chinese producers. One of the biggest and fastest-growing markets for electric vehicles worldwide is China.
When a comment was requested, Tesla did not immediately answer.
Tens of thousands of Tesla customers had complained to the business about suspension or steering part problems, according to a December Reuters article. Reuters discovered that Tesla blamed drivers despite having been monitoring the problems for years and knowing more about them than it had told regulators.