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.
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.
Yeah but turning off assists the split second before a crash is a bullshit way to try and claim it wasn’t involved in the crash. Tesla was caught doing that a couple years back.
Yeah, that’s just fucking lying to the public.
This is an unrealistic standard. We are not robots. We didn’t come with a standby mode unless we’ve actually worked on silently watching a vista while being ready to act at a moment’s notice. And honestly, even the people we pay to do that have problems with inattentiveness and falling asleep.
We need to jump from actually controlling the vehicle to a self driving system good enough to take a nap in. The middle part is extremely dangerous to humans.
True. That’s why driving with assist sytems does not make driving more safe.
Get a Mercedes. They guarantee you some (limited, but still) hands-free time in the driver seat.
I disagree, even the middle part is safer than before. It’s a net positive and will continue to improve.
It’s safer as a backup system yes. As a nudge in the wheel near the lines, as a light brake before the AEB has to kick in. Tesla’s is not safe. It makes people look elsewhere for engagement when the car is not ready to take full control.
Just like the rumored cut all driver aids instant before crash to say it wasn’t due to any of the auto pilot features
The only way the hood can pop open on the highway is if it was open before you departed, so the warning would alert the user just like the switch did before they can drive to a dangerous speed.
It’s not the actual latch that’s faulty, but the warning the driver should get, if they haven’t closed the frunk properly.
does tesla just not bother to hire a qa team or something?
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.
Toyota is also known for their reluctance to issue recalls even though they REALLY need to do a recall because they don’t want to tarnish their reputation for reliability. Often waiting until the government forces them to issue the recall. I’d much rather the Ford approach and just issue recalls like candy on Halloween. Sure having 700 recalls sucks, but driving a defective car sucks even more.
Cheaper to just let a bunch of people get injured/killed
Not always. But yes, there is a price.
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.
To be fair, it’s not an issue with just Tesla, but basically all modern software. The end user has become the beta tester.
This isn’t software, it’s a car. It’s highly regulated. NHTSA doesn’t care if it’s a software issue.
LOL wat? You don’t think Teslas are running any kind of software?
Recalls aren’t uncommon. You just don’t hear about most because it’s not trendy.
One of my vehicles is at risk of catching fire. The other is at risk of its axle falling off.
These are major brands, within the past 5 years.
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…
Not sure what description you’re talking about, but I’m basing this on the article itself.
Even in your reply…you say the problem is the actual latch being physically damaged.
It’s the owner that’s faulty for buying one in the first place.
I mean, this can happen with any car that has a hinged hood (so nearly all cars)
Is a frunk a front trunk, or is that a typo?
Front trunk, yeah
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.
Yeah, but that’s how it works according to the NHTSA.
It should be a traditional recall though.
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.
Isn’t a sensor… A physical part???
Not if it can be fixed with an update, that’s a software issue.
But it’s not. If you read the article it literally states it’s due to not closing because of deformation of the hood latch switch. Which is a physical object. Sure, you can get a notification now that the thing is open, but guess what, if it flops open while driving, I’ll probably already know that.
And if you’d read it, you’d notice they specifically say it’s the hood latch switch, and not the latch itself, that is deformed. It doesn’t pop open on its own, it falsely detects that the hood is properly closed when it actually isn’t, so it doesn’t warn the driver to go close it before driving off.
There’s no need to do a physical recall if Tesla can bodge some other way to detect the hood is still open and tell the driver to close it.
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.
Each country has it’s own authorities. Hopefully they don’t get away everywhere…
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.
Not even.
Ford’s fix required them to physically add parts.
This is more like if Ford just wrote a software update to detect the crack and leak, then pop up a warning that you need to pull over and “secure” the fuel.
Using software to patch design flaws seems to be a recurring cost-cutting pattern these days. Look at the MCAS of the Boeing 737 Max. This is how civilizations go to shit.
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.
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 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 you have that replacement hardware would permanently solve the problems? There simply are no guarantees.
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.
Mine cost ~$30k so I can’t speak to those folks.
Sometimes you can.
It’s common to use a Hall effect sensor for positioning. It gives off an analog value. You might be able adjust the signal threshold that you consider to be “open” or “closed” in software.
Further, this is probably something that you just don’t spend a bunch of time engineering. Pick a value that’s well with your tolerance range and move onto harder problems. When a problem comes up, you can fine turn the range.
Exactly.