Tesla To Voluntarily Recall Every Model S Because One Seat Belt Came Apart (jalopnik.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this month, a passenger in a Tesla Model S turned to talk to people in the back seat, and her seat belt somehow disconnected itself from the front seat. According to a Tesla spokesperson, "The seat belt is anchored to the outboard lap pretensioner through two anchor plates that are bolted together. The bolt that was supposed to tie the two anchors together wasn't properly assembled." Though the company hasn't been able to replicate the issue on any other cars, Tesla is issuing a recall for roughly 90,000 Model S vehicles so they can test that bolt.

Comments

Introduction

[tgrigsby]

Hello, my name is Elon "Setting the bar so high my competitors throw up from the altitude" Musk. Nice to meet you.

Re: Introduction

[Junta]

I think even '$100 a pop' would be insanely high cost to assign a quick check of a seatbeat assembly that can be probably done in a minute in the parking lot. A typical oil change costs under $20 and that actually involves moving a car into the service bay, using up a filter and oil, getting under the car/jacking up the car, the associated liability risk associated with doing all that, and time to get the oil out. Compared to that opening the door and checking out a seatbelt attachment is nothing.

That's also assuming 100% participation rate in the recall. For run of the mill recalls, participation rate generally peaks no higher than 75%. I would expect this one to be even lower since most folks will feel assured with a self-check and not bother.

Re:Introduction

[slazzy]

Reminds me of the movie fight club where the guy supposedly worked for a car company, and part of his job was working with formulas to determine if the cost of lawsuits from deaths would be higher than the recall cost. Nice to see a car company obviously concerned with safety first.

Re:Introduction

[Guy Harris]

Reminds me of the movie fight club where the guy supposedly worked for a car company, and part of his job was working with formulas to determine if the cost of lawsuits from deaths would be higher than the recall cost.

At least according to a Mother Jones story from 1977, something similar did happen at Ford, although it wasn't based on lawsuit costs, it was based on a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration figure for the dollar value of a human life.

Re: Introduction

[Richard Dick Head]

I think you're underestimating the marketing opportunity of a recall. They're just going to put a wrench on the bolt, that costs nothing. Yeah, some minimal labor costs. BUT...who goes through the pain of taking their car to a dealership without getting everything else it needs serviced? Or just buying a whole new car, which isn't uncommon, especially if someone can afford the 80+k to buy one in the first place.

Something tells me Tesla will come ahead on this one.

Re: Introduction

[hawguy]

It seems a bit... Insane though. 90,000 at a measly $100 a pop (labour, booking etc) = $9m minimum. If they keep that up, they'll eventually eat into the profit so bad they fail. Last I checked, they're not technically profitable as it is without subsidies.

You mean for only $9 million dollars, they can get 90,000 people to voluntarily come into a dealership where they are exposed to marketing collateral and a chance to talk with a sales person. Sounds like a pretty inexpensive marketing campaign.

Re: Introduction

[tlhIngan]

I think you're underestimating the marketing opportunity of a recall. They're just going to put a wrench on the bolt, that costs nothing. Yeah, some minimal labor costs. BUT...who goes through the pain of taking their car to a dealership without getting everything else it needs serviced? Or just buying a whole new car, which isn't uncommon, especially if someone can afford the 80+k to buy one in the first place.

Something tells me Tesla will come ahead on this one.

Well, Tesla is quite different - you can buy an annual $600/year service plan that covers everything except tires, and for a bit more, you can have it that Tesla will come to you to service it.

The thing is, an ICE takes a lot of maintenance - between stuff like engine oil and other fluids, there's a bit of tuning to keep things in shape. An EV is different - there's actually very little in the power train that requires regular servicing - so much so that users may go for years between tune-ups (Tesla recommends users come in at least once a year to get service and replace consumables like brakes). Most ICE service schedules range from every 3 months to every 6 months.

And yes, Tesla will probably come out ahead - I mean, look at the other recalls out there - between Toyota's sudden acceleration, GM's ignition switch and many others, either the company didn't act until forced to, or they still don't act, even when there are multiple deaths attributed to the flaw.

So they get a lot of PR over it - "we're recalling every Tesla S to make sure the seatbelts are bolted on correctly, even though there was only one failure and everyone lived, and the government isn't making us do it, but we will because it's the right thing to do."

Re: Introduction

[smaddox]

What we're seeing here is the difference between a company run by engineers (generate profit by solving problems) versus a company run by MBA's (generate profit by cutting corners^W costs).

Re: Introduction

[imboboage0]

As a professional auto tech, I'll confirm this. The shop may make some money on the parts if it's an expensive oil change on a luxury vehicle, but your base oil change is really a loss for the company as a whole. The tech makes a few bucks (7-8 in my case, USD), but it's really not worth my time if I have something better to do. This is especially true when you come across customers that you know from the very beginning are there for nothing more than the oil change special.

Re: Introduction

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Per WindBourne's recommendation, I award you one million virtual mod points. ... I mean, I know the mod points are already virtual in the first place, but that's not what I meant. At least I didn't say cyber mod points.

Carry on.

Re: Introduction

[Solandri]

As much as I'd like to believe that (I'm an engineer), I think what we're really seeing is the difference between a company which sells $90,000 cars vs companies which sell $25,000 cars. A recall which costs only 0.11% of your gross revenue is a lot easier to order than one which costs 0.4% of your gross revenue. Excluding R&D costs, the difference in profit margin exaggerates the difference even more. The recall cost is probably on the order of 0.5% of the profit margin for Tesla, but would be 10% of the profit margin for a typical (non-luxury) automaker. Heck, BMW covers all your maintenance costs for 4 years - you can do stuff like that if all you sell are luxury cars.

Re: Introduction

[ILongForDarkness]

I see your argument but suspect you are wrong in Tesla's case. Don't have it handy but my understanding is that Tesla is barely profitable and at that only profitable because of incentives. ~$20 a car (more if they do as some say and actually drive to you do to the service) might very well be well into the single digits of their profit. They want to scale up which would make them profitable. Better to find and figure out how to fix production issues now with 90k cars in your fleet vs when you are making 90k cars a month. I'll be more impressed if they are still doing this when they are selling 1M cars a year.

Smart move.

[Radical Moderate]

Assuming it costs $20 to check each car (about a half hour of mechanic time) that's less than $2 million. They're getting a ton of good publicity, good will from their customers--we like to buy stuff from companies that don't want to kill us--and if one of these belts fails and leads to a death they could easily lose that much in just one lawsuit.

It's as if Musk is asking himself "How would GM handle this?", then doing the opposite.

Re: Smart move.

[cbhacking]

Recalls are usually checked at routine maintenance time, too. My Subaru (I'd love a Tesla, but they don't suit my driving needs) got a couple of minor repairs - nothing likely to be life-threatening, just stuff that would probably cost them more to repair if they ignored it - for free when I took it in for its scheduled maintenance.

Now, Teslas don't need a lot of servicing, but they do get some. I'm sure some people will schedule a special service time to have the seatbelt checked, but for most people they'll probably just give the belt a good tug / look at and poke the bolt, conclude that it's fine, and forget about it until the next time they take their car in for routine maintenance. At that time, the tech will spend the extra few minutes - highly unlikely to average anywhere near half an hour - to check it themselves.

Still, good on Tesla for doing this. Remember that, for people who bring in their car *just* for this recall, there's a lot of overhead and it ends up costing much more than just the tech's time. Still probably not a major amount, even if a lot of people do participate in the recall outside their scheduled maintenance cycle, but non-trivial.

Re:Good of them

[nomel]

I think it's more that they can't afford to have something go wrong because they know the press will rip them apart. This will cause hundreds of shit journalists to delete the sensational clickbait articles they were working on, and gives huge cred. to their quality.

If a seatbelt in a Toyota comes apart, nobody gives a shit, and you couldn't pay a reporter to make a story about it. Is there some name for this type of "quality curse", similar to what Apple has?

Re:Not that unreasonable...

[Grishnakh]

No, but it's a lot better than many other car companies, where they do the bare minimum required by law to keep their customers safe. It's one of those cases where a little bit of money creates a lot of goodwill. I'd much rather buy a car from a company that is proactive about potential safety problems rather than requiring people dying in accidents before the government forces them to admit a problem, which is exactly what happened with GM and their shitty ignition switches. At this point, I don't give a shit how good the Volt or Bolt are technically, I really don't want a GM no matter what because I simply don't trust them.

Me too.

[Okian Warrior]

Yes, the marketing campaign is flawless. My next car will be a Tesla, and my decision is based only on the articles published here on /.

I'm also planning on getting a Tesla as my next vehicle.

It's largely because of context. I *hate* how my dealership inserts itself between me an my purchase and tries to siphon off money for itself. I went through the trouble of looking for the *same* model and make of my previous purchase between two dealers - and got two "rock bottom" prices that were $1000 different. I know they were "rock bottom" prices, because the dealership told me so.

There's also the reliability context. GM has a problem with its ignition switches, denies the problem for a decade, and once a hundred deaths occur fixes the issue without telling anyone, and backdates the paperwork in an attempt to hide the issue.

For the longest time I couldn't rationalize Tesla stock analysis in the financial news. It's almost as if the analysts were looking at Tesla as a black box company: they make some product, have some capitalization, have some profit/loss, and it's a good/bad buy.

As near as I can figure, the financial analysts have an algorithm that actually looks at Tesla as a black box company and makes an heuristic estimate of whether it's a good buy or not. Periodically, an analyst chooses Tesla for review and then rationalizes the heuristic output based on whatever news has recently happened.

(I think that's how all financial analysis is done, actually. It's always "markets are *up* because of $X, markets are *down* following $Y", and so on. It makes the reader think that market fluctuations are caused by these newsworthy events.)

No one in the financial news seems to clue in that the company is building a battery factory, or that the cars had (at the time) the highest rating on Consumer Reports, or that they own a nationwide chain of chargers (and are building more), or even that they are currently selling electric vehicles.

Nope - none of that matters. Porsche plans to make an electric vehicle, and Tesla's stock tanks.

Apparently, in the financial markets context doesn't matter.

But if you look at the context, Tesla is the best product on the market.

obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

Which car company do you work for?

A major one.

The man is a marketing genius

[kamakazi]

Right now the auto industry is reeling from a serious of serious "we had a problem, but we didn't want to say anything" scandals, from the GM ignition switch to the VW super smoggers, and don't forget the shrapnel bags. The entire ecosystem is full of distrust, some of it fairly active distrust.

In this environment a one off assembly mistake where there was no accident, no damage of any kind, is a marketing opportunity you couldn't even buy in a normal market environment.

Musk already recalled all his cars once, to bolt extra belly armor on them because of an accident which would have been considered extreme in any vehicle, and in which his car came out smelling like a rose.

This recall is going to be a lot cheaper. No engineering, not even any replacement parts, but now Tesla is Even More Different(tm) because they recalled a potential problem immediately, before anybody even asked about it.

Based on Musk's previous behaviour I think he really cares that his products are perceived as the best. I am not making a character reference because I don't know the guy, but he obviously cares about at least the appearance of superlativeness.

The guy runs a marketing machine that reminds me of the late Mr. Jobs in his prime.

Re:Not that unreasonable...

[AK Marc]

This is a good thing, but it's nothing to bow down and worship them over either.

It is when Chrysler latches kill children, and Chrysler spends millions of dollars fighting the recall. Or Ford and GM who have both been found to have covered up safety issues, and quietly fixed them, hoping nobody would notice and they wouldn't have to recall the proven and known unsafe vehicles.

For a car company to do a recall like that hasn't ever been done in the USA. So yes, it is quite extraordinary.

Re:Not that unreasonable...

[Zero__Kelvin]

Math doesn't work the way you think it does. 90,000 is 90,000 regardless of how many cars each company has on the road.

Other car companies have done this too

[perpenso]

This is a Good Company. I wish more of them did things like this!

They do. Once I took my car in for routine service at the dealership. On the bill it mentioned a complimentary inspection of my seat belt buckle per manufacturer recall XYZ. My car was "old", the warranty expired. I think over the decades I've seen stuff like that three times. Twice the inspections for defect or abnormal wear were negative. Once a part's lot number was such that the part was replaced for free.

On a fourth occasion I received a traditional recall, a letter in the mail saying bring the car in to have part ZYX replaced. The other three were silent recalls, surprises during routine service.

Re:Unlike Toyota that requires FJ Cruiser...

[somenickname]

This seems to indicate that the dealer has to provide the recall fix for free but doesn't have to pay for the damages that might have occurred because of the failure: http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/r.... It's possible that I'm not interpreting that correctly but, I've had recall work done on my FJ numerous times and never paid a penny for it. Presumably because the things that were being fixed hadn't caused any secondary damage.