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

[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

[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.

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: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.

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.