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Tesla Issues Its Largest Recall Ever Voluntarily Over Faulty Model S Steering (theverge.com)
Tesla announced today that it is recalling 123,000 Model S vehicles around the world over a power steering issue. The company said via an email that it was a proactive move and none of the company's other vehicles are affected. The Verge reports: The automaker said 123,000 Model S vehicles built before April 2016 were affected. No injuries or crashes have been reported in connection with the problem. In the email, Tesla said it had, "observed excessive corrosion in the power steering bolts," but that the problem was most prevalent in colder climates where road salt is used. "If the bolts fail, the driver is still able to steer the car, but increased force is required due to loss or reduction of power assist," Tesla wrote in the email to customers. "This primarily makes the car harder to drive at low speeds and for parallel parking, but does not materially affect control at high speed, where only small steering wheel force is needed." Tesla said owners do not need to stop driving their cars if they haven't experienced any problems. The company said it would inform Model S owners when a retrofit, which is estimated to take an hour to install, is ready in their area.
I more see this as trying to save face as their stocks fall.
I'm actually impressed. While I will never own a Tesla, unfortunately, because I won't own a car where the manufacturer can issue over-the-air updates that I cannot control and which materially affect the performance of the vehicle, this is actually perhaps the most responsible way I've seen a recall handled. In most cases, recalls are forced by the NHTSA. For the most part, auto manufacturers don't wait until the NHTSA actually orders a recall, but generally the writing is on the wall that they need to voluntarily recall or the NHTSA will step in. In this case, it wasn't even on the NHTSA's radar.
This might make me rethink my stance on Tesla.
100% of Tesla's recalls have been voluntary and arisen from internal rather than NHTSA investigations, which is not normal for "plenty of auto makers". Also, see this.
Some important information was also left out of this summary.
1) The corrosion-prone bolts are not in a component made by Tesla. It's made by Bosch.
2) Because the fault is Bosch's, Bosch has to cover the cost of the replacement.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
But of course they will be excoriated for having a problem in the first place by the usual suspects. Finally proof once and for all that Elon Musk is a delusional failure-in-the-making.
You may have heard of them - they are known as BOSCH. They make the electrics and much of the mechanics of just about every car on the road.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
There are a lot of businesses that would like to see Tesla fail. There is an entire country's worth of short-sellers who need to get Tesla down below their expected price. There are all of the auto manufacturers who failed to make good electric cars for us even when they certainly knew how. There are the oil companies and everyone who services them. There is every existing auto dealer. There are companies that make parts that aren't in Teslas. The list goes on.
So, you will now see the same crazyness as the claims that the Falcom 9 made a huge hole in the atmospehere! Run and scream! What actually happened was that ionization of plasma in the ionosphere diminished for two hours due to a shock wave, and thus GPS signals might have been about a foot off in some areas near the launch, and there might have been interesting (though yet undetected) changes in HF radio propogation that hams might now notice if they look hard.
So, now we have hundreds of thousands of Teslas on the road with rusty bolts that happen to have not hurt anyone. Hide under the bed! Tesla to go bankrupt any moment!
They seem to make pretty good cars, and nobody took electric seriously until they came along. Nobody else can compete with them yet, although they all talk up a storm about what they're gonna do real soon now.
Do you remember when Prius was the propaganda target? It was only a few years ago.
Bruce Perens.
Everybody's stock is falling after Trump thought tariffs would be a brilliant idea. By the way, slashdot mods who downmod me every time I describe how tariffs are a terrible idea...I told you so.
BOSCH isn't even mentioned in the article. This is a mechanical problem because someone bought cheap shit from China.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
yeah NO. what utter bullshit. auto makers do voluntary recalls all the time and it is usually in this type of scenario as they know in the long run it will probably become a mandatory recall if they don't do something.
The manufacturer of the power steering in a Tesla is written right on it. It's no mystery who made it. No, it's not in the article, but it is widely known. It is stated on other forums, like Electrek. Knowledgeable users on forums state categorically that Tesla won't even be paying for it - it's a fault with a BOSCH part, and BOSCH will be footing the bill for the repair.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
BOSCH isn't even mentioned in the article. This is a mechanical problem because someone bought cheap shit from China.
10 seconds worth of googling later ...
"The bolts, made by German supplier Bosch, can begin to corrode after contact in cold temperatures with road salt."
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
Well yeah clearly you do not understand the free market, supply and demand, PR=B$ and greed. You are not charged a reasonable price based upon reasonable costs on anything what so you. You are charged the highest possible price, where increasing it further would actually reduce profit, due to significant drops in revenue as a result of diminished sales. If they could, rather than buying something and selling it with a reasonable market, they would via corruption demand to be paid to take it and them demand via that same corruption, that you pay for it at the price they demand, by regulation, fail to buy and be penalised example it's called "Obama Care", a far right medical system, dumped on the US by a whole bunch of pretend left corrupt corporate douche bags.
So in US terms, what will tariffs do, where the maximum possible price is already being charged, reduced profit margins and there goes the share price. There is so much crony capitalism combined with corruption of Democracy that you pay the fair price on practically nothing. The price of the food you eat has been enormously artificially inflated by futures trading on food, the profit from this goes to the banks, for doing nothing other than corrupting government, you pay more for food to feed the insatiable greed of those who own banks, banks being pretty much nothing more than corporate taxation system, corporations charging taxes on all transactions.
However tarrifs should not be random but reflect the impact of regulated costs on fair completion, those regulated costs, wages, worker safety conditions, environmental safety requirements, product safety requirements, local, state and federal taxes, fees and charges. They should not occur at random but in a national trade court, where companies can apply for fair competition relief and the appropriate tariff applied to reflect regulated costs of operation. Double plus bonus, to reduce the tariff the affected country need just apply the same regulations, and either spend that money locally or pay it at the border of another country.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I had exactly this flaw happen in an old Subaru. I was left with a difficult to steer car. I don't remember a recall for it. So Tesla seems to be more diligent.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Rocket engines don't work without expelling.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
To the question of who's fault it is and should pay for replacement, Bosch made the bolt but was it to Tesla's spec? And isn't it so fortunate Tesla has plenty of service center capacity to handle the recall?
I would like to see Tesla succeed as well. However, they have been running on borrowed time for a while now. They've never turned a profit. They have persistent quality issues. They have a huge service backlog. They have supply chain issues. They have launch issues (the 3 is their fourth product launch, they should have this stuff nailed down by now.)
Tesla shipped around 100,000 cars last year and lost $2 billion dollars. Ford shipped roughly 2.5 millions cars last year and made $6 billion dollars. Tesla's market cap is $4 billion higher than Ford.
This sounds like bean-counter nonsense, but it's critically important. The only way Tesla can continue to operate is to keep it's stock price up so it can fund operations by selling this expensive stock (and bonds.) This is entirely based on it's ability to continue to grow it's sales by double digits year after year. They can't get their numbers up if they can't build cars.
The critics are right. They are dropping the ball on their fourth launch, which is inexcusable. This isn't a minor point. If one of the big three botched a launch this badly, they'd be torched by wall street and executives would be flung into the Detroit river.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
The biggest problem here is that nobody is regulating what Tesla can do to your car remotely from one day to the next, and the security is entirely up to them with no outside audit required. This can't really be allowed to continue as most automobiles get the remote update capability.
And yes, buying and keeping up a pre-1973 vehicle (emission control computers came in about then) doesn't look like so bad an idea, even given the safety advancements made since '73.
Bruce Perens.
Tariffs have their place to address certain issues, but see above.
I personally think most investors are idiots. Most of Tesla's cars are required to be serviced in their shops. Their motivation isn't for "profit" but rather because it's a new platform and they are looking to spot problems like this. Your required to take your Tesla into the shop something like every six months. So this factory recall probably affects 200 owners that refuse to get their cars serviced for good or bad reasons.
So BOSCH bought them from China. You think they machine them one at a time paying competitive wages in Germany? China melts down whatever is laying around and labels it steel.
You're obsessed. Before you go to sleep at night do you check for China under your bed?
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.
I work for a major car company.
What happens if the bolts go when in autopilot mode?
This does not sound like a big deal. Tesla provides the mechanic with a bag with a few bolts. Mechanic puts the car on a lift, removes three or four bolts. May not be as easy as it sounds if they are severely corroded or especially awkwardly placed, but mechanics deal with that all the time Mechanic installs new bolts and torques them to spec. Car is returned to bored customer sitting in lounge drinking lousy coffee. Some paperwork gets done. Cost maybe 25 cents for the bolts, $150 for labor.
Probably only half the Model S's ever get fixed.
Cost for half of 123,000 vehicles -- maybe $10,000,000. Compared to Tesla's other problems $10M is pocket change.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
None of the cars I drove as a teen had power steering, or power brakes. Kids these days.
yes, including them. would have taken you an extra 10 seconds to google and find the many voluntary recalls.
You have to give credit where it is due. Most auto makers and other big companies would wait until there are lawsuits first. Tesla is doing the right thing here.
No you don't have to give credit to Tesla. Steering joint bolts don't rust to the point of recall for many many years in any car made by any other mainstream manufacturer anywhere in the world. I've had classic cars over 30 years old with the original power steering bolts being just fine.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
> None of the cars I drove as a teen had power steering, or power brakes. Kids these days.
Kindly attempt to visualize your past life driving a car that wasn't constructed prior to 1990. I sincerely apologize that you are super old, but that's how life works, and honestly that is not the debate here. However, thank you for your contribution, and the universe wholly apologizes for hosing you out of "driving cars that don't completely suck".
Honestly. I'm 40 and this all makes perfect sense to me. Hell, I'm pretty sure even my parents would fully understand this article and not feel slighted. Are you 80+ and confused? Would you like the assistance of a sound-minded adult to assist you henceforth?
Fucking old people, I tell ya.... If/when I get this way, please just do me a favor and assassinate me as soon as possible. If possible, I'd like it to happen during a nice breakfast: perhaps on an unsuspecting Wednesday or Thursday, while I'm sipping some coffee between enjoying bites of a nice omelet breakfast. Sounds lovely. Thanks team!
There was a '68 Impala I had, the power steering pump went out; I simply took a knife to the dedicated belt. Yeah the low speed steering was harder, luckily my previous car had non-power steering, so I was used to it - and yes on the freeway, I didn't notice much difference at all.
I also drove a Subaru with failed power steering. You get used to it, and the car is still drivable. Once moving, it hardly makes a difference. If anything, I felt more connected to the road (and enjoyed driving it more) after the power assist failed -- other than the annoying moments of trying to turn the wheels while stopped, that is.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Ford Focus and Fusion got a recall about the clutch pressure plate, should I submit that story?
The Tesla is to electric cars what the iphone was to mobiles when it too launched. Its a game changer, everyone else has to play catch up now, but in ten years there will be viable competitors, probably for less money.
Kudos to Musk, he damn near perfected an idea that a lot of people had a crack at, and all pretty well failed, miserably. That said, he's going to need to 6 Sigma the hell out of this product as its a whole new sub genre of automobile, and fair enough, he seems fairly proactive in his recalls. Too many people get hung up on the cult of Musk, and forget he's just a guy, with drive, ambition, and a plan. He will fail at some things, but he has managed to disrupt two entire industries, autos and LEO transport, thats no small thing...
2) Because the fault is Bosch's, Bosch has to cover the cost of the replacement.
I see you fell for Musk's BS again. Bosch only covers the cost of the replacement parts. Tesla pays for the labor, which is a significant cost. I know, its hard to see everything from so far up Musk's rear end.
Why hello, TTAC - I miss your Tesla Deathwatch column from a decade ago!
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
We made steering wheels smaller and reduced mechanical leverage to make the car smaller. A power source compensates for the increased force required. Failed power steering adds resistance, making the car even harder to steer.
From what I've heard, a pure manual steering car designed around a plain rack and pinion setup gives a lot more tactile feedback and is more-pleasant to drive.
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I can get bolts made out of soft steel, hard steel, zinc-plated galvanized steel, 440, high-chromium stainless steel, molybdenum-vanadium high-chromium stainless, and so forth.
Different steels will flex more without deforming, or will hold more-rigid under strain. A flexible steel in a roll bar or even a frame will improve vehicle handling, whereas a high-grade hard steel might actually sheer under stress (outright break) instead of flexing like a spring. Molybdenum lowers the energy state in the lattice, so it's more-difficult to substitute oxides--even resisting electrolyte pressure which could cause normal high-chromium stainless to just rust.
Your car has dozens of types of steel in it. If you have a high-end combustion engine, you probably even have one of the many grades of inconel--an extremely hard steel that keeps its anti-corrosion and work-hardening characteristics even up around 1850 degrees. If you put regular steels in the turbocharger turbine, they practically melt (Inconel sheds heat like crazy, too, so any blast of hot-then-cooler spots in the exhaust will keep it cooler instead of heating it up toward peak temperatures).
A lot of good grades of steel will rust out if you park them within half a mile of the ocean.
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I've driven non power assisted cars as well. Big difference. They are geared differently. IE lock to lock was 4+ turns of the wheel instead of the now more general 3ish lock to lock. Translation, your power assisted car without power will be harder to turn than your old manual steering car. Further, the S is a porker at 5K pounds roughly. Again, at slow speeds this is gong to make it very hard to turn. So, the recall is necessary, and you should absolutely get it done ASAP.
I'm sure you can cite a whole bunch them. And "voluntary" in this case can't mean, "shit we better do this or the NHSTA will sue us to oblivion after their investigation". Or "omg we've already killed 5 people, better to a voluntary recall".
None of the cars I drove as a teen had power steering, or power brakes. Kids these days.
Same, however despite living for while without power steering, having power steering suddenly and unexpectedly fail while in transit is a very serious safety risk.
I had it fail going around a roundabout one day. It was as jaring as a steering wheel lock engaging. I missed the exit and went around again because I couldn't turn the wheel.
Even less of a big deal than that. Power steering is supplied by Bosch and they are covering the recall costs. Doesn't cost Tesla anything.
Yes, He does know what we want.
Praying isnt just asking for things, it is supposed to be communication from us to God.
emt 377 emt 4
>Failed power steering adds resistance, making the car even harder to steer.
Yep, it required a lot of torque to move the wheel. It wasn't safe to drive.
> From what I've heard, a pure manual steering car designed around a plain rack and pinion setup gives a lot more tactile feedback and is more-pleasant to drive.
The effect is not dramatically different, but it does feel a little more connected.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Tesla needs to break down the actual root causes - including all management failures. This kind of defect doesn't just show up in a finished product without warning from someone on the line seeing shoddy practices due to overwork or other bad pressures, or some engineer doing backend checks finding structural flaws overlooked previously. How far up does the failure go? The NHTSA will surely find out.
I have to agree with you ArmoredDragon! These fools obsessing over outdated economic theory divested from reality are in for some real shocks. The concepts of macroeconomics are wrong and useless outside of niches academic journals. The reality of trade is based on contracts and these kinds of sudden tariffs fuck with all of that. (This is actually called meso-economics.) Trump has killed off the last chance for American recovery.
Well yeah clearly you do not understand the free market, supply and demand, PR=B$ and greed. You are not charged a reasonable price based upon reasonable costs on anything what so you. You are charged the highest possible price, where increasing it further would actually reduce profit.
Which, in a competitive market, approaches the production cost, because margins are a market inefficiency.
If I'm the only one selling you a product you need, the answer to your question, "how much?" is "how much you got?". Which is bad, and why we should avoid monopolies and have strong anti-trust legislation. However, if I'm one of multiple vendors for an equivalent product, the moment I do that, the others will start a price war. Barring other concerns such as collusion or loss leader products, none of us are going to sell it to you at a loss, so at some point we're going to compete on other things such as convenience, quality, aesthetics, whatever it is you value. In other words, you'll get the best possible product for the best possible price.
When that doesn't happen, it means some of the requirements aren't being fulfilled (such as no competition, or the consumers don't have perfect knowledge, or a variety of other things). In other words, we're operating at a mode that's not going to self-regulate to the point we want it to, so government regulation that corrects these issues and make it more like a free market is necessary. Sometimes that's just not feasible, I agree: people who want private roads don't really grasp the fact that you're not going to get ten different companies building parallel roads and allow you to pick the lowest toll for the best maintained road. For things like health care, it's feasible, but we need more insurance company competition, more hospital competition, and regulations that force hospitals to publish price information for procedure as well as their success rates to give consumers (and insurance companies negotiating for price) information they need to make decisions.
That said, tariffs are not what you're looking for in terms of government interference. They just don't work at all, because they're not taking you closer to that self-regulating market. The other countries aren't going to do what you want to reduce the tariffs, they're just going to implement tariffs in other goods. Not to mention the costs for what you produce locally is going to go up, which means your exports become less competitive, your buying power decreases, which decreases production, causes people to lose jobs...basically it screws with comparative advantage. They also increase diplomatic friction. Trade partners have an interest in being friendly, which is stronger the more their economies are interdependent. Tariffs decrease the volume of trade, which decrease that interdependence / force people to search for other trade partners. Which means they don't care about keeping you happy anymore.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Computers are more complex but they also could leave out unfinished features or leave in lesser bugs by the shipping date. Assembly was easier than a car; all the hard components were made by others.
Main difference-- building a large complex machine that costs 10x as much as a computer. Complex in engineering, manufacturing and in regulations. Infrastructure investment is considerably higher too. Also keep in mind they have their own more computer as part of the car and it's more sophisticated than Apple's computers were (and like Apple, they use off the shelf parts-- but unlike apple they probably didn't design their out circuit boards.... although they did that for the car's other electronics.)
It takes longer to pay off the debts from any growth to meet demand. They simply can't hire factories to make what they need for many of the parts. For the batteries they are working with panasonic but nobody can output the volume required so they are making that product too.
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Somebody picked the wrong kind of bolt... a standard bolt of the wrong kind metal. I'm no engineer, but I know I'd forget about something like that while thinking about everything else... including mixed metal contacts.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I forget details-- you look it up but the Tesla plan is a solid one which will put it on par with Ford in REAL numbers soon.
Ford only makes about $1000 per car they sell. It's quite low, look it up. They make more on higher ones but it's mostly a profit by volume (and support fees.) Other profit goes to the car dealers. Ford makes about 5 million cars or so per year. So thats about 1 billion profit (on new cars, not all the tons of other stuff they are doing.)
Tesla's plan is to make about 1 million cars per year. They make 5x the profit per car, part of that profit comes from NOT having to share profits with dealers etc. That means when they reach 1 million cars per year (which is not far away) they will have about equal the profits of Ford. Since they don't do all the other stuff Ford does, you can't compare with those... plus Ford doesn't do solar or power storage (yet.)
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My friend's BMW had some bolts corrode on the power steering system. I wonder if it's the same part. When he asked for it to be fixed for free, BMW told him to pound sand.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
A defective power steering pump isn't a life-ender by any means, but something that I would be pretty pissed about on my $90K luxury car.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
You didn't get it down enough for their triggers ($250). But I do - and this isn't sarcasm - wish to sincerely thank you for doing your part to get the price down enough for me to buy at $268. I was beginning to think I'd never get a chance to buy low before the Model 3 ramp accelerates (I plan to cash out after 9-12 months).
So again, while it's funny being thankful for someone who I couldn't more profoundly disagree with... Thank you. Seriously.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."