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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'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..."
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
yes, including them. would have taken you an extra 10 seconds to google and find the many voluntary recalls.
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.
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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