The electric car giant Tesla will carry out a new mass recall of vehicles due to luggage racks "potentially" defective in two models in China and the United States, a move that once again brought the question of reliability to the table.
Chinese regulators announced the recall of nearly 200,000 cars on Friday, hours after the US regulator for automotive safety reported that Tesla was recalling some 475,000 vehicles from the market.
The most affected model is the best-seller Model 3. Tesla indicates that "repeated opening and closing of the boot lid" may "cause excessive wear on the coaxial cable" connected to the rear view camera, which could make the camera unavailable to the driver.
The other car involved is the luxurious Model S. One of the trunk latches is misaligned at the front of the car and could "opening unexpectedly and obstructing the driver’s vision".
Tesla estimates that 1% of Model 3s and 14% of Model S recalled in the United States will have this manufacturing defect. The brand stressed that this possible defect had not caused, as far as it knew, any accident or injury.
Large-scale recalls to review vehicles are not uncommon in the auto industry: Volkswagen recalled 8.5 million cars in 2015 following the Dieselgate scandal; An airbag defect also led to the recall of at least 100 million vehicles of all makes and the bankruptcy of airbag manufacturer Takata.
In Tesla’s case, however, this recall represents at least a quarter of the cars produced by the young electric car giant, with the total production figure for 2022 still unknown.
"This is a wake-up call for Tesla, with a welcome slap from the automotive world, which turns out to be perhaps more complex than the smartphone world many like to compare it to."German expert Matthias Schmidt commented.
"A troubled car can do a lot more damage than a faulty iPhone", he stressed.
– Misuse of the pedal –
As of June, the electric car giant had already recalled more than 285,000 cars in China due to problems with its assisted driving software that could lead to accidents.
It also recalled a few thousand Model 3s and Model Ys in America to inspect or even replace brake caliper bolts.
Despite the announcement that it will recall thousands of vehicles from the market, Tesla has had a good year in an auto market hard hit by the health crisis and the shortage of electronic chips.
On Wall Street, the company entered the tiny club of groups worth more than a trillion dollars in the stock market in October. In the third quarter it delivered more than 240,000 vehicles, a record. His boss, Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet, was named Person of the Year by Time magazine.
For the analyst Trip Chowdhry, of the Global Equities Reserach cabinet, the US call for review is a "no event"Because of its computer development capabilities, Tesla retains an advantage over its competitors.
The brand continues to dominate the global electric vehicle market, where major manufacturers are just beginning to expand their ranges, such as Ford with its F150 pick-up and the world’s number one Toyota, with several launches planned.
This episode is just the latest in a series of setbacks suffered by the American autonomous vehicle pioneer: The brand is extremely popular in China, but its reputation has been damaged by several security incidents and scandals in recent months.
In April, Tesla’s brakes made headlines in China when a disgruntled customer staged an uproar at the Shanghai auto show, protesting the allegedly faulty braking system on a vehicle in which family members had been injured.
However, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) indicated in January, after reviewing almost 250 applications, that the cited accidents could not be attributed to a defect in the vehicle, but to the "misuse of the pedals".
The driving assistance system "Autopilot" He is also investigated by NHTSA after a series of accidents. And the fact that Tesla is testing new driver assistance features in real-world conditions without specific authorization also fuels the controversy.
.