Tesla recalls nearly half a million Model 3 and Model S cars

Since 1966, hood latches are required to be redundant in US vehicles. That&#x27;s why, when you pop the hood, it just opens a bit, and then you have to go and release a hook or something from the front. This is because, in 1950s cars, hoods flying up suddenly were a thing. Often followed by a crash.<p>Double latches are required by 47 CFR 571. &quot;A front opening hood which, in any open position, partially or completely obstructs a driver&#x27;s forward view through the windshield must be provided with a second latch position on the hood latch system or with a second hood latch system. &quot;[1] That&#x27;s from 1966. In Teslas, the hood covers a storage space, and both both the primary and secondary latch are electrically controlled. It&#x27;s not some big dumb spring-loaded hook. So it&#x27;s higher risk for failure.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&#x2F;cfr&#x2F;text&#x2F;49&#x2F;571.113" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&#x2F;cfr&#x2F;text&#x2F;49&#x2F;571.113</a>

<i>For affected Model 3 owners, Tesla has pledged to install a new cable harness and guide protector free of charge.</i><p>Wiring harness flexing and chafing is a decades-old well-known problem with well-known solutions. I wonder what the people who designed that area are thinking now, when they were presumably trying to save costs?<p>If Teslas&#x27; issues were specific to being EVs or otherwise new functionality specific to its cars, that would seem more understandable; yet these appear to be low-hanging fruit. As the other comment here mentions, other manufacturers have many recalls too, and some of those do look like low-hanging fruit, so I wonder if this is just a norm for the industry as a whole. What I&#x27;m trying to say is, why haven&#x27;t simple things like latches and harness flexing&#x2F;chafing been solved and perfected by now?

I had the Model S frunk open in front of me while driving. Lucky to be alive.<p>On my last Model S (2018 model year), I was driving up on a bridge and it suddenly opened and blocked my forward visibility, with a trailer on my right. The vehicle was looked at by service a number of times because I got intermittent “Front trunk hood status unknown” (which I had also seen on a couple loaner Model S’s) and service despite taking it in a number of times and looking at it presumably a few days each time was not able to reliably reproduce and investigate the root cause. After the incident, they looked at the car for a couple weeks and. To their credit, they were quite good at resolving the issue and when I asked they &lt;strike&gt;lemoned&lt;&#x2F;strike&gt;“Goodwill bought back” the vehicle and I ordered another Model S. Their diagnosis, I was told, was that the emergency escape button inside the frunk had some sort of glitch and activated and was causing the frunk to open at times, but this must have been part of the problem. Glad to see this issue addressed at large, as it was super scary, but it took 2+ years since I first reported my own frunk problems till now that the recall is being issued.

It doesn&#x27;t seem like the rear view camera problem is that much of a safety issue, thoughts?<p>The front trunk flying open while driving seems highly undesirable though.

see also: Tesla ranks almost dead last on Consumer Reports reliability list<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sfgate.com&#x2F;tech&#x2F;article&#x2F;Tesla-ranks-almost-dead-last-Consumer-Reports-16632996.php" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sfgate.com&#x2F;tech&#x2F;article&#x2F;Tesla-ranks-almost-dead-...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;11&#x2F;19&#x2F;tesla-model-s-no-longer-recommended-by-consumer-reports.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;11&#x2F;19&#x2F;tesla-model-s-no-longer-reco...</a><p>I hope this doesn&#x27;t come across as excessively smug but I think my life, level of stress and personal finances are measurably improved by owning something that is closer to a $9000 Toyota Corolla and spending money on regular, basic maintenance for it.

This is about half of all Teslas ever sold in the US <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodcarbadcar.net&#x2F;tesla-us-sales-figures&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodcarbadcar.net&#x2F;tesla-us-sales-figures&#x2F;</a>

To put this in perspective, Tesla had sold about 2 million cars total. So Tesla have recalled a quarter of all the cars they have ever sold.

Didn&#x27;t Musk sell a billion dollars worth of stock a few days before this recall was announced?

I&#x27;m confused-- these seem like 2 totally separate issues. The Model 3 issue doesn&#x27;t even sound like a trunk latching issue, it sounds like a cable-harness-in-a-hinge issue?<p>I actually have a Model 3 that exhibited an annoying rear camera problem (now fixed). It had to &quot;go in&quot; to be fixed 3 times, for complicated reasons, but I found the ultimate fix (an OTA update) to be annoying. I had read on the forums that harness damage was not-uncommon, particularly among people who had installed a power trunk closing retrofit and somehow managed to damage the harness in the process (oops!)<p>Basically:<p>* When the car was new, rear camera did turn on 100% of the time, but failure rate was pretty low. The car had a few minor bugs and the camera seemed to be one. Within a few months most of the bugs were sorted and I had no regular issues with the camera anymore. (way less than 1% failure rate I&#x27;d say -- not unlike I&#x27;ve noticed in other cars).<p>* ~ April 2021 the camera started failing to come up with some regularity, immediately after a software update, so I suspected a bug, and just waited for it to get fixed. I think it basically never worked at this point. But it didn&#x27;t get fixed in the next few updates. (this was when the car was 3 or 4 years old)<p>* A few months later, I took the car in for its final &quot;warranty about to expire&quot; visit. Probably the car&#x27;s 2nd time at the service center in 3 years? I mentioned the camera along with a few other minor issues. They said they&#x27;d replace the harness through the trunklid if they had one, but thought it was out of stock. Sure enough, it was out of stock and they never &#x27;fixed&#x27; it.<p>* Mobile service visit, came to my house and replaced the harness in about 20 minutes. But it didn&#x27;t solve the problem. The tech said likely the FRONT coax harness would need to be replaced, which was much more involved and would require a service center visit.<p>* Scheduled service center visit.<p>* The night before the visit, they called and said &quot;hey, is your camera fixed? We pushed an update&quot;. Well, I don&#x27;t know. Even if it IS working, 12 hours isn&#x27;t enough to tel whether an intermittent problem is permanently fixed.<p>* Took the car in, they examined everything, said it was fine, and it has been ever since.<p>The car&#x27;s been relatively trouble free but I want to say this is the second time (possibly for the same camera issue) someone at Tesla pushed a update to the car the night before a service center visit, in the hope it fixed the problem. Why not prioritize these fixes for, I don&#x27;t know, a few days before the visit, if you want to fix things OTA and limit the load on service centers?

Previous discussion: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=29739029" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=29739029</a>

The rear camera MAY fail issue seems pretty benign.<p>When it fails go get it fixed?<p>Or is that no longer a permitted approach.<p>These recalls used to be for things major. Now we are getting a recall over what would be a warranty claim? Can they not just extend warranty coverage in this year to something like 10 years?

This comes just weeks after the CEO sold billions in TSLA stock to &quot;pay taxes&quot; when the market is in the middle of the largest bull run of all time..?<p>Highly suspicious imho.<p>(There&#x27;s a very good chance that the ROI on any TSLA stock today will exceed the interest owed on 1 years worth of unpaid taxes... assuming you were not about to recall almost every car you&#x27;ve sold in the past year, that is.)<p>I am shocked at how bold this was.<p>Between Dec 21st (the date of TSLA filing this recall) and today, he&#x27;s sold almost $3 Billion worth. Wow. That&#x27;s insane.

Meh. Honda just did a hood latch recall on Pilots.

Just a reminder that cars are recalled all the time and the only reason you are seeing this article is because it is Tesla. Any other manufacturer and this would be a non-story especially on HN.<p>Did Ford recalling 185k vehicles a couple days ago make the front page of HN?<p>How about Toyota recalling 200k vehicles also a couple days ago?[2]<p>Maybe Honda recalling 725k vehicles a month ago?[3]<p>EDIT: Lots of people are taking this as a defense of Tesla. That isn&#x27;t my intention here. I am providing context to this issue. Someone who isn&#x27;t familiar with the frequency that cars are voluntarily recalled is going to conclude that this is a bigger deal than if viewed in the context of the auto industry as a whole.<p>[1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.detroitnews.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;business&#x2F;autos&#x2F;ford&#x2F;2021&#x2F;12&#x2F;28&#x2F;ford-recalls-nearly-185-000-f-150-trucks-over-driveshaft-issue&#x2F;9033644002&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.detroitnews.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;business&#x2F;autos&#x2F;ford&#x2F;2021&#x2F;1...</a><p>[2] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justicepays.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;toyota-recalls-over-200000-vehicles-due-to-power-assist-braking-failure" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justicepays.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;toyota-recalls-over-200000-...</a><p>[3] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.caranddriver.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;a38425033&#x2F;honda-passport-pilot-ridgeline-hood-recall&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.caranddriver.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;a38425033&#x2F;honda-passport-p...</a>

How much will the stock rise as a consequence of this?

This headline makes it sound like “Park your car in the driveway tonight and it will drive itself to its nearest service point and returns back before 5am next day.” kind of event.