Tesla is already on its fourth recall of the month and there’s still a week left in November.
On Nov. 19, Elon Musk’s electric car company recalled 321,000 vehicles in the US over tail light issues. The day before it had recalled 30,000 Model X cars because of an airbag deployment problem. Earlier this month, the company called back 40,000 Model S and Model X vehicles manufactured between 2017 and 2021 over potential reduction or a loss of power steering, and 53 vehicles over a side view mirror installation.
According to the Department of Transport’s NHTSA website, Tesla recalls amount to 5% of the total issued so far this year in the US, but is second only to Ford in terms of how many vehicles were impacted. Yet these many “recalls” don’t affect its stock prices.
Musk however, objects to the use of the word “recall” because the issues almost always need “tiny” over-the-air software fixes, he says, and the vehicles rarely need to be hauled into a garage for a manual repair.
But there are more consequential forces than the frequent recalls at play. If Tesla doesn’t find and rectify glitches in time there could be legal trouble. A US justice department criminal probe against the company and its executives over self-driving claims is already underway. Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has also warned Musk that Congress will intervene unless he stops “putting profits over people and his debt over stopping disinformation.”
Tesla recalls, by the digits
19: US recalls so far this year. A non-exhaustive list of reasons include potentially defective rear-view cameras or front cargo area latches, rolling stops, faulty seat belt alert, windshield defrosting issues, music feature “Boombox” obscuring Pedestrian Warning System sounds, center screen’s CPU overheating, failing power window safety controls, and so on—most of which are solvable over the cloud. In October, though, 24,000 cars were part of a rare physical recall over seat belt problems
3.7 million: Vehicles affected in this year’s US recalls
1 million: Tesla’s biggest single recall in September, over risk of injury in power window safety controls
107,293: China-made Tesla vehicles recalled in the country in May because of the threat of the infotainment system lagging due to not cooling off sufficiently, causing collisions in rare cases
