Tesla Recalls 40,000 U.S. Vehicles over the Potential Loss of Power Steering Assist
Tesla is one of the most successful vehicle brands, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, who became recently popular for his acquisition of Twitter.
Today, Tesla has an excellent market reputation and unique new vehicles known for their safety and innovative designs. Tesla's current worldwide market value is $53.8 billion, making it a leader in the automobile industry.
In this post, you'll learn why Tesla called over 40,000 U.S. vehicles because of a potential loss of power steering assist.
The Power Steering Assist Issue
Model X and Model S are one of the most popular vehicles sold by Tesla in the past decade. While these vehicles have shown great market sales and popularity among buyers, Tesla identified a potential problem with these models.
For this reason, Tesla recalled 40,000 U.S. vehicles (40,168 2017-2021 Model S and Model X vehicles, to be exact). Although the vehicles had already reached the market, Tesla saw the potential risk in advance and knew it had to rectify the fault.
According to Tesla, over 40,000 of these U.S. vehicles showed issues with their power steering control and lost their assistive capabilities. The Safety Recall Report presented, in this case, showed that it wasn't just a single batch of cards produced.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration further explained that the Tesla vehicles manufactured between 2017 and 2021 have this potential problem.
These vehicles started having the steering control assist problem after hitting a pothole. To resolve the issue, Tesla recognized this problem and recalled all the cars manufactured during this period.
It happened before Tesla could know about the fault in the vehicles. These vehicles have shown a great history of potential problems, design complications, and performance short-handedness.
Why is this a Big Problem?
The national Traffic Safety Administration claims that the problem with the steering control assist could cause severe issues with the vehicles for drivers, especially those that rely on the driver assist.
With the drive assist out, drivers have to make more effort to control the car on the road, and the risks involved with it maximize for Tesla vehicles going at a lower speed.
Since Tesla markets its vehicles designed to make driving more straightforward and accessible, the drive assist issue could affect the Texas-based vehicle company's reputation. With the assistive driving flaw, drivers will find it significantly harder to control the vehicles on the road.
What did Tesla do about it?
According to Tesla's official records, they identified 314 alerts in places across the U.S. In contrast. These alerts were reported and listed in the record, and there's little information about any injuries or deaths resulting from mechanical or power steering assist complications.
Tesla's main idea for resolving this issue was to install an update that could help minimize issues with the power steering assist.
A firmware release focused on updating the values for calibration within the steering assist system. Because of this change, some vehicles started messing up their calculation for the road type.
With the wrong on-road information, misclassifying the rough road conditions made the steering assist technology lose its edge.
Because of this change, there was also unexpected steering assist torque, which became a nuisance for Tesla Model X and Tesla Model S owners. The problem continued for a significant period before the NHTSA report mentioned in this piece noticed it.
The deployed firmware release was initially in 2022.36 in October, after which the complaints started pouring in shortly. The carmaker also experienced an increased rate of alerts compared to the calibration values. The latest firmware was installed on certain vehicles, showing Tesla the root of the problem.
Issues with the power steering may be dangerous, especially when the car isn't running too fast. The drivers must put in more effort to control the vehicle, which can increase the possibility of a collision. According to the NHTSA, as of now, Tesla doesn't know about any long-term damages resulting from these power steering assist problems.
Per Tesla's experts, over-the-air software updates will help car owners recalibrate the power assist steering system. With the recalibrated updates, there's no further action needed to control vehicles that may face this problem with use.
Will this issue be Resolved?
There needs to be more skepticism about whether the latest calibration offered by Tesla could end the problems faced by the power steering assist system.
Professionals at Tesla claim that these upcoming changes could resolve the problem; the only problem is it has happened before that Tesla owners have suffered from these kinds of issues.
Despite an excellent market reputation, Tesla vehicles still need to be questioned because of their persistent problems. As per the problems reported b Tesla owners in the past, there have been persistent problems with the vehicles, resolving which has become a step-by-step approach.
For the steering assist problem, Tesla has recalled over 53 2021 Model S for their exterior side rearview mirrors. These mirrors were first created for the European market and did not match the requirements of the U.S. market "Rear Visibility" requirements.
Because of the design variation, Tesla is now spending more time redesigning and fixing these Model S vehicles to ensure these vehicles comply with the latest standards set by the U.S. government.
Although the rearview mirror issue seems like a minor issue, it could impact the on-road experience. Tesla, professional and legally competent, has pledged to resolve this problem, as the mirrors came with the U.S. service visits. The company has also assigned 17 recall campaigns for 2022 and has covered over 3.4 million vehicles during the campaign.
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