Tesla Motors Inc. plans to use the recall of every Model S that it has ever built to highlight its commitment to safety.
The EV maker announced it is recalling all of the 90,000 Model S vehicles that the electric-car company has made after a driver in Europe discovered that her front seat belt became disconnected from the pretensioner.
“Tesla recently found a Model S in Europe with a front seat belt that was not properly connected to the outboard lap pretensioner,” the company wrote in an e-mail to customers Friday. “This vehicle was not involved in a crash and there were no injuries. However, in the event of a crash, a seat belt in this condition would not provide full protection.”
Diarmuid O’Connell, Tesla’s vice president of Corporate and Business Development, told the Automotive Press Association, Tesla learned of the seat belt issue from a customer in Europe two weeks ago and moved to inspect 3,000 vehicles and its assembly process. The inspections didn’t turn up any other faulty belts.
But in effort to underscore its commitment to safety, Tesla plans to check every one of the Model S cars that that it has sold during the past three years.
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The Palo Alto, California-based company said it has found no other issues, but wants owners to bring their cars in to make sure the seat belts are properly connected. They are being advised to book an appointment for the inspections.
O’Connell had no estimate on the cost of the recall. However, the recall will be used to build rapport with the company’s customer base.
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“In early November, a customer sitting in the front passenger seat turned to speak with occupants in the rear and the seat belt became disconnected,” a Tesla representative said. “The seat belt is anchored to the outboard lap pretensioner through two anchor plates that are bolted together. The bolt that was supposed to tie the two anchors together wasn’t properly assembled.”
Carmakers in general have been bedeviled by an enormous number of recalls involving defective seat belts and faulty airbags so the Tesla recall is hardly unique. One of the major suppliers of airbag propellants, Takata Corp., is now teetering on the edge of bankruptcy because of the huge number of safety recalls connected to their products.
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Maybe they’ll fix all the other S model problems that Consumer’s Report documented? Not being able to identify the root cause of the seatbelt failure is not good at all. Denying that they have no issues with the laundry list of issues on the model S is just ignorant. All this and losing $4k per model S sold won’t generate any profits for Tesla.