Tesla recalling 90,000 Model S sedans to check seat belts | Hacker News Reader

Tesla recalling 90,000 Model S sedans to check seat belts

reuters.com

182 pointsleephillips99 comments

I just got the official e-mail. I thought this part was interesting:

"If you are concerned about the status of your seat belt prior to your scheduled inspection, you may be able to detect this condition by pulling very firmly on the lap portion of your seat belt with a force of at least 80 pounds. This procedure may detect an improperly attached seat belt but performing this procedure does not replace the need for an inspection by a Tesla technician."

It's cool that they're being so straightforward, but it's weird to see that sort of procedure so casually recommended to the end user.

Edit: I got my appointment scheduled for next week. Pretty quick and easy. I was afraid it might be a substantial wait, as the last time I needed a service appointment they were booked for a month. This inspection is only supposed to take 20 minutes, so maybe they're able to squeeze it in earlier because of that.

I think it makes sense - you'd probably be driving the car in for the inspection, so it'd be nice to have some sort of confidence in your seatbelt for that drive.

It totally makes sense. "If you can pull out your seatbelt, please don't drive the car to inspection. Get it towed or something."

That is a very reasonable suggestion.

I love the rapid turn around on inspection but perhaps that's an indication of how serious they think this is? Or put another way, once you publicly identify a possible issue could you be sued if that person was injured if the earliest you could see them was a month?

It looks like they rolled out a self-service scheduling system just for this event. It didn't show up for me initially, but it's there now. They have appointments starting at 8AM tomorrow morning and every half hour throughout the day. They also say you can come in without one. Seems like they are taking this extremely seriously. Whether that's because it's an actual danger or because they just want to be cautious, I couldn't say.

I assume it's that they know they have a lot to lose. They've been fighting for trust since day one, and a badly handled recall could send them back to no man's land.

It's nice to see a company treating people like adults again.

I find that pretty refreshing. I try to handle my responsibilities so maybe I don't have to rely on a corporation or the government to hold my hand. In that ideal scenario both the consumer and company can be sensible, limit pain, suffering, costs, lawsuits and so forth.

That said, in my experience the most common is the corporation not holding up to their side of the bargain. I recently had a recall on a GM vehicle I own, the car has been great. 110,000 miles and nothing extreme has happened. GM only got 90% of the way there though. I took it in for an ignition recall, they rekeyed my ignition to my driver's side door and now my keys won't work on my passenger side or trunk. They told me to pay for all new locks or take a hike. Or, they said I can use my keyless entry or carry two keys. I complain to GM corporate, they sided with the dealer as per their policy and also told me to take a hike. The correct thing to do would have been to key it to the VIN. But they wanted to make sure they didn't have to replace my driver's side door lock, since that's the one that's most likely to be worn down. Oh, and GM's own blog on the subject has a company official stating very clearly all your locks should work with your new key. I told GM corp that and even sent a link and showed them a screenshot of it. They ignored it.

We're thrifty but we have a slightly higher than average household income. I'm a developer, she's a teacher. GM won't get another dime from me or my wife, and I like to share my recall story with others. :)

Our next car is going to be a Tesla Model 3.

Didn't realize companies haven't been, went through a recall with a 95 Dodge Stratus back in the 90s where the rear seat belt shoulder mount was decided to be defective with regards to regulation. The disclosure sent even then went into detail about the problem and the resulting fix. In fact every recall I have seen with regards to safety is pretty explicit just so that fear isn't the reaction

I think the Tabata airbag fiasco is an exception.

>They ignored it.

why wouldnt they? you have no consumer protections in US, and even suing cost money, they know most people are sheep

"GM vehicle I own"

That was your first mistake.

    I try to handle my responsibilities so maybe I don't have to rely on a corporation or the government to hold my hand.

It's all about liability. Let's say another car has the issue and actually has an accident. Now who is at fault? Should Tesla have required a recall? Should they have had a different language? Is it your fault? Are you going to admit that when the insurance company doesn't want to pay?

That sounds like a classic engineers message - almost like its straight out of Musk's mouth. I dread to think how this is interpreted by someone with a less engineer-y mindset.

I doubt the average banker can do much with the phrase of "with a force of at least 80 pounds".

Sometimes I think companies should do dual PR releases. One that is mostly dataset/tech details and one that is fluffy PR.

Said banker could lift a couple bags of pet food, get a feel for that and check their belt. Perhaps they lift weights to stay fit, or their friends or family do.

Or, they simply take the car in, call their more technical friend, etc...

It's nice to see info clear enough for ordinary people to use. It is also nice to see that assumption of their potential to use the information out there too.

I don't think it's that extreme. Bankers don't know what pounds are, or don't know what pulling is?

Pulling on the seatbelt doesn't seem complicated enough to call it a "procedure". Now maybe if they'd said "And inspect the retaining plate while applying the force, if the retaining place moves less than 1.5mm, then you car is not affected", well that would count as a procedure. It's just a quick way to give customers some peace of mind while they wait for an appointment.

I would assume that they are prioritizing the recall appointments

Seat belt and safety system defects usually have a very low threshold for necessitating a recall or raising the ire of the NHTSA. Some manufacturers, notably Honda, have a lifetime unconditional warranty on seat belts.

It states in the article they are recalling every Tesla because of a single complaint.

Pretty good on the customer service/safety aspect if you ask me (I do not own a Tesla nor do I own Tesla stock).

They constantly mention the safety of their cars as a selling point. It's not surprising that they want to take care of this as quickly as possible, before it damages the brand.

I had a Mazda and a Toyota that had recalls for seat belts. 2 of the last 3 cars I owned. Pretty common.

This thread is hilarious. Tesla has quality problems on seat belts (!) and the thread is almost absolute positive focusing on how well they do the recall instead of focusing on the quality issues of a security (!) feature. I wonder what Tesla needs to do to get negative feedback on HN.

I think the point is that mistakes happen; the important is how you handle them. In contrast, there are plenty of cases where the company tries to hide them instead.

The way it works for me is, people can make a mistake, that's something we just have to accept. But whether I get negative about it or positive, depends on how the mistake is handled. Tesla gets one warning, two weeks later they announce that they want to see all their cars for inspection. What would make me stop trusting someone is if they'd try to sweep it under the rug or shrug it off.

Tesla seems to take its responsibility the way I wish all companies would when it comes to their products. It inspires trust. For me, anyway, and I think many people feel the same way -- many people in this thread, anyway :) Also, Tesla has a pretty solid reputation when it comes to supporting their own products, so that probably helps.

The alternative is to say "Okay Tesla made a mistake, they suck for making a mistake and I don't trust them anymore" and that's usually unfair because everybody makes mistakes.

I wonder how your comment would look like if your wife or husband would die due to faulty Tesla seat belts.

There is value in blameless post mortems, in openness and how you handle a crisis.

It is not the most important thing though. The most important thing is how you set up and fix quality so people don't die.

This reminds me of the Zen teaching where one points with his hand to the moon. And people forget about the moon and focus on the hand pointing instead.

Is it normal to issue a recall for a problem that has not been reliably reproducible?

If it's in a safety sensitive area, definitely. As soon as you know how to deal with a potential issue, the liability clock starts ticking, and so it should be.

And if you've just started to get the public to trust you/any slight issue is a PR timebomb.

In another comment you said they're "fighting for trust" and here you say they've just started to get the public to trust them. What is this referring to? In terms of safety, Tesla seems to be extremely trusted, and has been for a while now.

Tesla has a big and very vocal group of fanboys (of which I am one!), many of whom are also part of the "tech crowd" - therefore it may seem, from reading HN or Reddit, that Tesla is universally loved. But for GenPop, it's just a new car company making these weird things that are "electric cars", led by some guy they probably haven't heard much about. People don't trust electric cars yet, and don't consider Tesla to be a trusted brand.

Well I think they are fighting for trust, and they will be for a long time.

As the other commenter says, in these circles, Tesla is very well trusted. Out in the world though, there are still a lot of people who associate Teslas with spontaneous combustion. Even if that same person would say that they're "probably safe" or some similar hedged assessment.

I think I've heard people mention the fires once or twice, but they also seem to be aware that it involved exceptional circumstances and that no lives were at risk. And yes, I've talked about the car with a lot of people outside the tech community too.

I think in terms of safety, Tesla is more associated with things like blowing out the NHTSA rating system.

Or a high-media-attention sensitive area.

Yes. See the Takata airbag recall (ongoing).

Given that the way to check (yank hard on the lap belt) is simple, issuing the recall might serve the additional purpose of determining how widespread the problem actually is. There will probably be (in fact probably already are) numerous posts on teslamotorsclub.com and reddit.com/r/teslamotors saying "no problem found here."

Yes, ever since they starting fining the crap out of auto companies.

Auto companies have been preemptively recalling because recall is cheaper in the long runs than fines.

In fact rules and regulations for auto is actually a good example of government doing their job. Ralph Nader really did push real safety on cars in general.

I'm wondering to which extent the uneven distribution of Tesla cars around the world lowers the cost of recalling them (i.e. I suspect 50% of them live in a 10-mile radius of Palo Alto :) )

Elon could probably go door-to-door.

I've been kind of shocked at how many Model S cars drive on the roads in Chicago, even in the dead of winter with (2 years ago) -17 degrees F. My wife and I count them on the way to work and generally see 3 every morning at least.

There is a Tesla owner down the road from me who keeps his outside all year. I live in Calgary, Alberta. It was -14F last night...

50% of them have been sold outside the US so your estimate might be a bit high.

The notice was very clear that this problem didn't affect rear seatbelts. That's reassuring, but the rear seatbelts are certainly not immune to problems. My side rear seatbelts were replaced a while back under a service advisory after one of them started fraying pretty badly, and one of the replacements has also been replaced.

I guess the rear seatbelt problem wasn't considered a safety issue. It was certainly quite difficult to put on the rear seatbelt in both my car and the early test-drive cars, though.

As long as the failure is visible, it's not nearly as much of a safety issue, since you can just see that something is wrong.

Once the whole self-driving thing is completely integrated it'll be even easier.

I cannot wait until I don't need to waste my time driving when it is not for pleasure. Don't get me wrong I love a good drive but the morning commute can do one, I would much rather let the car do it so I can do some work or watch a movie. I want to treat my car like a train when it makes sense to.

OMG! I didn't even think of this. Here's how I imaging it might go:

  [CAR] Sir, I need to visit the service center and will be gone for about 1.5 hours.  Is that OK?
  [ME] Will you be back before I need to go home?
  [CAR] According to the traffic patterns and the availability of the service tech's I'm 98% sure that I can return by 5:00PM.
  [ME] OK.  Have fun!
  [CAR] Thank you, sir.

That might not be good, but the biggest surprise here that they've actually made and delivered 90,000 Model S's I didn't knew that they built so many of those already.

Production is accelerating fairly rapidly, so it's easy to get behind on that. About half of those 90,000 have been sold in the past 12 months and they're currently producing at a rate of about 55-60,000/year. Next year they're aiming for 100,000, although that will include Model X.

> About half of [all Teslas ever sold] have been sold in the past 12 months

If Tesla hits its goal of 500,000 cars produced annually by 2020, then this will remain true for several years, at least.

The decision and messaging both seem like the right way to deal with an issue with this, with respect to the consumer, the market, and the public at large.

How is this any different from any other manufacturer recall? My Jeep has an ignition key issue.

"Recall issued. Bring it in. We'll fix it. It'll take x amount of time."

Done prior to any accident/litigation. Recall all vehicles. Speak directly to press to enunciate that the ideals espoused prior to any problems are kept when a problem comes up. Pretty refreshing to me as a potential consumer, if I could afford one.

Jeep refused to acknowledge the issue as a problem when the researchers contacted them until the researchers broke the story through wired and a conference talk, and got national coverage on it. Ignoring a problem until it gets national media coverage is not the appropriate way to deal with safety issues.

I once overheard a few Tesla owners chatting about their cars and most of them had a weekly two hour maintenance buffer for scheduled appointments with Tesla. People who buy Tesla are early adopters so they shouldn't be surprised when stuff like this happens.

Really, two hours a week? That doesn't even pass a basic smell test. A typical owner might see the service center a few times a year at most.

In a corporate world almost devoid of trust, Tesla are building brand trust on a deep level

This is in such stark contrast to the way automakers have been behaving lately. I never thought i'd buy a new car, but if I get the chance it'll be a Tesla.

This is probably the first real test of the "Unconventional" car maker. Tesla scoffs at the Dealership model, hates Gas stations and champions disruption in general.

Now a somewhat massive issue forces a recall...Traditional Car Makers have fixed ways (with well known issues) to deal with stuff like this. I am genuinely curious if Tesla can "innovate" again.

And on the same day the Volt was named 2016 Green Car of the Year! <- how did that happen?

its nice to see that they are taking owner ship for the issue, rather then just trying to pass it under the rug. >> GM im looking at you. but then again who really classic american cars anyway? Everyone i know is buying JDM / Euro. Unless they buy a Tesla, but the factory is literally down the street from my house, so that would explain why i see them all the time.....

Hahaha UTM-Mangler...

Wait. So hundreds of people did die from this? Seems a little early for a recall...

> There have been no accidents or injuries related to the problem, a Tesla spokesman said on Friday.

Hah!

It's refreshing to see a large company that realizes that getting in front of an issue before it's an issue will keep you in better standing with customers, press, shareholders and general public than trying to hide your mistakes in the hope that people will never find out.

>It's refreshing to see a large company..

Large in the sense of market cap, maybe. But nowhere remotely close to the size and scale of the large automotive companies. Obviously, Tesla can be more agile.

Agile? How about responsible?

Letting safety issues slide for as long as possible, even at the expense of life and limb, has nothing to do with agility.

With approximately 12,000 employees, Tesla is a large company[1]. It's at the small end of the large companies, and at less than 10% of all the other major automakers, but it's still large.

1: http://smbresearch.net/sizing-up-smb/

Actually, recalls are harder than usual for Tesla, because they only have 1 model in the field... so every recall is 100% of cars.

marketing ploy

Go on...

"The cost of the worldwide recall will be "immaterial," the company said. The problem was discovered after a single report to the company in early November of a seatbelt assembly breaking."

"A Tesla spokesman said Friday there have been no accidents or injuries related to the problem. Tesla officials emailed owners of the battery powered luxury sedan asking them to bring their cars to one of about 125 Tesla service centers worldwide for an inspection."

"Tesla may send service technicians to customers if necessary, a spokesman said. The company sells and services its cars with its own personnel and stores. Other automakers get recall repairs done through networks of dealers."

So, they start by mentioning it's an immaterial cost, which eases investor concerns. Then say that they're taking action after a single customer anecdote, which shows driver safety is paramount. Then mention that their have been no injuries/accidents furthering the safety-first narrative. Then they state the number of service centers worldwide to which a customer can go to have the issue addressed. And finally a nice jab at traditional automakers, saying that Tesla will address the issue with its own personnel whereas it would traditionally be outsourced.

So, yeah, I think it's fair to call it a marketing ploy. And I don't mean to sound super critical or cynical. I don't have any problem with it at all, it just is what it is.

To be fair I think the outsourcing of servicing was a comment from the report not from Tesla. It seem more to me that the recall and the process is more likely for safety reason which makes business sense and at the same time they are highlighting how they are doing a good job and milking it for all the marketing it can give them. I don't see anything wrong with that though as long as they are doing the necessary first.

I think most people think of "ploy" like "plan" or "strategy", which implies the thing the marketing is referring to is marketing. That is, a price change, or new feature is rolled out specifically because of marketing. This is more a reaction and less a plan, and as such calling it a ploy carries some implication that they planned the whole thing. Whether that's a valid assumption or not from the meaning of the words, it's obvious that's how some people are interpreting it. That was definitely my interpretation.

OK, so which part is the ploy?

Did they just make up (or perhaps fake) the incident where the seat belt came detached? That seems extremely far-fetched.

Everything else looks like a perfectly reasonable response to this incident.

Certainly, they're spinning this to be as positive as possible, but reacting well and putting a positive spin on something is really far from a "ploy."

I guess I don't hold a super negative connotation of the word ploy. I didn't intend to condemn their actions as unsavory. But if ploy is defined as "a cunning plan or action designed to turn a situation to one's own advantage", then I think it's a fair word to use. It's just "reacting well and putting a positive spin on something" worded differently.

>"a cunning plan or action designed to turn a situation to one's own advantage"

Sounds like the plan is to everyone's advantage?

* Owners get a prompt fix for a newly discovered safety issue (2 weeks ago), and clear reproduction steps.

* Tesla looks proactive, obviously.

* They're not taking the drastic (but expensive) option of replacing all seat belts, which makes investors happier.

* I think they're asking nearby owners to drive in, to prevent jamming their shipping infrastructure.

I think any sort of safety-related recall is going to be a net PR loss for Tesla. Immaterial means the cost is irrelevant, not that it's low. I don't see any evidence that it's anything more nefarious than what they're claiming.

Isn't irrelevant essentially the same as low in this context? And I tried to clarify that I don't think they're doing anything nefarious either. It's just seems like classic Elon spin, that's all.

No. They're not saying "it won't cost much". They're saying "this is a safety-related issue, so we won't even discuss the cost because obviously safety is our first priority, no matter how much it costs."

Yeah you're right, I had a poor definition of immaterial in my head.

The words 'material' and 'immaterial' when referring to business costs are usually financial jargon. I presume they described it as an immaterial cost because the expense is small enough that will not have a noticeable impact on their overall financial situation.

> An item is considered material, according to the American Accounting Association, when the knowledge of it would influence the decision of informed investor.

http://simplestudies.com/what-are-the-exceptions-to-basic-ac...

I agree with others that business reasons makes the most sense. As they mentioned, the costs are immaterial, but it allows them to inspect and determine whether this is a widespread issue and address it before anyone else gets injured and slaps them with a lawsuit.

The cost of a lawsuit would probably be significantly greater than the inspections.

I got curious as to what the cost would be and ran some rough numbers. I think Tesla's labor rate is $125/hour. Figure their cost is half that. At 20 minutes per inspection, that's about $20. Multiply by 90,000 cars and that's about $1.8 million. 2014 revenue was about $3.2 billion and 2015 should be quite a bit higher, so "immaterial" does seem justified given that this involves nearly every car they've ever built.

I daresay a lawsuit would be the least of their worries if there was an actual incident. After Volkswagen and Chrysler, I wouldn't be surprised if the next incident results in jail time.

No company will do a recall if there is no good reason for it. Immediate questions spring to mind: why wasn't this caught prior to rolling out the cars? Was this design done by Tesla or was it an off-the-shelf component from another manufacturer? Is it an integration issue, a material defect or some other kind of problem? How did this pass the various crash tests?

There is no way a company like Tesla would open up their brand to such speculation voluntarily if they could avoid it by designing a better product from the start.

> "I think it's fair to call it a marketing ploy."

Or rather, good business.

I don't see how a recall can be a marketing ploy. Please explain

"Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches." andy warhol but tesla seems pretty dedicated to maintaining a really strong pr image and messing up something as simple as seatbelts seems like a bad thing

I replied to another comment below with my thoughts on that.

Not a ploy. Just good spin on a bad situation.

No, just good practice.

These things are bound to happen when you're trying to push new technologies. I think its a good thing that Tesla is trying to prevent potential accidents by recalling the cars.

Seatbelts are new technology?

ELECTRIC seat belts.

With regenerative braking.

Honestly, the brake is SO sensitive on the Model S (a slight tap has you flying forward I've found) that you COULD almost make this a reality.

What sort of newfangled technology are they using in anchor bolts?

I thought Volvo solved this particular problem in the 50s/60s.

Teslas response is impressive, but the fact that there is an issue in the first place is unsettling. I guess there are issues that come from starting from scratch when building a car, after all.

... that's a big conclusion to leap to for a single loose bolt.

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