Tesla issues its largest recall ever over faulty Model S steering | Hacker News Reader

Tesla issues its largest recall ever over faulty Model S steering

theverge.com

161 pointsfmihaila80 comments

Unlike the quality issues with the Model 3 that continue, this is no big deal. It happens to other manufacturers all the time.

Seems like a quick fix.

Tesla is 15 years old.

Tesla has produced 300K cars.

Tesla just recalled 123K cars.

Zero profit. This is good for bitcoin.

Nothing to see here. Stuff like this happens all the time, would not even be on HN if it did not have the world Tesla in it.

While disappointing and costly for Tesla, thankfully a power steering failure isn't typically a big deal, safety-wise.

If you've never driven a vehicle without power steering: it's marginally harder to turn the wheel, which really only affects you in parking lots and making turns from a dead stop (as is mentioned in the article).

Try driving a car designed for power steering with a failed pump. It's much, much, much harder than a car that was designed from the beginning to be used without power assist. Moving or not it's a hand-over-hand struggle to turn the wheel.

It’s not “you’re going to die now” harder.

More like “this isn’t comfortable, better pull over and see what’s wrong” harder.

Depends on what is going on around you when it happens, how long it takes you to realize that something is wrong, and what to do about it. It wouldn't surprise me if many people would not even realize that they have power assist in the first place, and just assume that the wheel somehow got stuck and there is nothing they can do.

Although I would imagine that the most common failure case is the wheel slowly getting harder to turn over a period of days or weeks.

It probably depends also on the car. I drove a friend's little Datsun pickup for a while with a failed pump, and while it was drivable, you did have to get used to using both hands to turn the wheel, especially at low speeds when you had to turn a little sideways and use and overhand grip to wrench the wheel around. Good times!

Some cars probably have more built-in leverage. A sports car may be the worst since it will have a pretty low ratio to begin with. My Camaro might not really be drivable because it has a low ratio rack as well as 285's on the front which are going to be a great big PITA to move.

For a strong guy yes, no problem, for a much lighter or weaker person it can be a huge problem. Tesla is a heavy car, it would require some serious muscle to initiate a slow turn without powersteering.

If you're driving a vehicle with purely drive-by-wire controls and no mechanical linkage, you're going to crash. As far as I know the industry hasn't really deployed that yet, but it's on the way (conceptually at least).

My power steering once failed when the accu died with (almost) all the electronics in the middle of the turn. With all the adrenaline in the blood, you won't have much problems controlling your car then ;)

You are right, it's quite a different experience comparing to cars from a few decades back.

I'm driving my VW Fox from 2005 with a broken pump for 12+ months now.

The only bad thing is parking, you get used to it. Gotta take the jacket off before attempting to park in or park out, or you are going to sweat a lot.

A Fox on tiny tyres is not the same as a 2 ton Tesla on wide tyres, where steering force required is concerned.

I had power steering disable itself randomly in a 2005 VW Polo. The required steering forces below 40km/h were suddenly extremely large. It was about 5 to 10 times the force that I remember from a heavier and larger car without any power steering that I have driven prior.

I guess you are lucky that your steerimg system is designed to fail more gracefully.

> Try driving a car designed for power steering with a failed pump

I do this fairly regularly - I race an early 90s Honda Civic in a wheel-to-wheel series where the power steering pump has been closed-looped on purpose (weight savings, one less thing to fail during an 8-24 hour endurance race, etc.)

One has to remember that cars that were designed to be without power steering usually has 5 turns of the wheel from one side to the other, while cars with power steering only has 3, again usually. So a car that was designed to have power steering and looses it, is not really comparable to cars designed to be without one, and is a real pain to drive, especially in the city.

I have also been told that the steering column for power steering is not as strong because the design loads are lower.

You might be confusing a few things - older steering columns were very rigid (and thus "strong"), but were also a fairly major concern in frontal or rear collisions: they would essentially impale the driver if hit at the right angle.

Modern steering columns have a telescoping construction that allows them to collapse in the event of an impact so that this isn't a big of a concern.

It doesn't matter whether it is a servo or a human that turns the shaft, the design loads are a function of the weight of the car and the front/rear weight distribution as well as of whether or not the front wheels are driven or idlers.

Wont affect Tesla. Supplier is footing the bill.

As with nearly all recalls, it will most likely affect their stock price in the short term.

Also, I expect most owners will wait until 1h fix (presumably much cheaper for all parties) is available.

It's a bigger issue on an ICE car where leaking power steering fluid can leak or spray onto hot engine components.

A sudden loss of power steering can be very dangerous. Imagine you are on the inside left turning lane, an unexpected power steering failure could cause you to drive into the vehicle turning on the outside lane because your turning radius is now far wider.

"Tesla said it has only seen this problem occur in "very cold climates" where road salts are commonly used."

Ah, the usual "designed in the Bay Area" issue...

It's a little overkill to characterize this as "faulty" steering. Given that it's a durability issue. And in any case, they're being proactive. Not dragging their feet as manufacturers did over corroding Takata airbag units.

Here is a different perspective from an owner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM5z0dW60KE

And then we find out how a lack of power steering makes autopilot a death mode.

It probably does, as the autopilot probably uses the power steering to steer.

That is why they tell you to not stop focusing on the road as you use it.

Yes, probably so. So maybe don't autopilot before the recall repair.

I've driven mid-sized cars without power assisted brakes and steering, and they were manageable at moderate speed.

The important difference is that those cars were designed for you to steer and brake it without assistance. Different gear ratios and such.

I had to drive a modern car home once with the power brakes malfunctioning and I couldn't exert enough force (grabbing the steering wheel to give me leverage) to have safe braking power. I ended up going very slow in the emergency lane of the highway in second speed so that motor braking could help me stop. It was not fun.

No, this was a modern car, with power assisted steering and brakes. Steering required more force, but wasn't that hard. Braking was iffy, I admit, so I also used engine braking and the hand brake.

And yes, standard transmission. I was coasting downhill in neutral, with the engine etc off. Testing the running start protocol, for dealing with battery failure.

i've driven an old car which had power assisted steering that would occasionally fail while the car was being driven. you could still turn the wheel, it just suddenly required a lot more effort.

i suggest this thing is mainly going to be a problem where the power-assist fails during a trip at some unpredictable and unfortunate moment. driving where you know you won't have power-assist for the entire trip would be far safer.

Does not only affect Tesla the part is made by Bosch and also affects daimler.

I think about DitBA whenever Siri says "Brrr!" to 39 F weather. Put on a sweater, Siri.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand 'sweater'."

Heh, happens all the time when you bring your car from a northeastern state to a mechanic in the south.

Why’s your car in such bad shape?

It’s called rust.

Rebuild it in rust! Wait...

Not really, a lot of other manufacturers had recalls for various parts and even frames in excessive salt conditions.

It's just that such challenging environments trigger the problems first.

Among others, Toyota Tacoma gen 2 frames for certain years were improperly factory coated and would rust straight through.

There's a famous example from the UK told to mech eng students.

One make of car used the wrong type of fixing for the steering wheel and the wheel could come away in your hands :-)

Ha. That actually happened to my dad decades ago (Russian cars lol)

Seriously -like my Beats Studio wireless which turn off in NYC winter!

Get yourself some Massachusetts-designed Bose equipment :)

Mine sometimes struggle in the winter though, especially with my phone in my pocket.

Honda recently moved to a capless gas filler that, in certain climates particularly, will collect water.

Bay Area people are known to spend a lot of time in Tahoe when it's cold. So this is more, "Let's repeat that untrue joke about people in the Bay Area knowing nothing about winter."

hahaha average low in Lake Tahoe is -5 degrees C (23 F). When you think that's cold, then you truly do know nothing about winter.

Given that the flaw revolves around road salt, and not the absolute temperature, yeah, doesn't matter in this particular case.

Regardless of whether Tahoe winters are “real winter” or not, I don’t think they use salt in CA because of the environmental effects downstream - I believe they use sand instead.

This prompted me to look up which states salt and which don't, and I learned the term "Salt Belt":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Belt

(And yeah, you're right: CA isn't one of them.)

California has a variety of climate areas, and a little googling tells me that they use various kinds of salt in the high Sierras, including the Tahoe area. Also, half of Tahoe is in Nevada, which uses salt.

Sand only works when it's barely freezing. Which can be true at low elevations, but not at 10,000'.

It depends. Michigan uses sand when it's too cold for salt to have any effect.

they use sand and gravel in Edmonton. Which is below barely freezing.

Edmonton is barely below freezing in the winter?!?

Almost thought I screwed it up... "below barely freezing", not barely below freezing.

Normally I'd be the first to beat up on Tesla for not actually knowing how to really design or build a car (they don't) - but in this case, its not as if they're the first auto manufacturer with a similar problem.

https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/ford-recalls-355000-vehicle...

(To be clear, my issues with Tesla is that they do not have the internal manufacturing expertise - or the design expertise for automobiles, and this shows thru parts availability, several recalls, and their slow pace of production - you can't design components with the same tolerances you'd build a MacBook Pro with, and use them on a car, and expect it to work well for manufacturing at scale)

To be specific "The automaker said 123,000 Model S vehicles built before April 2016"

That's quite a minor recall compared to almost any typical recalls in recent history is it not?

Although that's not to say it isn't still a serious issue for a smaller firm like Tesla.

There are literally 2 much bigger recalls happening right now.

Airbags! Multiple companies have recalled a specific airbag module that catches on fire. 1+ million cars

Ford recalled 1.3 million cars last week, the steering wheel can fall off. That "internal manufacturing expertise" in action.

Glad you added the literally, otherwise I might think that 2 was an exaggeration.

It's a sizable percentage of all the cars Tesla has ever sold, considering they're barely over 300,000 produced across all lines right now.

Yeah it's not a big recall in the scheme of things but it is a major percentage of the total production of the Model S (wikipedia says they were up to 212,000 at end of 2017).

GM's big ignition switch recall was 800,000, Firestone recalled the tires for millions vehicles back around 2000.

Most automakers sell millions and millions of units in a short period of time, but Tesla does not. I’d be more interested to see what percentage of Tesla’s have been subject to recalls vs the total shipped, and compare that to a similar mainstream metric.

123,000 of 300,000 is just above 40%

I thought that seemed really high, so I did a little looking and horrifically it’s actually a bit lower than the industry average of 46%! Some of that is skewed by VW recalling more cars in a year than it sells in a year, but still...

Wow.

http://m.wardsauto.com/industry/best-and-worst-automaker-rec...

I’m actually mostly surprised there are 123k model S cars manufactured before 2016. Those cars are $70-80k each on average. That’s a lot of revenue.

How did they get this many people: Number of employees 37,543 (2017)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.]

Well, they do make a lot of what goes into the car in-house. And they design it in house, too.

How would a self driving car be impacted by a failure like this? Can the onboard computer still drive the car (and has a sense there’s something wrong w/ the steering) or is it just dead in the water?

Is this going to effect them trying to shift workers from the S line to the 3 assembly line? Or is this just a matter of maintenance services doing the replacement?

At the very least, this is the last kind of news they need, for sales, PR, and internal morale.

I don't know. Good-guy recalls on things that are largely unimportant sometimes can end up creating good will and customer loyalty. The part in place seems to only matter in very specific scenarios and is largely an inconvenience, not a safety risk.

The fix will be done at local service centers. So I don't see how this will affect production at Nevada and Fremont.

Guessing from the article, the fix is replacing a few bolts with more corrosion resistant ones. The labor around that should mostly be about reaching the parts in question and maybe some minor recalibration on the steering column.

I was told the upgrade would take ~1 hour in a local service center.

Getting a 404 not found. Perhaps dodgy reporting?

It's working for me, here's a mirror though: https://outline.com/m8mpV4

Here's some other sources:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/29/tesla-recalls-123000-model-s...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-recalls-123-000-model-s-c...

http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/29/technology/business/tesla-mo...

I still see it.

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