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For affected Model 3 owners, Tesla has pledged to install a new cable harness and guide protector free of charge.

Wiring harness flexing and chafing is a decades-old well-known problem with well-known solutions. I wonder what the people who designed that area are thinking now, when they were presumably trying to save costs?

If Teslas' issues were specific to being EVs or otherwise new functionality specific to its cars, that would seem more understandable; yet these appear to be low-hanging fruit. As the other comment here mentions, other manufacturers have many recalls too, and some of those do look like low-hanging fruit, so I wonder if this is just a norm for the industry as a whole. What I'm trying to say is, why haven't simple things like latches and harness flexing/chafing been solved and perfected by now?

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Attempts to save money in manufacturing undermine solved or perfected approaches.

But you only hear about it when it fails. When it's successful it just looks like products gradually getting cheaper.

Yes, that's the definition of risk.

They took the apple route and decided to just go ahead with it after a few months of testing. Like the fiasco of using flex cables for their macbooks. They would crack from opening and closing and would cost $800 for a new screen plus labor.

Not to be rude, but link that backs this claim?

https://support.apple.com/13-inch-macbook-pro-display-backli...

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/07/20/flexgate-class-action-l...

you are making a presumption there in terms of the engineering. I think the Model 3 (And Model S) where the first two major production cars from a new vendor - who didn't necessarily have the institutional knowledge. That said, I have had a Honda Odyssey, that has had four major return to shop events in it's lifespan. I had two Honda that had to have their airbags replaced. A VW that had a alternator reknowned for running backwards and destroying itself. A Honda recall that involved a kids seat suddenly becoming unlatched and possibly catapulting a child during a car crash.

It's hard to cover ever contingency.

Sure. But the examples you have listed are all on pretty complex systems while hood latch seems very basic. It makes me wonder which issues Tesla didn't recall cars for.

To you question: no idea. But I know my aunt has a Honda CR-V that needs to go back to the shop every 1-4 months to get a cable harness serviced and they have to take apart a huge part of the car to do it. I think it’s more a matter of unintended consequences. In the case of the Honda, the dealership tells her their understanding is Honda thought it was nestled away deeply enough it’d be protected. Big oops on their part the integrity measure failed and results in hours of maintenance to repair it

My understanding of the automotive industry is that they cut corners everywhere they can because they know it’ll save more money than a lawsuit or recall will cost. Do they do these things and when someone dies or raises a stink only then do they do the recall.

Having spent 7 years in automotive, I can tell you definitively this is not the case. Automakers are not interested in dealing with litigation, regardless of the cost-benefit-analysis. It is a mess. Discovery is a mess. The actual court work is a mess. No automaker wants to risk going down this road.

This is largely urban legend from the Corvair debacle when an internal document showed someone comparing costs of lawsuits to a cost of recall. I don’t think it ever made it into some sort of policy, it was just a math wonk running numbers

Actually I was referring to the Ford rollover thing: https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/ford-hid-suv-...

And to the GM ignition thing: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2014/10/3/18073458/gm-car-r...

This is largely urban legend

There are numerous anecdotes about cost/benefit analysis. Not just Corvair.

The Ford Pinto fuel tank is one of the most notorious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Cost%E2%80%93benefi...

I had originally typed the Pinto as the example, but changed it after thinking the memo in question was related to the Nader book. Regardless, the point still stands. From your link:

“The general misunderstanding of the document, as presented by Mother Jones, gave it an operational significance it never had” and that the memo

“explains in part of his Mother Jones article that Ford employees wrote this document as part of an ongoing lobbying effort to influence NHTSA (24, 28). But his readers have relied exclusively on his other claim, that it was the "internal" (20, 24) memo on which Ford based its decision to market the dangerous Pinto and settle the few inevitable lawsuits”

That’s what I meant by it not translating to actual policy.

I watched “Fight Club” too, good flic.

Why does the harness need to be on the moving part in the first place?

If there's lights or other electrical components (such as a backup camera in this case) mounted on the trunk lid, then the harness will need to flex every time it opens.

Is this at all an abnormal issue? I've had cable run failures myself in other cars. It's a pretty routine thing, I think. It rises to the level of a recall here only because the device on the other end of the wire is the backup camera.

It's amazing the amount of attention the simple fact of "TESLA!" can bring to the most mundane and normal issues. It's... an inspection recall. People will just schedule a service visit on their phones and the Tesla folks will show up and check it. Is this really worthy of (at current count, I believe) three front page stories on HN?

Or is it because the recall encompasses 20% of all the vehicles that Tesla has ever sold?

Isn't that a bit spun, though? 90% of "all the vehicles that Tesla has ever sold" were sold in the last two years. It's a brand new company ramping quickly. In fact the total number of vehicles affected here represents about... six months of production output. That's a big recall[1], but not particularly notably so. There are six-figure recalls announced every year.

I just don't understand what it is about "TESLA!" that causes people to get so terribly upset. I especially don't understand why the people who are most upset are the ones who didn't buy a Tesla and don't plan to.

[1] And again, it's just an inspection of a cable run! We're not talking about swapping a drive shaft or something.

Do Tesla folks make house calls?

Yes. They refer to them as "mobile service".

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