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Comment by wiredfool | Hacker News Reader

The Irish NCT results for 2024 show high failure rates for Teslas in:

  - Vehicle safety and Equipment
  - Steering and Suspension
  - Side Slip
  - Wheels and Tires

and to a lesser extent

  - Lights
  - Lighting and Electrical

The (Tesla) overall failure rate is over 50% (697/1301), which is above the (population) overall failure rates of just under 50%.

Note that the oldest Tesla is 2015, and most are 2020+ which is significantly newer than a good chunk of the cars on the road here.

Also note that in my personal experience of ~10 NCTs, I've had 3 nominal failures which were stupid trivial things that aren't actually maintenance issues. (1, extra seat not in car. 2, tent peg fell in and folding seat didn't lock in place. 3, folding seat wasn't up when tested, as well as at least one where my mechanic swears that they screwed it up (steering rack boot not attached))

https://www.rsa.ie/road-safety/statistics/nct-statistics-and...

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An 18% failure rate on a one year old model Y under "suspension and steering". This is absolutely shocking.

For comparison the ID4 had 0 failures at this age for this category, and for a much larger sample size.

I assume these are all taxis as they're being tested so early. This implies there a ton of unsafe privately owned Model Ys on the road.

That is probably because the ID4s had pre-inspection before their yearly technical inspection. That is what they do in The Netherlands, probably also other countries. That makes their cars stand out in these reports.

Don't all cars in the Netherlands have at least a small checkup before inspection?

I once had a Fiat Panda from 1984, 20 years old by then. It had a small checkup and maintenance, then went for the inspection. It passed, but was highlighted for inspection from the controlling organizing. The mechanic, owner of the shop, started getting really nervous about losing his license, asking, is the car allright, is it really allright? And it passed inspection again.

They had an overall failure rate of 20% so I don't think that's the case.

Anecdotally most people I know here don't bother with preinspection. It's usually cheaper even if it fails the first time. Although looking at the data most people driving EVs could probably save time/money by investing in a tire thread guage!

Also to add, the Irish system is totally different to a lot of Europe. The owner always brings the car for inspection, it's never part of an annual maintenance package.

Suspension and steering is probably loose bushings. Side Slip is alignment/tracking. Wheels and tires is almost always worn tires, especially passenger side front due to roundabouts.

I'm not sure what the vehicle safety and equipment failures would be, nor the distinction between lights and lighting and electrical. The fact that it's a noticable failure point is a little surprising to me because all the lights should be LED and pretty solid.

(Though, I'll say, even though we have mandatory inspections, 5-10% of cars in my area are driving with at least one light that's out.)

Lighting failures are usually headlight alignment problems, i.e. blinding oncoming traffic

They shouldn't fall out of alignment that quickly so I'd guess they're poorly aligned from the factory

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