American Electric Car automaker Tesla is now recalling over 130,000 vehicles including the Model S and Model X. National Highway Traffic City Administration has demanded or on the other hand requested Tesla to call back over 140,000 of their vehicles through a formal letter on January 13th 2021 after upgrading a safety norm in November, stating that it had tentatively concluded the 2012-2018 Model S and 2016-2018 Model X vehicles “contain a defect related to motor vehicle safety.”
It is generally unusual for an agency to directly send a formal letter to an automaker demanding for a recall, because automakers typically agree to these things from their own side.
National Highway Traffic City Administration stated that “during our review of the data, Tesla provided confirmation that all units will inevitably fail given the memory device’s finite storage capacity.”
The agency said touch screen failures pose significant safety issues, including the loss of rear view/backup camera images, and loss of alerts in the autopilot feature which may lead to a severe crashes.
NHTSA noted that “Tesla has implemented several over-the-air updates in an attempt to mitigate some of the issues … but tentatively believes these updates are procedurally and substantively insufficient.” It noted that under law “vehicle manufacturers are required to conduct recalls to remedy safety-related defects.”
