It seems that Tesla CEO Elon Musk cannot catch a break over the past few months. On top of everything that has been going on with Twitter, the EV manufacturer is currently dealing with a federal investigation for complaints about Tesla vehicle seat belts disconnecting while driving.
Tesla Model X's Faulty Seatbelt
Two Tesla drivers filed complaints stating that their front safety belts were unbuckled whilst on the road. While both were Model X, one's model year was 2022 while the other was 2023. The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration is currently investigating the incident.
The NHTSA says that the seat belts failed to stay buckled due to them not being properly connected during assembly. It was said that they were only held together by "friction fit," as mentioned in The Verge.
Upon opening the investigation back on March 24th, reports say that the issue may be affecting around 50,000 Tesla Model X vehicles. The two vehicles involved in the complaint were believed to be delivered with "insufficiently connected anchor linkages."
The disconnection of the seat belt from the anchor pretensioner would occur once force has been exerted on the link and the friction resistance was no longer enough to hold it. This could prove to be dangerous and even fatal when accidents do take place.
Tesla has had the same incident with its Model 3 vehicles, which affected more than 24,000 cars. It's said that the anchors for the rear seat were not reassembled correctly, resulting in the recall last year.
This is a bigger problem for Tesla not only because it's yet another issue associated with the car brand, but because, unlike other issues, they cannot simply fix it with a software update and may require a service repair to fix it.
Other Issues with Tesla
Although Tesla has released the latest full self-driving beta a few days ago, the company issued a recall in February after admitting that the FSD beta may cause crashes. Over 360,000 cars were affected by the recall.
The feature has been linked to many crashes involving the electric vehicle. During the Super Bowl, an ad was even aired to show just how flawed the full self-driving feature was. Tech billionaire Dan O'Dowd spend $7 million for the video to be viewed by 100 million people.
For one, the Automatic Emergency Braking feature claims that it will automatically stop once an obstacle has been detected on the road. The ad shows that the vehicle did not do so and hit a test mannequin in the process.
The Side Collision Warning feature also did not function as intended, which should be able to tell if there are obstacles along the car. This became evident when a simulation of a child crossing the road was not detected by the car.
The latest update of the Tesla FSD, which is the Beta v11.3.2, has more neural networks to assist the driver with advanced self-driving. The same rules apply, as mentioned in Interesting Engineering, where the driver must keep their hands on the wheel at all times.
