Tesla has partaken in a long history of blaming drivers for parts failures it knew were defective, a bombshell report from Reuters alleges.
The report chronicles several stories from frustrated drivers who spent thousands replacing failed parts on the often new vehicles.
“It tried to kill me,” Jamie Minshall, one of the drivers Reuters interviewed, said of his 2023 Model Y. Minshall had the vehicle for less than two months when he felt it “jerk suddenly.” A message on his dashboard popped up, pointing to a loss of power steering, making the steering wheel difficult to maneuver.
“Fortunately, I was able to hit the brakes quick enough and not go into the ditch, but, yeah, it was pretty terrifying,” Minshall told the publication.
400 Model 3 or Model Y owners complained of such power-steering failures to the automaker between late 2017 and early 2022. Reuters notes the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) began investigating the outages in the two vehicles this past July.
The company has blamed many of the failures on its own customers, pointing to “driver abuse,” according to interviews Reuters conducted with former service managers, company records and a 2020 letter to the NHTSA.
Other customer complaints chronicled in Reuters’ report include issues with suspensions, half shafts, and steering racks.
Neither Tesla nor its CEO, Elon Musk, provided a comment to Reuters. At the time of writing, Musk, who is often active on X, hasn’t made a post addressing the allegations.
You can read the full report here.
Source: Reuters
