Tesla emerges dry…almost

The company has generally refrained from recalling its products following NHTSA’s investigation into suspension defects, but it has still been advised to replace parts in some cars.

That investigation spanned years and involved allegations of suspension defects in the Model S and Model X. The situation began to escalate in 2020 when Tesla recalled about 30,000 Model S and Model X vehicles previously shipped to China due to an alleged suspension issue.

The strange thing was that It only concerned two car models and only those sold in China.Even though these cars were manufactured in the USA, Tesla used the same suspension as all Model S and Model X produced during this period.

Tesla disagreed with Chinese authorities that these cars should be recalled and claimed there was no defect. The company stated that the fault in question occurred Less than 0.05% of cars outside China and about 0.1% of cars in China.

The automaker blames the high rate on “driver abuse”, which it says is “uniquely serious” in China, where users in the country allegedly do not maintain their cars at all and deliberately subject them to such conditions and tests that they inevitably end up with failures due to heavy loads – frequent bumps into curbs, heavy impacts into potholes, etc.

In 2020, NHTSA weighed in and launched its own investigation. Four years later, NHTSA’s Office of Defect Investigation (ODI) has completed its investigation No mandatory recall, but Tesla is recommended to replace the front control arms on a select number of Model S and Model X.

NHTSA initially launched an investigation after receiving 43 complaints of front suspension failures, and discovered many more incidents (426 incidents) during the investigation, but no major accidents occurred. If a vehicle is operated with a faulty front linkage, the vehicle may cause additional damage to other vehicle componentsHowever, there is no evidence that front linkage failure affects the vehicle’s handling in this way.

NHTSA notes that closing the investigation “does not constitute an admission by the Agency that a safety-related defect did not exist.”