Remember that scene in Fight Club wherein Edward Norton describes car recall math? Number of vehicles out there multiplied by probably failure rate multiplied by the average cost of an out of court settlement, and if that’s more cost-effective than doing recall, they don’t do one? Yeah, Tesla’s not into that, so they’re recalling a ton of cars over a single seatbelt failure.
Tesla’s not the only car company to act quickly on recalls, but some past mechanical faults have been ignored longer than they should’ve been to disastrous effect for both customers and companies. In this instance, a single Tesla customer had their seatbelt mysteriously become detached from the seat while turning around to talk to passengers in the back seat. There was no damage, crash, or injury involved, but with the success of electric vehicles still tenuous and Tesla leading the charge, they’re not taking any chances.
According to Reuters, they find the cost of inspecting all Model S sedans (most in the U.S. with some in Europe and Asia) to make sure their seat belts are assembled properly to be “immaterial.” Whether it’s for PR reasons or altruistic ones, it’s nice to see a company take its customers’ safety so seriously. Tesla drivers should have received emails instructing them to take their car to a service center for inspection, though they don’t expect to find many faulty vehicles.
Customers can test the seat belts themselves by pulling on the lap belt with a force greater than 80 pounds, but it’s recommended that they spend the six minutes at a service center letting Tesla officially make sure their expensive, environmentally-friendly investments aren’t actually death traps. Maybe now Tyler Durden can feel a little brighter about the state of humanity.
(via Wired, image via 20th Century Fox)
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