Tesla under investigation for Model Y steering wheel malfunctions
Okay, shares of Tesla trading lower on the day after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into a malfunction of a 2023 Tesla Model Y steering wheel. As you can see, 3% drop on the day. Our senior autos reporter, Pras, remaining here with that story. So Pras, a steering wheel falling off, that sounds like a problem. That sounds like the most terrifying thing on the planet. Yeah, you got to steer, I think. My God.
You got to steer. So yeah, apparently two instances of two separate cars, the wheels came off the column while the driver was using the car. So potentially a serious issue here. Apparently the retaining bolt was missing from the factory when the cars were delivered. So that's the problem. It's fixed, apparently, it was just the reattached wheel, put the bolt on. The question is how many cars out there have been affected by that? We don't know.
The firm Motor Intelligence says that Tesla sold 252,000 Model Ys in the US last year. So the question is of those, how many of those might need this retrofit fix, put the bolt back in? A serious issue there, I think they're going to be investigating very, very soon right now. One thing I will say though is that this sort of follows that big full self-driving recall that we saw just a few weeks ago, 300,000 vehicles, right? And then just today we saw that NHTSA opening up a special investigation into another self-driving incident with the car crashing into a fire truck in Costa Mesa, California. So a lot going on there in the safety end. A lot of issues there in a short period of time. Yeah, and steering wheel's falling off. That's going to be enough to make you second guess if you were planning to buy.
A retaining bolt in a steering wheel. I'm no auto's expert. It's pretty essential.
Yahoo Finance, Personal Finance, Money, Investing, Business, Savings, Investment, Stocks, Bonds, FX, Currencies, NYSE, Equities, News, Politics, Market, Markets, Yahoo FInance Premium, Stock market, Tesla, TSLA