Federal safety regulators said Friday that Elon Musk’s Tesla will recall more than 125,000 vehicles in the United States to fix a flaw in the seatbelt warning system in some of its models.
Affected Tesla vehicles experienced an issue where “seat belt warning lights and audible chimes may not operate as intended” when the driver was not wearing a seat belt. This was revealed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Tesla plans to fix the issue through an over-the-air software update at no cost to vehicle owners.
The update is expected to arrive sometime in June.
“The software improvements remove reliance on the driver’s seat occupancy switch from the software logic and activate the seat belt reminder signal based solely on the status of the driver’s seat belt buckle and ignition,” NHTSA said.
According to the announcement, the recall applies to some Tesla Model S vehicles from 2012 to 2024, Model X from 2015 to 2024, Model 3 from 2017 to 2023, and Model Y from 2020 to 2023.
Tesla shares were flat in trading on Friday.
The electric vehicle giant announced a voluntary recall of about 4,000 Cybertrucks in April to fix an issue with a faulty accelerator pedal that could lead to fatal accidents.
An NHTSA safety report at the time said the accelerator pedal pad in affected Cybertrucks “may detach, causing the pedal to become trapped in the interior trim above the pedal.”
Tesla in December conducted an over-the-air recall of more than 2 million vehicles in the U.S., the company’s largest ever, to address concerns from federal regulators that safety warnings for its Autopilot semi-autonomous driving system “may not be sufficient to prevent drivers from misusing the software.”
The federal government said last month it was investigating whether those updates were sufficient following the series of accidents.
With post wire
