Photo by: NDZ/STAR MAX/IPx
Following weeks of complaints by owners of Tesla’s Cybertruck, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued a recall. recall for all 3,878 vehicles sold, citing occurrences of a “trapped accelerator pedal.”
The NHTSA site said the recall “potentially” affected every Cybertruck with the explanation that “a trapped accelerator pedal can cause the vehicle to accelerate unintentionally, increasing the risk of a crash.”
Complaints by Cybertruck owners started weeks ago and were shared on social media. Inside EVs One video showed how “the cover of the pedal can slip off and get stuck in the driver’s side footwell, causing the pedal to stay pressed.” The driver was able to stop the acceleration by pressing the brakes, but as Inside EVs writer Rob Stumpf pointed out, “Kind of scary considering the 6,800-pound truck can sprint from 0-60 mph in under 2.7 seconds,” also describing the potential for disaster as turning “the stainless steel trapezoid into a 6,800-pound land missile.”
That video and similar ones, as well as other complaints filed by Cybertruck owners, led to a halt in the delivery of additional Cybertrucks. According to TechCrunch, Tesla confirmed the problem to NHTSA:
Tesla said it first received a notice of one of these accelerator pedal incidents from a customer on March 31, and then a second one on April 3. After performing a series of tests, it decided on April 12 to issue a recall after determining that an “[a]n unapproved change introduced lubricant (soap) to aid in the component assembly of the pad onto the accelerator pedal,” and that “[r]esidual lubricant reduced the retention of the pad to the pedal.”
Tesla says it will replace or rework the accelerator pedal on all existing Cybertrucks. It also told NHTSA that it has started building Cybertrucks with a new accelerator pedal, and that it’s fixing the vehicles that are in transit or sitting at delivery centers.
Tesla owner Elon Musk has not yet posted on Twitter/X about the recall, but did post about the delay in deliveries on Wednesday, writing that they were being “very cautious”:
There were no injuries or accidents because of this. We are just being very cautious.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 18, 2024
He also thought this video of Bill Maher comparing liberals to the gas pedal “driving off a cliff” was funny.
