More than 800,000 US Tesla EVs have seat belt warning bug
Due to a software bug in certain Tesla vehicles, the seat belt warning sometimes does not sound. That was discovered at the beginning of this year by South Korean authorities. In the US it is estimated that about 817,000 vehicles are affected. Tesla will release an over-the-air update in early February.
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has released a recall report citing the issue affecting North American Model S and Model X vehicles built since 2021 to date, as well as all North American Model 3 vehicles manufactured have been built since 2017. According to the organization, this concerns 817,000 vehicles.
The problem, according to the NHTSA, occurred after a ride in which the seat belt warning went off, but the user interrupted the ride without heeding the same sound. This can be, for example, by getting out and leaving again later by car. At the second ‘drive cycle’, as the NHTSA calls it, the mandatory warning sound for the seat belt will no longer be heard, according to the organization. They say this is due to a software bug. The seatbelt buckle warning sound will still sound as soon as the above-mentioned vehicles are driving more than 22 kilometers per hour.
So according to the organization, it concerns the above-mentioned models, but neither Tesla nor the NHTSA gives details about similar problems with the same vehicles in other parts of the world. There may be, because the problem was discovered on January 6 of this year by the South Korean automotive test and research center. This is according to the report of the NHTSA. The South Korean institute notified Tesla and opened an investigation on January 10.
On January 27, Tesla rolled out a firmware update, version 2021.43.101.1, which contained a fix for the issue. In early February, the company will roll out an over-the-air update that includes the same fix; that will be version 2022.4.5. US owners of the above vehicles are not required to take any further action once they have installed the firmware update, according to the NHTSA.
Tesla Model 3