Car Industry Legal Issues and Scandals

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an investigation into complaints about steering issues in the 2023 Model 3 sedan and Model Y crossover utility vehicles.

The agency said it has received some complaints from Tesla owners who reported either losing power steering control or complete steering control. One owner said the loss of control resulted in a crash.

During the pandemic, Tesla began modifying software so it could use different semiconductors when supply chain issues created shortages. Tesla has recalled some Model S and Model X cars to address power steering problems attributed to a software update that didn’t go quite right.

ConsumerAffairs reviewers have on occasion, mentioned various issues related to steering their Teslas.

‘Awkward and dangerous’

Lars, of Manhatten Beach, Calif., told us he considers the new yoke steering wheel in his 2022 Model S “awkward and dangerous.”

“I'm not sure how they got this approved but it is super disappointing,” he wrote in a ConsumerAffairs review. “I'm sure there will be some people who like it, but it is not safe.”

Amanda, another Tesla owner from Atlanta, told us she has issues with the quality of her Tesla, including how the steering wheel was put together.

“My vehicle also has some screws missing in the steering wheel but they don't allow you to go to the service center for this,” Amanda wrote in her review. “They've had issues with steering wheels falling off, but there's no one to tell you if your car is safe.”

It’s not certain that the current investigation will lead to a recall. Federal agencies like NHTSA cannot order a recall but only request the company to issue a voluntary recall. As part of its investigation, NHTSA is asking Tesla owners to submit complaints about any steering issues.

You can file a complaint with NHTSA here. ConsumerAffairs would like to hear about your issues here.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has asked for more information from Tesla and California authorities who are investing a weekend accident in which a Tesla plowed into a firetruck parked on a freeway.

One person was killed and another critically injured in the accident that occurred just days after a recall of nearly 363 thousand Tesla vehicles equipped with the company’s advanced driver assistance feature, which Tesla markets as Full Self-Driving Beta.

That followed a notice by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) warning that in rare cases cars equipped with the technology could be in violation of state and local traffic laws. It said there could be an increased risk of an accident if the driver fails to intervene.

According to the most recent reports, it is not known what caused the accident or if the car was being operated in self-driving mode. While suspicion has focused on self-driving technology in other Tesla crashes, Matas Buzelis, the president of the Association of Automotive Intelligence and an automotive expert at carVertical, says it’s a complicated issue.

Safer than human drivers

He cites data provided by Tesla, along with government safety statistics, that show vehicles using a self-driving system caused 9.6 times fewer accidents than cars driven by humans.

“Perhaps there are situations when the autonomous system can’t really match the human driver in certain environmental perceptions,” Buzelis told ConsumerAffairs. “However, computers and sensors monitor so much more processes simultaneously when compared to human drivers. And that is the key to safer traffic.”

John Uustal, a founding partner of Kelley | Uustal Trial Attorneys, is a good bit more skeptical of the technology and says that the safety of consumers needs more attention. He says labeling the driver-assist technology as Autopilot is dangerously misleading.

"It’s crazy because Tesla admits that the driver needs to maintain control,” Uustal told us. “It’s not Autopilot. Tesla calls it Autopilot to drive sales, but this technology is killing innocent people."

Time will tell

Buzelis says the truth may become clearer as Tesla sales grow and there are more of these vehicles on American highways. He says if there is a direct correlation between more cars on the road and accidents, he expects accidents to go down, not increase.

In the latest crash, the Tesla Model S slammed into a firetruck that was parked in one lane of the freeway to protect first responders who were working another accident scene behind it. The Tesla did not change lanes to avoid the truck.

The NHSTA is currently looking into how Tesla’s autopilot system detects and responds to vehicles parked on highways and has opened a number of investigations into Tesla car accidents where Autopilot was suspected of being used.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge believe many consumers may be driving while drunk and not even realizing it. According to their recent study, about half of all drinkers are not good at gauging how drunk they are. This often causes them to get behind the wheel while exceeding the legal alcohol limit. 

“In countries with legal alcohol limits, it’s usually the driver who makes a judgement about how much they’ve drunk and how fit they are to drive,” said researcher Dr. Kai Hensel. “But as we’ve shown, we are not always good at making this judgement. As many as one in two people in our study underestimated how drunk they were – and this can have devastating consequences.” 

Drinking and driving don’t mix

For the study, the researchers had 90 participants involved in a drinking and driving experiment over the course of two days. The participants were in either an experimental or control group and were instructed to drink a combination of beer and wine until their blood alcohol concentration (BAC) reached 0.11%; in the U.S., the legal driving limit is 0.08%. 

To assess how well the participants knew their own bodies, the team tracked their BAC with breathalyzer tests and had them come forward when they believed they reached the legal driving limit. The researchers told participants in the experimental group that when they hit the legal limit, their beverage of choice would be switched – from either beer to wine, or vice versa. 

Ultimately, the participants struggled to accurately assess how drunk they were in both trials of the study. In fact, their ability to estimate their BAC got worse between the first and second days of the experiment. 

During the first day, nearly 40% of the participants had exceeded the legal driving limit when they believed they were just reaching it. By day two, that figure jumped to more than 50% of participants. The researchers believe that awareness is the key to ensuring consumers aren’t driving drunk. Moving forward, they hope more work is done to get drinkers to understand their limits. 

“Drinking and driving is a major risk factor for road traffic accidents,” said Dr. Hensel. “Anything that can be done to reduce these numbers is worth trying. With guidance, our participants were able to improve their judgement. It could be that pop-up stalls set up around drinking establishments that help people understand their breath alcohol concentration might help. 

“Really, the best advice is that if you’re driving, just don’t drink,” he added. “But if you really do feel like a drink, then look into your alcohol tolerance. This differs from one person to the next, depending on your sex, weight, and age, and there are some reliable apps out there that can help guide you.” 

Things are back in order now, but scores of Tesla drivers had a rough start to their weekend. Electrek reported that a failure within a Tesla mobile app left hundreds of drivers around the world locked out of their Tesla vehicles on Friday. Electrek said the outage came after Tesla pushed a new update to its mobile app.

Why does a mobile app have the power to create so much havoc? It’s because owners often rely on their phones to perform several vehicle functions, including unlocking the car. Tesla CEO Elon Musk was upfront about the disruption. He addressed the error on Twitter on Friday, saying that the issue was a “500 server error” to connect their Tesla Model 3 on the iOS (Apple) app. 

Outages of Tesla’s systems are relatively isolated, but Electrek reports that there have been some significant examples in the not-so-distant past. Back in September 2020, there was a complete outage of Tesla’s customer-facing servers and its internal system for several hours.

Frustration continues to mount for Tesla owners

Musk probably can’t wait for 2021 to be done and over with it. Just this year, his company has had to face seat and brake issues, a recall of 130,000 cars because of touchscreen problems, and autopilot systems running amok.

Even though its 2021 score in the J.D. Power 2020 Initial Quality Survey moved it out of the dead last position among automakers, consumers still claim that Tesla’s customer service is lacking.

“I have had my Tesla Model S Performance now for over a year (15,000 miles) and it has been the worst experience that I have ever had in my 40 plus years of having cars,” Matthew of San Marino, Calif., wrote in a recent ConsumerAffairs review. 

“From taking delivery of the car to this moment has been so stressful and it is impossible to get anyone to help in customer service. The car was not available to pick up when I went to pick it up. They had emailed me and told me it was. This happened twice. The manager of the Burbank Service Center was rude and did not want to be bothered listening or helping me.”

Honda said Tuesday that it’s pausing production at its factories due to a supply-chain issue caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The automaker said most plants in the U.S. and Canada will stop production while some will operate at reduced levels. Workers won’t be laid off and will have the opportunity to continue working at affected factories. 

"We continue to manage a number of supply chain issues related to the impact from COVID-19, congestion at various ports, the microchip shortage and severe winter weather over the past several weeks,” the automaker said. “Our purchasing and production teams are working to limit the impact of this situation and are adjusting production as necessary in order to carefully manage the available supply of parts and meet the needs of our customers.” 

Last summer, Honda halted production at some of its U.S. factories due to a cyberattack that impacted the company’s customer service center. The carmaker noted that the “timing and length of production adjustments could change” as it works to mitigate the current issue. 

Porsche has issued a “stop sale” on vehicles equipped with its Sport Chrono package. The stop sale involves older cars built between 2012 and 2016, including certain 911, Boxster, Cayman, Cayenne, and Panamera models.

The automaker said it found that some cars equipped with the Sport Chrono package emitted more nitrogen oxide than permitted when driven in "Sport Plus" mode, rendering them illegal to be sold in the U.S. 

A spokesperson for the automaker told Business Insider that it’s working on a software fix and "testing every model derivative" to figure out which of the models are affected. 

“Not every model line we've tested is affected," the spokesperson said. "So, it really goes down to us testing every model derivative. We're being cautious."

Not a safety issue

The cars affected “were developed and sold years ago,” the spokesperson said, adding that Porsche's current model line isn’t affected by the issue. 

"To be clear, our dealer partners are buying all used Porsche cars as they usually would, and the cars in customers' possession remains safe to drive — what the dealers have paused is selling the specific cars in their inventory affected by this until the software on these cars can be updated."

At this time, the automaker isn’t sure when it will resume selling cars equipped with the Sport Chrono package. The company said it will apply a software update to the affected vehicles once it’s able to hone in on the issue. Eventually, Porsche plans to issue a fix for customers’ vehicles as necessary. The company stressed that the issue doesn’t pose a safety risk for current owners.