Tesla Faces 19th Recall Of The Year

Tesla has faced back-to-back recalls throughout 2022 with the latest recalls in November affecting more than 350,000 vehicles in the U.S. across two separate campaigns.

Tesla has recalled over 3.7 million vehicles throughout 2022 and had four alone in the month of November.

On Saturday, Tesla filed a safety recall report focusing on an estimated 321,000 vehicles that may experience tail light failure. This is after the company recalled close to 30,000 Model X cars over a front passenger airbag issue on Friday. Prior to that recall, 40,000 Model S and Model X vehicles were recalled due to the possibility of losing power steering assist on rough roads or after hitting a pothole.

Tesla stated that there have been no reports of any crashes or injuries related to the November recalls and that they are in the process of updating the models in production.

For models already on the road, Tesla will release an over-the-air software update in order to fix the rear light and airbag issues. These updates will be at no cost to the customers, and there will be no owner notification since there are no out-of-warranty repairs. There will be owner notification letters mailed out with postmarks either on or after Nov. 17.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader urged the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in a statement to recall Tesla's fully self-driving technology back in August. He said that it was "the most dangerous and irresponsible actions by a car company in decades" and he points out that the software "malfunctions every eight minutes."

The NHTSA issued an order in June 2021 that required tech companies and automakers to report any and all crashes immediately that involved any advanced driver assistance systems and automated driving systems on public roads.

As of Wednesday, there have been 18 fatal crashes reported since July 2021.

Tesla has accounted for a majority of the deaths and NHTSA has been running special investigations since 2016 into Tesla crashes. Of the 38 special investigations opened, 19 resulted in deaths.