A recent investigation by Reuters found that Tesla has a past of blaming customers for part failures and refusing to pay for repairs, even when the company itself found the parts to be defective. According to information Reuters got from talking to more than 20 Tesla users and nine former workers, the problems have been happening with all types of Tesla cars around the world for at least seven years. Tesla put off recalls in the U.S. and Europe, even though the problems were the same in both places, but they did it for China. According to a probe report released by Reuters on December 20, Tesla has a history of blaming drivers when parts that aren’t up to par fail. Reuters talked to nine former Tesla employees and more than 20 customers for the story. The problems had been going on for at least seven years, and they affected all of Tesla’s models. One case from Reuters shows how Shreyansh Jain’s experience went. In March, Jain bought a 2023 Tesla Model Y. He told Reuters after a day that the front-right suspension broke when he was making a small turn into his neighborhood, even though the car had only 115 kilometers on it. More than $14,000 worth of repairs Reuters says that Tesla told Jain that the suspension fall was caused by the lower control arm coming loose from the steering knuckle. Jain thought Tesla would pay for the damage since he had only bought the car a few hours before the accident. It took almost 40 hours and cost more than $14,000 to fix everything. This included replacing the steering column and redoing the suspension. Tesla found out that a customer with only 115 miles on the odometer had killed the suspension in the first few hours of ownership, which doesn’t seem likely. Reuters says Tesla refused to pay for the repairs, saying that the accident happened because of “previous” damage to the suspension in a car that had only 115 miles on it. Sadly, Jain’s situation wasn’t the only one the company broke the rules for. People on the internet have come up with a hashtag-style name for Tesla control arm failures: “whompy wheels.” A report from a news service, based on interviews with former service managers, company records, and a 2020 Tesla letter to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), shows that the company said Tesla owners were abusing the cars, which is why several parts were breaking down so often. In other cases, Tesla charged customers whose cars were no longer under warranty to repair parts that Tesla experts thought were not up to par or that they knew were likely to break often. Roles to play and “Whompy Wheels” Reuters says that the car company issued a recall, but only for China, four years after finding and fixing more than 400 incidents of this kind in China. Even though there was proof of similar problems happening in other places, Tesla never announced a recall in the U.S. or Europe for this problem. Actually, the company dealt with each problem on its own while telling U.S. officials that “driver abuse” was to blame for the problems. The news source says that Tesla told service centers in a 2019 document to give the same reason to customers who are having problems with their aft-links. They were told to blame “vehicle misuse,” like “hitting a curb or other excessively strong impact.” Besides the “whompy wheels,” some Tesla owners have also said they are having problems with the power steering. The NHTSA first looked into problems with power steering in 2023 Model 3 and Model Y cars in July. Reuters looked at customer contacts sent through Tesla’s service app and found that over 400 Model 3 and Model Y users complained about power steering between late 2017 and early 2022. Reuters talks about a car owner who lost power steering near Portland, Oregon. “Fortunately, I was able to hit the brakes quick enough and not go into the ditch, but, yeah, it was pretty terrifying,” Minshall told reporters. “It was pretty scary.” “It tried to kill me.”
