Tesla has recalled more than 321,000 vehicles due to a software development firm glitch that caused false fault detections. The electric car manufacturer plans to release an over-the-air (OTA) firmware update to fix the anomaly that affects taillights and their ability to illuminate properly.
The vehicles in questions are a combination of 2023 Model 3 electric cars and Model Y 2020 through 2023. The OTA firmware update should fix the software glitch and take care of the anomaly described by the company as taillights that “intermittently illuminate.” According to Tesla, this happens due to an issue “that may cause false fault detections during the vehicle wake up process.”
The customer complaints started coming in during the week of October 24. Tesla received complaints mostly from foreign markets that claimed vehicle tail lamps were not illuminating, and proceeded to investigate the issue. On November 7, the company concluded the investigation and confirmed it revealed the root cause of the problem. Tesla also reported risk assessment associated with the glitch, as well as the affected vehicle population.
“Tesla reviewed the findings with the executive team and a voluntary recall determination was made,” said in the filing with the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Tesla is not aware of any crashes, injuries or deaths related to this issue.
The OTA firmware update prevents false fault detections during the “vehicle wake up process” that checks if all of the taillights are operating as intended. Without such a safeguard in place, there’s no way to prevent false fault detections.
This isn’t the first time Tesla recalled faulty vehicles for one reason or the other. In fact, it is the 19th recall this year. Last week, Tesla recalled around 30,000 Model X electric vehicles over a passenger airbag issue that improperly deploys in low-speed collisions. Back in September, Tesla recalled an addition 1.1 million cars that could not recognize certain objects when rolling up the windows, which caused a “a pinching injury to the occupant.”
While most of the issues were solved with OTA firmware updates, some required far less convenient physical recalls. Back in May, Tesla had to physically recall more than a million vehicles due to touchscreen issues caused by CPU overheating.
Vehicle recalls are a regular part of a model’s lifecycle, so the latest issues plaguing Tesla are probably no reason for concern.
