CyberTRASH? Owner claims to have found MORE defects in new EV β days after Tesla recalled 4,000 units due to accelerator problems
A Tesla Cybertruck owner claims he has had to have four separate issues repaired on his EV in just over a month.
The driver, based in California, claimed the problems started with a defective windshield, with a line right in his field of vision.
After the local service center replaced the windshield, new problems appeared with the gear lever, accelerator pedal and tailgate.
The gear shifter fell off the windshield and dangled by a wire, the accelerator pedal was not properly secured by a Tesla technician, and the tailgate would not open – or stay closed.
The new problems come just a few days after the automaker issued a recall for the accelerator pedal on every Cybertruck it has shipped to date: 3,878 vehicles.
A new Cybertruck owner shared a photo of the gear shifter hanging by a wire just days after the company announced a recall for the vehicle’s accelerator pedal.
The unusual gear lever is located on a piece of trim that runs down the center of the windshield. The sun visors are attached to the sides with magnets. A former Tesla engineer told DailyMail.com that this poor design puts too much stress on the gear lever, which is not anchored firmly enough to handle it.
The frustrated Cybertruck owner, who goes by the username kobratoldya, shared photos of the electric vehicle’s problems on the Cybertruck Owners Club forum, in a after entitled ‘The problems are piling up…’
βI’m starting to get a little frustrated with the issues I’m having with the Cybertruck,β the post began.
βIt started with a blemish in my windshield that left a long line in my line of sight,β kobratoldya wrote.
‘They replaced my windshield, but I think something happened to the top gear selector panel.
“He has fallen and will not rise again.”
This gear shift problem comes down to poor design, former Tesla engineer Cristina Balan told DailyMail.com.
The truck has no gears, but the selector switch allows a driver to put the car in park, drive, neutral and reverse gears.
The problem, she said, is that the truck’s sun visors are attached to the gear lever with strong magnets, but the gear lever is not attached tightly enough to absorb the pressure the visors place on it.
βThe visors are one of the parts in the car that take the most abuse,β Balan said.
When someone drives their Cybertruck in sunny weather, they fold down or adjust the visor to block the glare.
Every time they do that, the magnet that attaches it to the gear lever will pull on the plastic housing, eventually pulling it out of place, as happened to Kobratoldya.
“They attached a moving part to another moving part,” Balan said.
The gear selector is not supposed to move, but because it is not firmly anchored to the windshield, it will eventually move, she said.
Balan noted that the gear lever is only attached to the trim along the windshield with four clips – and without screws.
βI’m really surprised no one noticed that,β she said. ‘It’s crucial! You’ve got the stuff there!’
The solution, she said, would be to attach the visors to the windshield trim where the gear lever attaches, as shown below.
Former Tesla engineer Cristina Balan shared this and the following sketch with DailyMail.com, showing where the sun visors should have been attached.
Because of the daily pressure placed on the sun visors, Balan says they should be attached to something sturdier than the gear lever, which isn’t even bolted down.
In Balan’s proposed design, the sun visors would not pull the gear lever every time a driver or passenger moves them.
Another possible solution would be to make the selector lever less bulky, Balan said. Instead of a big plastic box, it could have just been buttons on a thin piece of upholstery.
Two other commenters on the original post said their gear shift knobs had also come loose.
βIt seems like everything is backwards in this Cybertruck design,β Balan said.
And when it comes to Kobratoldya’s Cybertruck specifically, she confirmed, the accelerator pedal was improperly secured.
The accelerator pedal was the problem addressed in the recall. A cover on the pedal could slip off, Tesla discovered, leaving the pedal stuck and possibly leading to uncontrolled acceleration.
A simple repair involving riveting the pedal cover to the pedal solved the problem.
This Cybertruck accelerator pedal was not properly secured (left), said a former Tesla engineer. The rivet should not be on the edge of the metal. This is what the pedal looked like (right) after it was repaired a second time, prompting some members of the Cybertruck Owners Club to comment on the poor workmanship.
These shop instructions from Tesla’s recall bulletin show that whoever repaired this owner’s Cybertruck accelerator pedal did not follow proper procedures. The rivet should have been placed higher and the pedal cover should have been placed lower down.
When the company announced the recall, CEO Elon Musk claimed, βThere have been no injuries or accidents as a result. We’re just being very careful.β
While Musk claimed there were no accidents as a result of the problem, one Cybertruck owner reported crashing into a center-corner pole on April 4 when the vehicle refused to slow down β and the airbags failed to deploy.
kobratoldya posted a photo of his car’s pedal after a Tesla technician made the repair.
The rivet was placed incorrectly on the edge of the pedal cover, Balan confirmed.
βThe man said they are all like that, but later at home I saw that mine was the only one on the edge,β Kobratoldya wrote.
In fact, according to Tesla’s service bulletin about the recall, the pedal should have been replaced entirely because the pedal cover had slipped out of place.
The idea is to drive a rivet through the metal so that it can hold it firmly in place. This is a fundamental mistake by the engineer, she said, pointing out that Tesla recently laid off 10 percent of its workforce.
“They laid off thousands of people, and this is the result.”
This Cybertruck owner was unable to open the tailgate by pressing the button. He also confirmed that he could not open it via the vehicle’s touchscreen.
Once he got the tailgate open, it wouldn’t stay closed. He closed it and it fell open. The same thing happened twice.
‘Mr. Rivet should have been let go with the remaining 10%,β one commenter wrote. “There is absolutely no excuse for these kinds of mistakes.”
Ultimately, the pedal was repaired correctly, but it was damaged by the first poorly performed repair.
After a visit to the Long Beach Tesla dealer, the gear shift was repaired and the replacement pedal was ordered – as there were now two holes in the accelerator pedal on the new vehicle.
However, this Cybertruck’s problems didn’t stop at the pedal and gear lever. The truck’s tailgate also doesn’t work as it should, kobratoldya wrote.
In a video shared on the Cybertruck Owners Club forum, he showed that pressing the button on the bed rail did not open the tailgate.
He also confirmed that he couldn’t open it from the vehicle’s touchscreen or from the Tesla app.
βWith persistence I got the tailgate open,β he wrote. βBut now it opens randomly and repeatedly. I closed it, went into the house and then it opened. I’ve done this twice.’
The problem prevents the truck from running, he wrote. The service center offered to send for it, and they would keep it until they got the right repair parts, he wrote.
βI have a feeling they’re going to have my truck for a long time,β he concluded.