Tesla is surfing the stock market on a wave of success.
But the rapid growth has its price.
Brand fans around the world complain about quality defects.
Now the group threatens trouble with the US authorities.
The electric car pioneer
Tesla
has recently grown rapidly.
But the rapid
pace
has its price.
Many brand fans complain about quality defects.
Now the
US
traffic safety
authority is
targeting the company.
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Munich- The e-car pioneer
Tesla
* is celebrated on the stock exchange like hardly any other company.
Tesla shares
*
only
reached a new all-time high
on Tuesday at
$ 547.
The soaring is quite astonishing, because the self-confident Californians have been struggling for a long time with sometimes serious quality problems.
More and more
Tesla
drivers around the world are therefore
losing
patience.
Just a few weeks ago, for example, frustrated brand fans in the Netherlands got together and set up the website Teslaclaim.nl.
They wanted compensation from the company, Teslaclaim lawyer
Sieger Suurbier
said
, referring to widespread defects such as broken lights, removable decorative strips or charging problems at
Merkur.de
*.
Tesla: US authority targets electric car maker
Now the company threatens to face its dazzling boss
Elon Musk
in massive trouble on its home market - with the US Federal Road
Safety
Authority (
NHTSA
).
An official investigation into the functionality of the Media Control Unit (
MCU
) has been initiated, the supervisors announced a few days ago.
The MCU is the central control unit.
The initiation of an official investigation is a key requirement for a recall.
Tesla: error rate of 30 percent
In the past few years,
Tesla had
repeatedly suffered massive MCU failures.
In some months, the failure rate was 30 percent, complained the NHTSA.
A total of around 160,000 vehicles from the
Model S
and
Model X series
from 2012 to 2018 could be affected by the error, it said.
Tesla
itself has already admitted the MCU in 15,000 cases of damage.
The problems ranged from the failure of the blower to remove fogged windows and defective reversing cameras to the complete failure of the central MCU touchscreen.
In addition, a defect in the MCU often leads to the failure of the charging function.
In-car footage from Sunday's Plaid Model S run at Laguna Seca pic.twitter.com/rwQDBFCWoH
- Tesla (@Tesla) September 23, 2020
The core of the difficulties is apparently due to the MCU flash memory used.
System reports are filed there at regular intervals.
When the memory is full, older files are automatically overwritten.
However, the system is not very stable.
After several cycles, the flash memory often gives up the ghost.
Even several system updates by the
Tesla
engineers could not change anything.
Replacing the MCU costs around $ 2500.
Many customers reacted annoyed accordingly.
Tesla: Group threatens costly recall
Now the Californians, who are currently also building a plant in
Grünheide
near
Berlin,
could be ordered to call back by the supervisory authorities - including an MCU replacement.
In the worst case, the company could face costs of a good 400 million dollars.
But given a market value of around $ 520 billion,
Tesla
could
easily get over that too.
* Merkur.de is part of the Ippen digital network.