Tesla is recalling just under three million cars in China after the country's market regulator found that the emergency door release inside them is too hard to find and use after a crash. Electrek, citing the filing with the State Administration for Market Regulation, puts the figure at 2,975,910 vehicles: 973,156 domestically built Model 3s, 1,956,713 domestically built Model Ys, and imported cars — 35,590 Model 3s, 8,328 Model Xs and 2,123 Model Ss. The Korean outlet Edaily rounds it to 2.98 million and reports the recall starts on 25 September.
The part in question is not the flush exterior handle that Tesla made famous. Electrek is explicit about this: it is the interior mechanical backup, the one that opens a door when the car has lost power. The regulator says it is hard to identify and operate because it closely matches the colour of the trim around it. In a severe crash that knocks out the low-voltage system, the electrically controlled handles can stop working — which, in the regulator's words as Insurance Journal reports them, could hinder occupants from quickly opening the doors to escape and impede rescue efforts by those outside the vehicle.
The fix is software and a label. Tesla will push an over-the-air update that lowers the windows automatically when a crash is detected, and will affix warning labels showing where the emergency releases are.
Tesla is not alone in this. Insurance Journal reports that at least eight other carmakers are recalling vehicles in China over door-handle safety at the same time, more than four million in total, in one of the most sweeping recalls the world's largest car market has seen. Tesla's share is the largest. Electrek notes that several makers who followed Tesla into similar door releases have issued similar recalls of their own, and that the design is under legal and regulatory pressure on two continents.
There is a second, separate recall on the same day, and the two are easy to confuse. Edaily reports that Tesla is also recalling 2.74 million domestically built Model 3s and Model Ys with an immediate over-the-air update — that one strengthens driver-attention monitoring while driver assistance is engaged, to reduce the risk of a crash when a driver cannot respond in time.
The market did not treat the news as a shock. Edaily reports Tesla trading 0.92 per cent higher at $348.30 in pre-market at 7.04 in the morning local time, after closing down 1.71 per cent the day before. The stock is down 23.26 per cent so far this year.
Why it is on the board
Second on Google Trends in Korea, in the band above five hundred searches, with Yonhap carrying it at 27th on its reading list and video on it running as well — all three lens types we have for Korea, on a story about an American carmaker and a Chinese regulator.
확인: Electrek · Insurance Journal · 이데일리