Federal highway safety regulators have concluded their investigation into more than 120,000 Tesla Model Y vehicles on Tuesday, determining no recall or manufacturer action was necessary.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched its preliminary investigation in early 2023 following two separate incidents where steering wheels completely separated from the steering column because of a missing bolt designed to keep them attached.
Tesla acknowledged that both affected vehicles had been shipped to customers without the crucial retaining bolt and subsequently repaired both cars at no cost to the owners under warranty coverage.
According to NHTSA, both problematic vehicles rolled off production lines during the opening week of January 2023 from Tesla’s manufacturing facilities in Austin, Texas, and Fremont, California. The agency noted that both cars had received final assembly repairs before customer delivery that required technicians to remove and reinstall the steering wheels.
Safety investigators discovered no further cases of the same problem and determined that both steering wheel failures happened within the vehicles’ first 400 miles of operation, suggesting any other potentially affected cars would have likely already shown the same defect by now.
NHTSA emphasized that ending this investigation does not mean officials have determined no safety defect exists, and the agency reserves the right to reopen the matter if additional information comes to light.
