In Denmark when a car reaches 6 years, it needs to be safety checked to be used on the roads. After that it’s every 2nd years.
Tesla model 3 managed these safety checks extremely poorly, with 3 times the average failure rate.
In total, 1,392 errors were found on the Tesla model, which is three times as many compared to the other electric cars.
If you don’t have a translate page button (to your own language), You may want to switch to Firefox. I’m showing the original page in danish, because danish is delicious.
No, we did not. Every steering system that uses a mechanical column, like the Model 3, will eventually develop play. The bushings and u-joints are mechanical parts and wear over time. Even electric (drive by wire) steering can eventually develop play simply because the steering itself is mounted used a bearing or bushing assembly.
Here’s an image of the steering assembly from an Opel Vectra.
You see those things at the very ends? Those are tie rods and they wear out. You see those black booted things on each side of the steering gear? Those are u-joint and they wear out and get loose.
There’s the actual column, the part that goes between the steering wheel and the steering assembly. As you can see in this image it too has wear points that will eventually cause looseness. Specifically there is a bushing at both the top and bottom where the steering shaft goes through the column. If you have tilt steering, that column does, there’s another wear point. If you have pull out / push in steering then there’s another one.
MANY vehicles, including the Model 3, also have a u-joint in their column. You can see it in this image. That U-Joint is necessary because the location of the steering wheel often doesn’t align with the steering box on the assembly. Here’s an image of a column out of an Audi A6 and it has a u-joint on BOTH ends.
I’m not arguing that Tesla’s are great, they definitely have QC problem, but the statement that this is a “solved problem” LET ALONE one that was solved in 1975 is absolutely untrue.
Not true, I own an 18 year Opel Vectra, no issues with play in the steering, and nothing was ever needed to be done to fix it, and no other old cars I’ve driven had it, and I haven’t heard of it as a problem you should to check for before a safety check. The older cheaper worm gear steering racks ALWAYS had it, and it was regulated how much was allowed. but they’ve been obsolete for about 50 years maybe more now.
For a 4 year old car to have it is ridiculous.
My good person if I go to a search engine and type in “vectra loose steering” it returns results of people having problems with literally every mechanical bit that I pointed out to you; from tie rod ends (sometimes called track rod ends) to worn bushings in the column mounting hardware. The problem of “loose steering” exists even for your Make and Model.
It happens with nearly every vehicle manufacture. Here’s an owner of a 2019 Honda Accord ST complaining about it in 2020 when their car was only a year old! Heck I just did a search for “BYD steering loose” and got results!
Now THAT I agree with. These problems really shouldn’t be showing up in vehicles this new unless they have more than 100,000 miles (160,000 kilometers) on the odometer or they’ve been subjected to abnormal conditions. I’m not arguing that Tesla’s are great, I’m pointing out (with evidence) that “loose steering” is not a solved problem and widely exists across all Makes and Models.