A couple says their Tesla Cybertruck nearly dumped their baby onto the side of the highway after its passenger door latch failed, The Oaklandside reports.
The husband, Oakland resident Viral Shah, says he and his wife were driving up a ramp to get on the highway when the back passenger door next to their one-year-old child suddenly swung open. Shah and his wife screamed and immediately pulled over to check on their kid. Fortunately, the car seat saved the baby from being flung out the car, but it was an alarmingly close call. And had the 60-pound stainless steel-clad door swung back closed, it could have smashed the child’s hand or arm.
If anyone had been sitting back there without a seatbelt, Shah told The Oaklandside, “they would’ve been mush on the street.” His wife had to take the child’s seat, buckle herself in, and hold the door closed for the rest of the drive home. ”This is f*cking nuts,” she said, Shah recalled.
Upon inspecting the passenger door, Shah discovered that the metal loop that the car door latch hooked into, called a striker, was missing one of its two screws and had come loose. He also found that the driver door had a screw loose as well. Alarmed, he submitted a complaint to the National High Traffic Safety Administration.
“That’s what made me really scared and furious, because this wasn’t a simple defect,” he told The Oaklandside. “This wasn’t an oversight with one thing where shit happens. This was a systemic design flaw that was affecting those two doors because they were the most heavily used.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind the same thing would happen to all four doors had they been used with the same level of frequency,” he added.
An expert who reviewed photos and videos taken by Shah and his wife suspected that the “weld-nuts” on the backside of the door’s steel pillar appeared to improperly welded, gradually dislodging as the doors were shut.
“This should never, ever happen, but weld-nuts do occasionally break free if there is a process or setup error in the welding equipment or if protective coatings that are used to limit corrosion during shipping of parts are not properly cleaned,” Sam Abuelsamid, a car engineer and vice president of market research at Telemetry, told Oaklandside.
The Cybertruck has been recalled a staggering ten times, a number that probably flatters the vehicle, as it has been accused of all kinds of serious reliability issues beyond those that became official record. Many of the recalls, in any case, were pretty serious. One was for its accelerator pedal getting stuck in the down position, and another was for losing power while driving. It’s also been recalled for other body-related issues, including its stainless steel panels flying off because they were adhered with crummy glue.
The latches aren’t the only apparent issue. Other aspects of the electric doors, which do not have a traditional handle, have been criticized for being unsafe. The doors are operated by a push button from both the outside and inside, systems that can easily fail in an accident. And critics say its emergency release mechanisms are too hidden and impractical. In 2024, three recent high school graduates died after being trapped in a Cybertruck that crashed and caught fire. A bystander at the scene tried to let them free, but couldn’t open the electric doors after the buttons failed.
Shah said that after his incident, he took the vehicle to a Tesla service center, which admitted on an invoice that the rear passenger door was “damaged due to a loose striker.” Tesla offered to buy back the vehicle for nearly its full purchase price, so long as he agreed not to sue the automaker. He took the offer.
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