Jun 10, 2009

Tesla Motors to Do House Calls

You have to hand it to the public relations mavens at Tesla Motors: They are attempting to posture the safety recall covering all 345 Tesla Roadsters manufactured before April 22, 2009, as a good thing by offering to fix the problem for its customers at their home or office while they wait and watch.

In response to a manufacturing-related handling issue, Tesla decided to inspect the rear inner hub flange bolts on its Roadster model after one owner reported uncharacteristic handling. Following a root-cause analysis, the California-based company determined that the aforementioned rear inner hub flange bolts on a small percentage of Roadsters were improperly torqued during assembly by Lotus, the contract manufacturer of the chassis. Lotus is conducting a similar recall on some of its Lotus Elise and Exige vehicles. No accidents have been reported as a result of this manufacturing issue, which is unrelated to the model’s all-electric power train, which seems to work just fine.

In an effort to protect its image, Tesla will make house calls to service the cars at owners’ homes or offices. The company has also offered to pick up the car and take it to a repair facility if necessary. Service will be performed at no cost to the customer and will include a full-vehicle inspection and software upgrade.

“We plan to do everything we can to address this matter swiftly and keep customers satisfied,” said Greg Zanghi, Tesla’s director of service and parts operations.