A Tesla Cybertruck owner says he had to repair four separate issues with his electric vehicle in just over a month of ownership.
Based in California, the driver claimed that the problems began with a defective windshield, with a line right in his field of vision.
After the local service center replaced the windshield, new problems appeared with the gear selector, accelerator pedal and tailgate.
The shifter fell off the windshield and was dangling by a cable, a Tesla technician incorrectly fixed the accelerator pedal, and the tailgate won’t open or stays closed.
The new problems come just days after the automaker issued a recall for the accelerator pedal on every Cybertruck it had shipped so far: 3,878 vehicles.
A new Cybertruck owner shared a photo of the gear selector hanging from a cable, just days after the company announced a recall of the vehicle’s accelerator pedal.
The unusual gear selector is located in a molding that runs down the center of the windshield. The sunshades are attached to the sides with magnets. A former Tesla engineer told DailyMail.com that this poor design puts too much pressure on the gear selector, which is not anchored firmly enough to handle it.
The frustrated Cybertruck owner, who goes by the username kobratoldya, shared photos of the electric vehicle’s problems on the Cybertruck Owners Club forum, in a mail titled ‘The problems are piling up…’
“I’m starting to get a little frustrated by the issues I’m having with the Cybertruck,” the post began.
“It started with a blemish on my windshield that caused a long line in my line of vision,” kobratoldya wrote.
‘They replaced my windscreen but I think something happened to the top gear selector panel.
“He fell and won’t get back up.”
This problem with the gear selector is due to poor design, former Tesla engineer Cristina Balan told DailyMail.com.
The truck has no gears, but the selector allows the driver to park the car, drive, neutral and reverse.
The problem, he said, is that the truck’s sun visors are attached to the gear selector with strong magnets, but the gear selector is not attached firmly enough to withstand the stress placed on it by the visors.
“The visors are one of the most abused parts of the car,” Balan said.
Every time someone drives their Cybertruck in sunny weather, they will lower their visor or adjust it to block the glare.
Each time they do this, the magnet attaching it to the gear selector will pull on the plastic casing and eventually knock it out of place, just like what happened to the kobratoldya.
“They’ve attached one moving part to another moving part,” Balan said.
The gear selector is not intended to move, but because it is not firmly anchored to the windshield it will end up moving, he said.
Balan noted that the gear selector is only attached with four clips to the molding that runs along the windshield and zero screws.
“I’m really surprised no one noticed that,” she said. ‘It’s critic! You have the equipment there!
The solution, he said, would be to attach the visors to the edge of the windshield to which the gear selector is attached, as shown below.
Former Tesla engineer Cristina Balan shared this and the following sketch with DailyMail.com, showing where the sun visors should have been placed.
Because of the daily pressure put on sunshades, Balan said, they should be attached to something sturdier than the gear selector, which isn’t even screwed on.
In Balan’s proposed design, the sunshades would not pull the gear selector every time a driver or passenger moves them.
Another possible solution would be to make the gear selector less bulky, Balan said. Instead of a large plastic case, they could have simply been buttons on a thin trim.
Two other commenters on the original post said their gear selectors had also come off.
“It seems like everything is backwards in this Cybertruck design,” Balan said.
And with regards specifically to Kobratoldya’s Cybertruck, he confirmed, the accelerator pedal was incorrectly attached.
The accelerator pedal was the problem covered in the recall. Tesla discovered that a pedal cover could slip, causing the pedal to get stuck when pressed and potentially causing uncontrolled acceleration.
A simple repair, riveting the pedal cover to the pedal, fixed the problem.
This Cybertruck accelerator pedal was poorly fixed (left), a former Tesla engineer said. The rivet should not be on the edge of the metal. This is what the pedal (right) looked like after being repaired a second time, prompting some members of the Cybertruck Owners Club to comment on the poor workmanship.
These shop instructions from the Tesla recall bulletin show that whoever repaired this owner’s Cybertruck accelerator pedal did not follow proper procedures. The rivet should have been placed higher and the pedal cover should have been moved lower.
When the company announced the recall, CEO Elon Musk stated, “There were no injuries or accidents due to this.” “We’re just being very cautious.”
While Musk claimed there were no accidents due to the problem, the owner of a Cybertruck reported that he crashed into a pole mid-corner on April 4 when the vehicle refused to slow down and the airbags failed to deploy. .
Kobratoldya posted a photo of his vehicle’s pedal after a Tesla technician performed the repair.
The rivet had been placed incorrectly on the edge of the pedal cover, Balan confirmed.
“The guy said they’re all like that, but then at home I saw that mine was the only one that was right on the edge,” kobratoldya wrote.
In fact, according to Tesla’s service bulletin about the recall, the pedal should have been replaced entirely because the pedal cover had fallen out of place.
A rivet must go through the metal to hold it firmly in place. This is a basic technical error, he said, noting that Tesla recently laid off 10 percent of his staff.
“They laid off thousands of people and this is what they ended up with.”
The owner of this Cybertruck was unable to open the tailgate by pressing the button. He also confirmed that he could not open it from the vehicle’s touch screen.
Once he managed to open the tailgate, it wouldn’t stay closed. He closed it and it opened. The same thing happened twice.
‘Mister. Rivet should have been fired with the other 10%,” wrote one commenter. “There is absolutely no excuse for that kind of mistake.”
The pedal was eventually repaired correctly, but was damaged by the first botched repair.
After a visit to the Long Beach Tesla dealership, the gear selector was repaired and a replacement pedal was ordered, because the new vehicle’s accelerator now had two holes.
However, this Cybertruck’s problems didn’t end with the pedal and gear selector. The truck’s liftgate also doesn’t work as it should, kobratoldya wrote.
In a video shared on the Cybertruck Owners Club forum, he showed that pressing the button on the bed rail did not open the rear door.
He also confirmed that he couldn’t open it from the vehicle’s touchscreen or the Tesla app.
“With perseverance I managed to open the tailgate,” he wrote. ‘But now it opens randomly and repeatedly. I closed it, entered the house and then it opened. I did this twice.
This problem makes the truck undrivable, he wrote. The service center offered to have him bring it in and they would hold it until they had the proper repair parts, he wrote.
‘I feel like they are going to keep my truck for a long time,’ he concluded.