Tesla has issued a recall after a seatbelt fault was discovered that would mean the driver may not be fully protected in the event of an accident.
The recall was deemed voluntary but Tesla is taking no chances by tackling the issue head-on. It has recalled every Model S built worldwide – more than 90,000 cars including the new P85D – to get to the root of the problem.
Reports say the fault is to do with the front seatbelts. An official statement said: “Tesla recently found a Model S in Europe with a front seat belt that was not properly connected to the outboard lap pretensioner. This vehicle was not involved in a crash and there were no injuries.
“This is the only customer vehicle we know of with this condition. We have since inspected the seat belts in over 3,000 vehicles spanning the entire range of Model S production and found no issues.”
A Tesla spokesperson told news service Bloomberg the fault was discovered in November 2015 when someone in the front seat of a European Model S turned to speak to an occupant in the rear and the seatbelt became disconnected.
Anyone affected has been advised to bring their car to a Tesla repair centre for a free three- to six-minute seat check. Tesla is said to be checking cars that turn up to use its Supercharger fast-charging network.
The announcement caused Tesla’s share price to slide by four per cent but later recovered the same day, although it has dropped overall by 10 per cent over the last 12 months.
Tesla recently updated its cars with an Autopilot feature that allows the car to drive itself and is the first step in its vision for fully autonomous cars.
Check out our first drive of the highly capable Model S, 691hp P85D here.
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