This is the second time it happened on a Tesla vehicle.
The cause of this latest failure has yet to be determined.
Tesla’s Service Center billed the owner $103,96 for the repair, before cancelling the fee.
Tesla is known to have one of the lowest build quality standards of any automaker selling in North America and despite significant improvements over the last few years, some progress can still be made.
This is what an owner recently discovered when the steering wheel of his Model Y came off in his hands while driving down the highway, only six days after he took delivery.
Luckily for him and his family that was in the SUV at the time, traffic was light and he was able to pull over to the side of the road while awaiting a tow truck.
This driver posted his story on his Twitter account (@preneh24) along with a few pictures that show the steering wheel dangling by a couple of wires.
This is not the first time such an issue happens at Tesla, since another driver had the steering wheel fall off of his Model 3 back in 2020.
@elonmusk @TeslaOwnersWW @BLKMDL3 Family was excited to receive Tesla Y delivery on 1/24/2023. Was driving on highway and all the sudden steering wheel fall off, was lucky enough there was no car behind and I was able to pull on devider #SafetyFirst #Fixit #TeslaModelY #help pic.twitter.com/4UMokFA2cv
— Prerak (@preneh24) January 30, 2023
In that case, Tesla determined that the bolt holding down the steering wheel was missing entirely from the vehicle, meaning that only friction held the wheel on during the 340 miles that had been driven since the owner had taken delivery.
Since the latest incident happened only about 10 days ago, the cause has not been fully explained yet, but the vehicle has been repaired.
Speaking of the repair, the Tesla Service Center where the Model Y was towed to tried to bill the owner for $103,96 for a manufacturing defect on his week-old car.
After having complained about this situation online and to the Service Center, the owner was able to get Tesla to foot the bill.
Due to the seriousness of the issue and the subpar handling of the case by the Service Center, the owner (@preneh24) is now asking for a full refund, saying he and his family have lost trust in Tesla.
To be fair, Tesla is not the only automaker to have a problem where steering wheels fell off some vehicles in recent memory, with Ford and Hyundai having had to recall over 1,4 million vehicles in total back in 2018.
Source: @preneh24 (Twitter.com) via InsideEVs
