Last year, almost all Cybertrucks had to be recalled because Tesla used the wrong adhesive on the instrument panel that the automaker says could get stuck while driving. Now, another embarrassing recall reveals that the electric van may see tires come off on certain models due to improper fuel usage.
This is the 11th Cybertruck recall to date, and with concerns that the stainless steel trucks may rust, Tesla is recalling the Rear Wheel Drive (RWD) Cybertruck Long Range over faulty brake rotors. In a notice sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Tesla says “the brake rotor holes may crack and allow the stud to separate from the wheel hub.”
Tesla’s explanation for the error is as follows: “In affected vehicles, road disturbances and high stiffness may compress the stud hole in the wheel rotor, causing a crack. If so, some RWD Cybertruck owners who are driving happily may have their wheels seized in a strange manner.”
Poor Cybertruckers have enough to deal with without worrying about the wheels on their “apocalypse-proof” cars falling off, so, thankfully, Tesla says it will completely replace wheel hubs, rotors, and lug nuts for free on all 173 trucks affected by the recall.
Sean Tucker, managing editor at Kelley Blue Book, explains that Tesla is once again in a position to fix production Cybertruck models before something catastrophic happens. “A car is such a complex machine that the smallest change in design can have consequences over many years,” he says. “This is about certain oils [Tesla] found in lug nuts that tighten to hold the 18 inch wheel to the brake rotor.”
Tucker says the oil didn’t reduce friction enough and could loosen the nuts over time, causing vibration that could break the brake. He says: “So they changed the grease. However, that message didn’t come in time, and they built the 173 with the wrong oil.
Some reports have suggested that the 173 recall number represents the lowest number of RWD Cybertrucks made, but Tucker says that’s not the case. The recall applies to trucks built on certain dates that use certain shipments of lug nuts and oil, and vehicles with 18-inch wheels manufactured on certain dates. He says it’s a “subset” of Cybertrucks.
“Certainly, the Cybertruck is not selling in the numbers that Tesla expected it to do,” Tucker said. “But this is just a case of a small production change that wasn’t communicated to the factory floor in time.”
Cybertruck sales have been quite poor. “Demand is off the charts!” Elon Musk lamented the end of 2023, citing more than a million reservations to take Tesla’s polarizing polygonal. But that bad glue snafu doesn’t just affect a small part everything Cybertrucks made at the time revealed that the company had replaced 46,096 trucks in the first 14 months of sales.
