Austin, United States of America- Tesla has announced that nearly 1.1 million of its vehicles in the US have a defunct window system as the windows can pinch a person’s fingers when being rolled up.
According to Tesla, windows are supposed to stop if they detect an obstacle in their path but testing discovered a possible problem in some of its windows.
However, Tesla said it should be able to fix the problem with an over-the-air software update, and that car owners won’t need to bring their cars in to be serviced.
Tesla discovered the problem during production testing in August and owners with the defunct windows will be notified by the letter starting on 15 November.
The models involved are the 2017-2022 Model 3, the 2020-2021 Model Y, and the 2021-2022 Models S and X.
Tesla has previously recalled vehicles for features that allowed its cars to slowly roll through stop signs in some circumstances when in full self-driving mode, one that allowed video games to be played on a console in the middle of the dashboard even when the car was being driven.
Meanwhile, the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), has revealed that 2015 to 2019 Hyundai and Kia models are roughly twice as likely to be stolen as other vehicles of similar age, with the reason being that many of these vehicles lack some basic auto theft prevention technology included in most other vehicles, even in those years.
According to the HLDI, the method of theft, which involves serious damage to the ignition system, indicates that these cars are being stolen for fun rather than for resale.
“When you forcibly break the ignition, you are causing so much damage that it’s not easy to re-VIN (to re-VIN a vehicle means to change or replace its Vehicle Identification Number, an identification code made from 17 letters and digits, to make the vehicle harder to trace) and resell the vehicle on the open market,” said Darrell Russell, director of Operations at the National Insurance Crime Bureau.
However, Hyundai vehicles produced after November 1, 2021, and those with push button start cannot be easily stolen in this way due to electronic immobilizers which became standard on all Hyundai vehicles, including those with keyed ignitions, after that date.
Moreso, Kia vehicles in the US now also have push-button start systems that make theft more difficult.
