Tesla recalls 125K vehicles over seat belt warning system

Elon Musk-led Tesla is recalling more than 125,000 vehicles in the US to fix a defect with the seatbelt warning system in some of its car models, federal safety regulators said Friday.

The affected Tesla vehicles experienced an issue in which “the seat belt warning light and audible chime may not activate as intended” when the driver is unbelted, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said.

Tesla will fix the problem with an over-the-air-software update at no cost to vehicle owners.

The update is expected to occur at some point in June.

“The software remedy will remove dependency on the driver seat occupancy switch from the software logic and only rely on driver seat belt buckle and ignition status to activate the seat belt reminder signals,” the NHTSA said.

The recall applies to certain 2012-2024 Tesla Model S, 2015-2024 Model X, 2017-2023 Model 3 and 2020-2023 Model Y vehicles, according to a release.

Tesla shares were flat in Friday trading.

The electric vehicle giant had previously issued a voluntary recall for nearly 4,000 Cybertrucks in April to fix an issue with faulty accelerator pedals that risked causing fatal accidents.

The NHTSA’s safety report at the time said the pad on the accelerator pedals of affected Cybertrucks “may dislodge, which may cause the pedal to become trapped in the interior trim above the pedal.”

In December, Tesla conducted on an over-the-air recall of more than 2 million cars in the US — the largest in company history — address concerns from federal regulators that safety alerts in its Autopilot semi-autonomous driving system “may not be sufficient to prevent driver misuse” of the software.

Last month, the feds said they were investigating whether those updates were sufficient following a series of crashes.

With Post wires