Nearly All Cybertrucks Have Been Recalled Because Tesla Used the Wrong Glue

Tesla said Thursday it would callback astir each the Cybertrucks it has produced to repair a stainless alloy trim sheet that the carmaker said could go detached from the conveyance portion driving. It’s the eighth callback for the distinctive all-electric pickup, which deed US roads conscionable implicit 2 years ago.

Unlike galore different Tesla-related recalls, though, this 1 cannot beryllium fixed with an over-the-air bundle update, and indispensable beryllium brought into a work halfway for repairs. The callback affects much than 46,000 Cybertrucks manufactured betwixt November 2023 and precocious February 2025.

The callback is related to a cosmetic applique connected the vehicle’s exterior, which is attached to the remainder of the motortruck by a benignant of glue, according to a filing published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the US’ roadworthy information regulator. On affected Cybertrucks, the adhesive tin abstracted from the remainder of the truck, creating a imaginable “road hazard” for others and expanding the hazard of a crash.

Complaints astir the trim archetypal bubbled up successful societal media posts; Tesla reportedly halted Cybertruck accumulation past week. Tesla says successful the filing that it began to analyse the contented successful aboriginal January. The filing says Tesla volition repair the contented with different benignant of adhesive “not prone to biology embrittlement.”

Dale Harrow, seat and manager of the Intelligent Mobility Design Center astatine the Royal College of Art London, labels this latest glue callback for the Cybertruck arsenic “surprising”.

“Glues are utilized a batch much than radical deliberation successful car assemblage operation these days,” helium says. “Rather than having a mechanical fixing, weld oregon a screw oregon a bolt, it's precise effectual gluing panels unneurotic for a lighter construction. It's go precise popular. Jaguar, Lexus, Audi, they'll usage glues astatine immoderate point. So I'm precise surprised. It's not arsenic if it's an chartless science. I've not heard [of problems] anyplace else.”

There are galore glues the car manufacture uses to enslaved panels and parts together, Harrow says, adding that antithetic adhesives are utilized depending connected spot of enslaved needed, peculiar circumstances, and materials involved. However, what is antithetic with the Cybertruck to different vehicles is its highly unconventional usage of stainless alloy for its panels.

“Stainless alloy is the large difference," Harrow says. "So possibly there's been an contented there?" Harrow points retired this responsibility appears to beryllium happening successful acold weather, and that it mightiness beryllium that the stainless alloy is conducting acold better, perchance conscionable capable to marque a quality successful the curing process.

"I could surmise that thing connected the accumulation enactment is not rather bonding astatine the close somesthesia oregon getting the close UV coverage? And that could beryllium owed to the stainless alloy having a antithetic density from modular steel. It's not a tiny company, and it's not doing things connected the cheap. So I'll beryllium precise amazed if determination wasn't the cognition wrong the institution to [fix] this. But it would request rather a spot of investigation, I think, to find retired the existent origin of it.”