Norwegian officials announced they are actively investigating Tesla customer complaints about allegedly defective suspension parts. This follows a recent report that Tesla vehicles have been beset by quality issues.
The Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA) opened its investigation in September 2022, following several complaints from customers. They claim that the lower rear control arms in Tesla Model S and X vehicles have failed prematurely, in many cases while the vehicle was in motion.
“Control arm broken off. This is a damage MANY other Teslas have received. Direct traffic hazard,” one owner wrote in a complaint seen by Reuters. They also challenged the NPRA to “step up and do something.”
Read: Scathing Report Says Tesla Knew About Flawed Suspension Yet Blamed Customers
In a 2019 investigation by Tesla Product Support Engineer Ralf van Gestel, it was determined that control-arm failures had been reported more than 3,000 times globally in the 12 months preceding April 2019. His data suggested that, on average, Tesla was replacing the parts after just two-and-a-half years of ownership.
Former service managers and technicians from Norway told Reuters that they frequently dealt with angry customers whose control arms had failed. Such was the burden of repairing these parts that in 2017 they said Tesla told them to push the cost of replacing the parts onto the customers by blaming the failures on abusive driving, or other factors that would relieve the automaker of its warranty responsibility.
The automaker is also arguing with regulators, claiming that failures are rare or are due to drivers abusing their vehicles. We’ll soon discover if that argument persuades the NPRA.
The Norwegian regulator has one more meeting scheduled with Tesla this week and said that it will render its decision on the matter by December 25. It could close the investigation and recommend no action, or demand a recall that has the potential to include every Model S and X in the country.
