(Bloomberg) -- Tesla Inc. released a software update to 1.85 million cars in the US to guard against its vehicles’ hoods flying open during driving.
Beginning on June 18, the carmaker deployed the over-the-air software update to detect whether the hoods of its vehicles are open and notify customers, according to a recall report posted to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website on Tuesday. The fix went to Tesla Model S, X, 3 and Y vehicles produced as early as January 2020 and as recently as this month.
Tesla said in the report that it began investigating customer complaints of “unintended hood opening events” in China in late March. By mid-April, the company identified the issue: deformation of latch switches that could prevent customers from being notified their hoods were open.
For reasons unknown, the rate at which this occurs has been higher in China compared to markets in Europe and North America, according to the company. As of July 20, Tesla identified three warranty claims or field reports pertaining to the issue in the US, and it isn’t aware of any related crashes, injuries or deaths. The automaker estimates that 1% of the vehicles involved in the recall had the defect.
Tesla shares fell as much as 1.7% as of 9:35 a.m. Tuesday in New York. The stock had dropped 6.6% this year through Monday’s close, trailing the 15% gain in the S&P 500 Index.
(Updates with share move during regular trading in the laast paragraph.)
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