A Tesla Cybertruck owner claims he has had to have four separate issues repaired on his EV in just over a month of ownership.
Based in California, the driver claimed that the issues began with a flawed windshield, with a line right in his field of vision.
After the local service center replaced the windshield, new issues with the gear selector, accelerator pedal, and tailgate appeared.
The shifter fell from the windshield and dangled by a wire, the accelerator pedal was fixed improperly by a Tesla technician, and the tailgate won’t open – or stay closed.
The new issues come just a few days after the automaker issued a recall for the accelerator pedal on every single Cybertruck it had shipped so far – 3,878 vehicles.
A new Cybertruck owner shared a photo of the gear selector hanging by a wire, just days after the company announced a recall for the vehicle’s accelerator pedal.
The unusual gear selector is located on a piece of trim that runs down the center of the windshield. The sun visors are attached to the sides of it with magnets. A former Tesla engineer told DailyMail.com that this poor design puts too much stress on the gear selector, which is not anchored firmly enough to handle it.
The frustrated Cybertruck owner, who goes by the username kobratoldya, shared photos of the electric vehicle’s problems to the Cybertruck Owners Club forum, in a post titled ‘The issues are piling up…’
READ MORE: Tesla RECALLS nearly 4,000 Cybertrucks
A potentially fatal flaw with the accelerator pedal could cause it to get stuck down, causing uncontrolled acceleration.
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‘I’m starting to get a little frustrated with the problems I’m having with the Cybertruck,’ the post began.
‘It started with an imperfection on my windshield that caused there to be a long line on my line of sight,’ wrote kobratoldya.
‘They replaced my windshield but I think something happened to the top gear selector panel.
‘It dropped down and won’t stay back up.’
This problem with the gear selector comes down to poor design, former Tesla engineer Cristina Balan told DailyMail.com.
The truck does not have gears, but the selector enables a driver to put the car in park, drive, neutral, and reverse.
The issue, she said, is that the truck’s sun visors attach to the gear selector with strong magnets, but the gear selector is not attached sturdily enough to take the stress the visors put on it.
‘The visors are one of the parts in the car that take the most abuse,’ Balan said.
Whenever someone drives their Cybertruck in sunny weather, they will be flipping the visor down or adjusting it to block the glare.
Every time they do, the magnet that attaches it to the gear selector will tug on the plastic housing, eventually pulling it out of place, as happened to kobratoldya.
‘They’ve attached a moving part to another moving part,’ said Balan.
The gear selector is not meant to move, but because it is not anchored firmly to the windshield it will end up moving, she said.
Balan noted that the gear selector is only attached with four clips to the trim running down the windshield – and zero screws.
‘I’m really surprised that nobody caught that,’ she said. ‘It’s critical! You have the gear in there!’
The solution, she said, would be to attach the visors to the windshield trim that the gear selector attaches to, as pictured below.
Former Tesla engineer Cristina Balan shared this and the following sketch with DailyMail.com, showing where the sun visors should have been attached.
Because of the daily pressure put on the sun visors, Balan said, they should be attached to something more sturdy than the gear selector, which is not even screwed on.
In Balan’s proposed design, the sun visors would not be tugging on the gear selector every time a driver or passenger moves them.
Another possible solution would be to make the gear selector less bulky, said Balan. Instead of a big plastic box, it could have just been buttons on a slim piece of trim.
Two other commenters on the original post said their gear selectors had also come off.
‘It seems that in this Cybertruck design, everything is backwards,’ said Balan.
And when it comes to kobratoldya’s Cybertruck specifically, she confirmed, is that the accelerator pedal was fixed incorrectly.
The accelerator pedal was the problem covered in the recall. A cover on the pedal could slip off, Tesla found, causing the pedal to get stuck pressed down, and potentially leading to uncontrolled acceleration.
A simple repair, riveting the pedal cover to the pedal, took care of the issue.
This Cybertruck accelerator pedal was improperly fixed (left), said a former Tesla engineer. The rivet should not be on the edge of the metal. This is how the pedal looked (right) after it was repaired a second time, prompting some Cybertruck Owners Club members to comment on the shoddy workmanship.
These shop instructions from the Tesla recall bulletin show that whoever repaired this owner’s Cybertruck accelerator pedal did not follow proper procedures. The rivet should have been placed higher up, and the pedal cover should have been moved lower down.
When the company announced the recall, CEO Elon Musk claimed, ‘There were no injuries or accidents because of this. We are just being very cautious.’
While Musk claimed there were no accidents due to the issue, a Cybertruck owner reported they crashed into a pole mid-corner on April 4 when the vehicle refused to slow down – and the airbags did not go off.
kobratoldya’s posted a photo of his vehicle’s pedal after a Tesla technician had performed the repair.
The rivet had been incorrectly placed on the edge of the pedal cover, Balan confirmed.
‘The guy said they are all like this but later at home I saw that mine was the only one on right on the edge,’ wrote kobratoldya.
In fact, according to the Tesla service bulletin on the recall, the pedal should have been replaced altogether because the pedal had cover had slipped out of place.
A rivet is meant to be driven through the metal so it can hold it firmly in place. This is a basic technician error, she said, pointing out that Tesla recently laid off 10 percent of its staff.
‘They fired thousands of people, and this is what they end up with.’
This Cybertruck owner could not open the liftgate by pressing the button. He also confirmed he could not open it from the vehicle’s touchscreen.
Once he got the tailgate to open, it would not stay closed. He closed it, and it fell open. The same thing happened twice.
‘Mr. Rivet should have been let go with the other 10%,’ wrote one commenter. ‘There is absolutely no excuse for that type of error.’
Eventually the pedal was repaired correctly, but it ws damaged from the first poorly done fix.
After a visit to the Long Beach Tesla dealer, the gear selector was repaired, and the replacement pedal was ordered – because now the new vehicle’s accelerator had two holes in it.
This Cybertruck’s issues did not end with the pedal and the gear selector, though. The truck’s liftgate also doesn’t work as it is supposed to, wrote kobratoldya.
In a video shared to the Cybertruck Owners Club forum, he showed that pressing the button on the bedrail did not open the liftgate.
He also confirmed he could not open it from the vehicle’s touchscreen or from the Tesla app.
‘With persistence, I got the tailgate to open,’ he wrote. ‘But now it randomly and repeatedly opens. I closed it, went in the house and then it opened. Did this twice.’
This issue makes the truck not drivable, he wrote. The service center offered to have him bring it in, and they would keep it until they had the right repair parts, he wrote.
‘I feel like they are about to have my truck for a long time,’ he concluded.
