Having a hood fly up and cause a crash can be a fun addition to a chase scene in a movie, but unless you’re an aspiring stunt double, it’s definitely not something you ever want to experience in real life. Unfortunately for nearly two million Tesla owners, an issue means there’s a risk that could actually happen, Reuters reports. As a result, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced a recall for 1,849,638 affected Teslas.
According to the recall report, “After a customer action opens the hood, the latch assembly may not detect an open condition and prevent driver notification of the hood open state when the vehicle is placed into drive.” It then cautions that, “Unknowingly driving a vehicle with an unlatched hood may result in the hood fully opening and obstructing the driver’s view, increasing the risk of a collision.”
Tesla discovered the problem after receiving several complaints of “unintended hood opening events” in China. The electric automaker later “identified the condition affecting vehicles in China as latch switch deformation, which could prevent the customer from being notified of an open hood state.”
The recall doesn’t appear to affect the Cybertruck or the original Roadster, however it does affect the rest of the lineup. Specifically, it covers any Model S built between January 26, 2021 and July 15, 2024, any Model X built between August 18, 2021 and July 15, 2024, any Model 3 built between September 21, 2020 and June 02, 2024, and any Model Y built between January 09, 2020 and July 15, 2024.
That doesn’t sound good, although if it’s any comfort to the Tesla owners reading this, the recall report estimates that only about one percent of recalled vehicles will be affected. Also, it appears the problem can be fixed with an over-the-air update, so owners should simply make sure they’re running firmware release 2024.20.3 or later, and if not, update their software.