Tesla has recalled 125,000 vehicles over seat belt warning alerts

WASHINGTON — Tesla is recalling more than 125,000 vehicles to fix a seat belt warning system that can increase the risk of injury in a crash.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the recall includes certain 2012-2024 Model S, 2015-2024 Model X, 2017-2023 Model 3 and 2020-2023 Model Y vehicles.

The seat belt warning system should provide audible and visual seat belt reminder signals to drivers to warn them that the seat belt is not fastened. NHTSA said that in certain vehicles, the audible and visual seat belt reminders did not go off when they were supposed to, which did not comply with federal safety requirements.

NHTSA said that as of Tuesday, Tesla had identified 104 warranty claims that may be related to the condition. The company is not aware of any collisions, deaths or injuries that may be related to the condition.

Tesla, which is led by billionaire Elon Musk, plans to begin rolling out a free over-the-air software update to affected vehicles in June. The software update will remove the reliance on the driver’s seat occupancy switch in the software and rely solely on the driver’s seat belt buckle and ignition state to activate the seat belt reminder signals.

Last month, Tesla recalled 3,878 of its 2024 Cybertrucks after discovering that the accelerator pedal could lock up, causing the vehicle to accelerate unintentionally and increase the risk of a crash.

In February, NHTSA announced a recall of nearly 2.2 million Tesla vehicles sold in the United States because some warning lights on the dashboard are too small. The agency also said at the time that it upgraded a 2023 investigation into Tesla’s steering problems to an engineering review, one step closer to a recall.

In April, NHTSA said it was investigating whether last year’s recall of Tesla’s Autopilot driving system did enough to ensure drivers were paying attention to the road.