Tesla, the electric car company owned by Elon Musk, is recalling most of its Cybertrucks due to an exterior panel that can fall off while driving ― posing a serious setback for a company whose shares already have been taking a nosedive.
Tesla announced the recall of more than 46,000 Cybertrucks in a filing with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The recall applies to all vehicles built from November 2023 through Feb. 27 of this year ― accounting for nearly every Cybertruck in existence. In its filing, Tesla says that the cant rail, a stainless-steel exterior trim panel, can detach from the vehicle.
“A detached panel can become a road hazard, increasing the risk of a crash,” Tesla admitted in its NHTSA filing.
This is the eighth time Tesla has had to recall Cybertrucks, which have been on roads for less than a year and a half.
Tesla already has seen its stock lose about half of its value this year, in part due to rising competition and in part due to outrage over Musk’s job under President Donald Trump overseeing massive cuts to federal funding, including money spent on school meals for kids, national parks and forests, programs combatting infectious disease and research to help sick and wounded veterans.
Demand for used Teslas also has been plummeting, according to a survey from Cars.com that found searches for used Teslas dropped 16% over the past month.
A bizarre plea on Wednesday night from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick for Americans to buy stock in Musk’s company massively backfired. After Lutnick’s TV appearance, in which he urged viewers to “buy Tesla” and promised them that the stock will “never be this cheap again,” the company’s shares dropped another 1.7% Thursday morning.
Lutnick’s sales pitch comes just over a week after Trump ― in an unprecedented and ethically dubious move ― shilled for Tesla by parading the company’s vehicles outside the White House in support of “great patriot” Musk.
This week, several families of victims who died or were injured in crashes involving Tesla’s self-driving technology wrote to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy expressing their concern that Musk’s influence in the Trump administration may weaken government oversight on automated vehicles, according to reporting in Politico.
The families said they were worried about the status of the policy from President Joe Biden’s time in the White House that required Tesla and other vehicle manufacturers to report crashes that involved advanced driver assistance technologies or automated driving systems.
“We fear this important measure is under threat given recent media reports and the influence of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose company operates the most widely used [advanced driver assistance technologies] in America,” the letter reads.