Tesla Cybertruck’s Unintended Acceleration Fix Is Just a Rivet
If the pedal assembly doesn’t need replacing, a tech will just rivet the pad down.
Earlier this month, Tesla began holding Cybertruck deliveries due to faulty accelerator pedal covers that could slide up and wedge themselves under the front bulkhead, pinning the pedal to the floor. One Cybertruck owner posted a video of the issue that went viral, causing Tesla to place a temporary stop-sale on Cybertrucks, before issuing a recall. Over the weekend, someone shared a glimpse of the fix, and it's as simple as you might expect—it's pretty much just a rivet.
According to The Verge, a recall service bulletin recently went out to Tesla workers instructing them how to remedy the loose pedal covers, and it turns out there are two different repair protocols. Depending on the condition of the pedal and its pad, technicians will either "rework or replace the accelerator pedal assembly such that the assembly meets specifications and ensures sufficient retention force between the pad and accelerator pedal to prevent the pad from dislodging."
To determine whether the truck needs a "rework" or full "repair," technicians first have to measure the distance between the bottom of the pedal and the pad that covers it. If the distance is more than 5mm, techs will have to replace the entire pedal assembly. If the distance is less than 5mm, they can just repair the existing pedal, which is when the rivet comes in.
In this video posted by Aaron Cash to X, you can see the rivet repair process, performed at Tesla's Cyber Takeover event in Long Beach, California. Tesla supplies a jig with a pilot hole for technicians to use, for drilling through both the pedal and its pad. Once the hole is drilled, the tech removes the jig and then places a rivet in the hole, which will hold the pad to the pedal.
Why was this necessary to begin with? As Tesla explains it, there was an "unapproved change" to the pedal pad during manufacturing involving soap that made it more slippery than normal. "On affected Cybertruck vehicles, when a high amount of force is applied to the accelerator pedal pad, the pad may dislodge and become trapped in the interior trim above the pedal," said Tesla in the service bulletin.
Is it a bit silly to replace the entire assembly on some Cybertrucks but just drill a hole in the pedal for others? Probably, especially when you consider the Cybertruck almost as expensive as a BMW 7 Series to start, and can crest $100,000 with little trouble on the configurator. It seems let's say, less-than-premium to have a hole drilled into a six-figure truck's pedal to fix a potentially dangerous issue. A single rivet is about as cheap a solution as you'll find for any vehicle recall. But cheap or not, the rivet should work as intended and prevent any Cybertrucks from speeding away uncontrollably in the future.
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