NHTSA Complaint #11616404 — 2021 TESLA MODEL X

Alerts: UI_a020 - Steering Assist Reduced APP_w264 - Lane Departure features unavailable This incident happened suddenly during a normal commute from work to home. It caused the steering of the vehicle to be very heavy and difficult to control which could have potentially led to an unwanted accident on the road. There root cause seems to be a failure in the steering rack component of the car. It is a very common and prevalent issue with Tesla vehicles, and complaints on various Tesla forums and Reddit threads about this same issue. There also has been NHTSA investigations in the past regarding this. The failure caused the loss of safety functionality such as Lane Keeping Assistance, Lane Departure Assistance, Autopilot and FSD. Tesla Service Center diagnosed the alerts as a steering rack hardware failure and is charging almost $5000 to replace the part. Given that this is such a prevalent issue among so many Tesla vehicles, it needs to be addressed by the manufacturer and should be a safety recall and not on the customer to pay out of pocket.