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Lucid Air Recalled Over Front Tow Eye Bracket That May Detach During Towing

On July 15, Lucid was informed that the tow eye bracket of a customer’s vehicle failed while being winched onto a flatbed truck using the tow eye. Mere days later, the EV automaker from California received another tow eye failure report. Given these circumstances, the Product Safety Working Group was instructed to investigate this problem.
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The PSWG reviewed the tow eye design specifications and manufacturing data on August 15th. As fate would have it, the tow eye brackets in the July 15th and July 22nd incidents “failed due to inadequate adhesive properties.”

Lucid also discovered three other failures caused by inadequate adhesion. More specifically, a crack was discovered on a test vehicle on July 26th, and the other two failures occurred on a customer vehicle on August 18th and a test vehicle on August 24th. Lucid subsequently confirmed with the current subframe manufacturer that both the subframe and tow eye brackets “exceed the design strength specification and have substation margin.”

Lucid called up Ethos Automation, the previous subframe manufacturer, for more information. The Newark-based automaker confirmed that Ethos was responsible for the adhesive failures mentioned earlier, then established a clean point at the plant for vehicles with build dates beginning April 21st.

The PSWG and Product Safety Officer briefed the Product Safety Executive Council on their findings, concluding that subframes produced by Ethos present a safety risk. The automaker was originally aware of 304 potentially affected cars, but that number grew to 571 as the investigation carried on.

Their build dates range from October 22nd, 2021, to April 20th, 2022. Following Ethos Automation, Lucid switched to Martinrea International for subframe production. Owners of the affected vehicles will be notified by first-class mail with instructions not to use the tow eye for recovery operations on November 14th. To rectify this problem, Lucid-certified service centers have been told to install two rivets to the tow eye bracket.
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 Download: Lucid Air tow eye bracket recall (PDF)

About the author: Mircea Panait
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After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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