Photo: Sascha Pallenberg
This story only came to our attention thanks to Sascha Pallenberg. He shared a Tik Tok video of what seems to be a brand new Tesla Model S Plaid with a loose airbag on Twitter. He did that teasing the American carmaker for removing adjustable lumbar support because “logs showed almost no usage,” according to Elon Musk.
Elon Musk: "Looking at the Airbag Logs now - very low usage rate.
— Sascha (???) Pallenberg (@sascha_p) June 23, 2021
Will remove in all future models."pic.twitter.com/5ITZK6nsie
UPDATE: Ricco Kimbrough confirmed he did not own the Model S and talked to autoevolution about that. This text is unchanged apart from this update: read the new article here.
Thankfully, Tik Tok videos come with a signature that allowed us to discover the car belongs to Ricco Kimbrough. Identifying there as a public teacher, Kimbrough made more than one video about his Model S. In fact, he made 31 videos of getting delivery of his car, some of them with his two parakeets in a Gucci transparent bag.
@riccokimbrough ? original sound - ? Ricco kimbrough??
Kimbrough’s videos are about how much he paid for his Model S ($89,190), how black people can also buy Tesla cars, how he prefers to have black vehicles, how only “broke people” drive gas cars, how Teslas are the cars to have right now, and how to prevent Tesla from spying customers by placing a tape on the internal camera. The purpose of that camera is to monitor if drivers are paying attention to the road with Autopilot on.
In the very first video, he said his car belonged to the “Plaid edition,” but the price paper he presented shows it is actually a Long Range. Apparently, they are also coming with the steering yoke.
It is only in his 25th video about the car that he discovers the issue with the airbag in his steering yoke. He then makes three more videos complaining about the problem. In his 29th video, he enters the Tesla Service Center to talk to a company representative. It seems that Kimbrough is informed that Tesla will fix that whenever possible. Check it below.
@riccokimbrough ? original sound - ? Ricco kimbrough??
In his 30th video, Kimbrough checks another Model S with the steering yoke, and that unit does not have the airbag problem.
In his final video about the delivery of his car – the 31st – the public teacher warns future Tesla owners to carefully inspect their vehicles before accepting them because “they are like Legos.”
It is a good thing this issue was not in a Model S Plaid. With its fast acceleration (even if not under 2 seconds, as Tesla claims), it is possible the loose airbag would be ejected from the steering yoke. If you have heard about any other case with a loose airbag in any Tesla vehicle, get in touch to let us know more about that.
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