One can never play it too safe when it comes to consumer electronics. With more and more devices and items that we use these days depending on some sort of battery, and with that, a charger, you might not be able to know just when that charger, adapter, or battery is going to catch fire due to overheating. The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is one of the most recent serious examples, so much so that it has been banned from all flights worldwide, after a product recall and replacement exercise which failed to fix the problem, only to have the Note 7 end up as a discontinued product. Tesla, the company behind the hugely successful line of electric cars, knows how important it is to maintain consumer confidence in their brand -- and one of those ways would be to ensure that none of their electronics in their electric-powered vehicles fail. Not even once.
So, when word went around that not one, but a couple of charging adapters from Tesla overheated, the company decided to run a voluntary recall of approximately 7,000 of such adapters which were used to charge their electric rides. The overheating issue ended up with plastic melted all over the plugs, and while this item is not used often, it is sold on Tesla’s online store. This explains the limited notice to those who have purchased the chraging adapter in the US, and not anywhere else in the world where Tesla vehicles are sold. Hence, it seems as though the charging adapter issue is a local one, and not an international problem -- which is good to know.
The overheated charging adapters were reported in November, based on an e-mail that Tesla sent out to its customers earlier this week. Other than the melted plastic around the plug, there was no other damage, so if you hear otherwise, chances are it is a hoax or an effort to maximize the negative news surrounding any kind of overheated electronics tehse days. The accessories were not manufactured by Tesla themselves, but rather, it has been outsourced to a supplier elsewhere, and Tesla claims that the last charging adapter of this sort that they sold happened more than half a year ago.
The two cases of overheating equipment involved the NEMA 14-30 adapters, which are sometimes used to charge Tesla vehicles via clothes-dryer appliance outlets in U.S. homes. International customers aren’t affected. Replacements will be shipped beginning in the next few weeks, and customers should avoid using them in the meantime.
In an effort to shore up the safety of their charging adapters and electronic accessories, Tesla will also take the opportunity to replace the NEMA 10-30 and 6-50 adapters, as both of them have a similar design. Better be safe than sorry here. The entire replacement exercise ought to take approximately three months to complete, and since there has not been a single report of overheating in the NEMA 10-30 and 6-50 adapters, Tesla says that customers who make use of them may continue to do so without any worry.
This is the first accessory recall from Tesla, although it is the fifth recall of the company since June 2012 as the Model S started to be shipped out to customers.
