Despite Tesla's success with electric vehicles on the world stage, the brand is new relatively new, and seems to be struggling quite a bit with quality control issues.
In the past, we've seen dodgy panel gaps on new vehicles, incredibly thin paint on the recently released Model Y SUV, but steering wheels falling off? That's a completely new issue.
@elonmusk Steering wheel fell of today! Concerned that the rest of the car will fall to bits too! Can this be looked into as to why it’s happened to a car just over 1 month old! #TeslaServiceIssues pic.twitter.com/w103imxnbA
— Jason T (@JasonTuatara) April 26, 2020
One extremely unfortunate Model 3 owner in the UK recently experienced this issue whilst driving the EV, and we can't imagine that it'd be a very enjoyable occurrence.
According to the owner, the car was less than a month old, and the whole steering wheel assembly came loose as he was reversing into his driveway. He also mentioned that it was at the end of a 32km drive, and counts himself lucky it didn't happen on the open road.
While this was the first hardware issue on this particular Model 3, it was scheduled to be delivered in October last year, but only landed mid-March due to factory delays coupled with Covid-19 restrictions.
Despite the lockdown, this owner still managed to put around 550km on the clock before this unfortunate incident, which left the long-time Tesla without a Model 3 yet again.
After returning the car with a properly attached steering wheel the next day, the owner released a statement. "Tesla confirmed that the steering wheel was not fixed to the body of the car with a bolt, and they are looking into what happened on production. The Driving and Cecile standards agency here in the UK is also doing a full investigation."
While Tesla may be taking a lot of heat right now for build quality, it's worth noting that other manufacturers have recalled cars over similar issues.
Back in 2018, Ford recalled around 1.4 million cars for an issue regarding a loose steering wheel, and Hyundai recalled around 44,000 Santa Fe models for the same issue.