Fortunately, Nikola was spared from an issue that affected ZF North American brake pedals
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by Sebastien Bell
5 hours ago
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by Sebastien Bell
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Any time something falls off a car, there’s reason for concern, but when there’s a risk that the brake pedal might fall off, it’s more of a crisis than a concern. Fortunately, despite a recent recall, Nikola Tre operators can rest assured that their brake pedal won’t fall off.
The startup was sold pedal assemblies by ZF North America, which did have a legitimate issue. The supplier had reason to believe that the locking screw that maintains the brake pedal in assemblies it shipped out to customers might not be fully threaded, or could be missing entirely.
That led to the fairly serious concern that the brake pedal could move out of its guidance and fall off completely. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), with typical understatement, notes that this could “increase the risk of a crash.”
Through its investigating, ZF North America discovered that the issue could have either been down to an electric screwdriver that was not linked to automatic sequence control, or necessary tightening operations that were skipped in the assembly line.
To warn it that an issue might be present, ZF North America got in touch with Nikola on September 12. The truckmaker inspected all of the vehicle cabs it had in its possession on September 14, and found no issues.
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On November 1, Nikola completed an inspection of all trucks it had sold, and was no doubt relieved to discover that all screws were in place and tightened to spec. The truckmaker told NHTSA that it didn’t initiate a recall because 100 percent of the vehicles that left its factory were safe.
While NHTSA agreed that no further action had to be taken by Nikola, it did ask it to file a recall notice, in which it could note that the safety campaign had been completely before notification was necessary. That’s good news for operators, such as Nissan, which recently started using a Nikola Tre for car hauling purposes in Los Angeles.
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