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Tesla recalls charging adapters after two reports of plugs overheating
Tesla Motors, Inc. has voluntarily recalled approximately 7,000 charging adapters after two cases of melted plastic around the NEMA 14-30 charging plug adapter were reported. No damage besides the melted plastic around the plug was reported in either case, according to a blog post made by Tesla.
The company writes, “In November 2016, we learned about two customers whose NEMA 14-30 charging adapters overheated. These are the only two such incidents that we know of anywhere in the world and neither resulted in any injuries or property damage. However, out of an abundance of caution, we’re replacing NEMA 14-30, 10-30 and 6-50 adapters that were made years ago by our original supplier.”
Replacements will be shipped beginning in the next few weeks, and Tesla advises customers to avoid using the specific adapter in the meantime. As noted, the recall does not involve the Tesla Wall Connector, Universal Mobile Connector (UMC), or popular NEMA 14-50 or 5-15 adapters that come standard with each Model S and Model X vehicle via the UMC kit.
Tesla said it notified U.S. regulators of its voluntary recall today. This will be the first Tesla recall of an accessory. A year ago, the company voluntarily recalled seat belts on all Model S after one report of an improperly latched front seat belt. In April, Tesla voluntarily recalled fewer than 3,000 Model X SUVs over concerns of strength on the third-row seats.
Recalls are common in the U.S. automotive industry. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration has calculated that over 50 million cars had recalls of some kind in the last year.
Tesla will also replace the NEMA 10-30 and 6-50 adapters, which have a similar design, even though there have not been any reported instances of overheating in that type of adapter. Those replacements will take about three months. Tesla says that customers can continue to use them in the meantime.
The recall involved a rarely used accessory item that is sold through the company’s online store. No international customers are affected.
We’ve provided the issued statement from Tesla
NEMA 14-30, 10-30, 6-50 Adapter Recall
Because safety is our top priority at Tesla, we want to inform you of an action we’re voluntarily taking to recall a small number of charging adapters.
This recall does not involve the Tesla Wall Connector, Universal Mobile Connector, NEMA 14-50 adapter, or NEMA 5-15 adapter that came standard with your Tesla and that most of our customers use for charging. It only involves NEMA 14-30, 10-30, and 6-50 adapters, which are sold separately as accessories and which are used by relatively few of our customers.
In November 2016, we learned about two customers whose NEMA 14-30 charging adapters overheated. These are the only two such incidents that we know of anywhere in the world and neither resulted in any injuries or property damage. However, out of an abundance of caution, we’re replacing NEMA 14-30, 10-30 and 6-50 adapters that were made years ago by our original supplier.
If you have one of these NEMA 14-30 adapters and regularly use it, you will receive a replacement from us within the next couple of weeks. If you do not regularly use it you will receive a replacement as soon as possible. Until then, we ask that you stop using your current adapter, and that you instead charge your car in a different way, such as with a Tesla Wall Connector or NEMA 14-50 adapter (if you have one), or by Supercharging.
Although there have been no incidents with NEMA 10-30 or 6-50 adapters, they have some common elements with the NEMA 14-30, so we will be replacing those as well. These replacements will take about three months to develop and manufacture. In the meantime, since none of these adapters has ever overheated, you can continue to use them if you do not have another way to charge your car.
If you need additional assistance, you can also contact us by phone at 877-798-3752 or by email at ServiceHelpNA@teslamotors.com.
How to determine if your adapter is affected by the recall
Your adapter will likely be included in the recall if you purchased it more than six months ago. To check, compare the part number on the prong side of the adapter to the table below. If you find a match, your adapter will be replaced.
| Recalled Adapter | Part Number |
| NEMA 6-50 | 1016021-00-A |
| NEMA 6-50 | 1016021-00-B |
| NEMA 10-30 | 1016174-00-B |
| NEMA 14-30 | 1018243-00-A |
| NEMA 14-30 | 1018243-00-B |
The latest version of the NEMA 14-30 adapter does not need to be replaced. They have part number 1018243-00-C and have a gray plastic cap (on the right in the photo), rather than a black plastic cap (on the left in the photo).
Are any of the standard equipment adapters affected?
No, only 14-30, 10-30 or 6-50 accessory adapters purchased separately are impacted by this recall. The 14-50 and 5-15 adapters included with your Tesla are not affected.
When will I receive my replacement adapter?
Replacement 14-30 adapters for those who regularly use them will be shipped to the address we have on file within the next couple weeks. Replacement 10-30 and 6-50 adapters will be shipped to the address we have on file in about three months. Please verify your address by signing in to your account.
May I exchange my adapter at a store or service center?
Replacement adapters will be mailed to your home. We will not carry replacement adapters in our stores and service centers until after the recall is complete.
Are the adapters made by Tesla?
The adapters were designed by Tesla and produced by a supplier.
What will Tesla do with the old adapters?
Tesla will recycle materials from the returned adapters.
Elon Musk
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a recent podcast interview that Tesla is not who Americans should look at to beat Chinese carmakers.
The comments have sparked quite a bit of outrage from Tesla fans on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
Farley said that Chinese automakers are better examples of how to beat competitors. He said (via the Rapid Response Podcast):
“If you’re an American and you want us to beat the Chinese in the car business, you’re all going to want to pay attention, not necessarily to Tesla. Nothing against Tesla—they’ve been doing great—but they really don’t have an updated vehicle. The best in the business for us, cost-wise and competition-wise, supply chain, manufacturing expertise, and the I.P. in the vehicle, was really BYD. In this next cycle of EV customers in the U.S., they want pickups and utilities and all these different body styles. But they want them at $30,000, not $50,000. Like the first inning, they want them affordably.”
Despite Farley’s synopsis, it is worth mentioning that Tesla had the best-selling passenger vehicle in the world last year, and in China in March, as the Model Y continued its global dominance over other vehicles.
Musk responded to Farley’s comments by stating:
“This is before Supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.”
This is before supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2026
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford cancels all-electric F-150 Lightning, announces $19.5 billion in charges
Instead, Ford is “doubling down on its affordable” EVs and said it would pivot from its previous plans.
Reaction from Tesla fans was pretty much how you would expect. Many said they have lost a lot of respect for Farley after his comments; others believe he is the last CEO anyone should be taking advice on EVs from.
Nevertheless, Farley’s plans are bold and brash; many consider Tesla the most ideal company to replicate EV efforts from. It will be interesting to see if Ford can rebound from this big adjustment, and hopefully, Farley’s plans to replicate efforts from BYD work out the way he hopes.
Elon Musk
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
NASA awarded SpaceX a $175 million Mars rover contract while the White House proposes cutting the mission.
NASA just signed a $175.7 million contract with SpaceX to launch a Mars rover that the White House is simultaneously trying to defund. The contract, awarded on April 16, 2026, tasks SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy with launching the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosalind Franklin rover from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, no earlier than late 2028. It would mark the first time SpaceX has ever sent a payload to Mars.
Under NASA’s Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation project, known as ROSA, the agency is providing braking engines for the rover’s descent stage, radioisotope heater units that use decaying plutonium to keep the rover warm on the Martian surface, additional electronics, and a mass spectrometer instrument, as noted by SpaceNews.
Those nuclear heating units are the reason an American rocket was required at all. U.S. export controls on radioisotope technology mean any payload carrying them must launch on a domestic vehicle, which narrowed the field to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. Falcon Heavy’s pricing made it the practical choice.
SpaceX is quietly becoming the U.S. Military’s only reliable rocket
Falcon Heavy debuted in February 2018 and has 11 launches to its record. The rocket has not flown since October 2024, when it sent NASA’s Europa Clipper toward Jupiter. The three-core design, built from modified Falcon 9 first stages, gives it the lift capacity needed for deep space planetary missions that a single Falcon 9 cannot reach.
The Rosalind Franklin rover has been sitting in storage in Europe for years. It was originally due to launch in 2022 as a joint mission with Russia, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ended that partnership, leaving the rover built but stranded without a launch vehicle or landing hardware. NASA stepped back in through a 2024 agreement with ESA to rescue the mission. The rover is designed to drill up to two meters below the Martian surface in search of evidence of past life, a science objective no previous mission has attempted at that depth.
The contradiction at the center of this story is hard to ignore. The White House’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal included no funding for ROSA and did not mention the mission at all in the detailed congressional justification document released April 3.
Musk has long argued that reaching Mars is not optional. “We don’t want to be one of those single planet species, we want to be a multi-planet species.” Whether this particular mission survives Washington’s budget fight, the Falcon Heavy contract means SpaceX is now formally on record as the rocket that could get humanity’s next Mars science mission off the ground.
The timing of this contract carries extra weight given that SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC in early April and is targeting an IPO roadshow in the week of June 8. It would be the largest public offering in history.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is set to hold its Earnings Call for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday, and there are a lot of interesting things that are swirling around in terms of speculation from investors.
With the company’s executives, including CEO Elon Musk, answering a handful of questions that investors submit through the Say platform, fans want to know a lot of things about a lot of things.
These five questions come from Retail Investors, who are normal, everyday shareholders:
- When will we have the Optimus v3 reveal? When will Optimus production start, since we ended the Model S and Model X production earlier than mid-year? What’s the expected Optimus production rate exiting this year? What are the initial targeted skills?
- What milestones are you targeting for unsupervised FSD and Robotaxi expansion beyond Austin this year, and how will that drive recurring revenue?
- How will Hardware 3 cars reach Unsupervised Full Self-Driving?
- When do you expect Unsupervised Full Self-Driving to reach customer cars?
- When will Robotaxi expand past its current limited rollout?
Additionally, these are currently the three questions that are slated to be answered by Institutional Firms, which also answer a handful of questions during the call:
- Now that FSD has been approved in the Netherlands and is expected to launch across Europe this summer, can you discuss your Robotaxi strategy for the region?
- What enabled you to finish the AI5 tapeout early and were there any changes to the original vision? Last week, Elon said AI5 will go into Optimus and the Supercomputer, but one month ago said it would go into the Robotaxi. Has AI5 been dropped from the vehicle roadmap?
- Given the recent NHTSA incident filings, can you update us on the Robotaxi safety data? If safety validation remains the primary bottleneck, why not deploy thousands of vehicles to accelerate the removal of the safety driver?
The questions range through every current Tesla project, including FSD expansion and Optimus. However, many of the answers we will get will likely be repetitive answers we’ve heard in the past.
This is especially pertinent when the questions about when Unsupervised FSD will reach customer cars: we know Musk will say that it will happen this year. Is Tesla capable of that? Maybe. But a more transparent answer that is more revealing of a true timeline would be appreciated.
Hardware 3 owners are anxiously awaiting the arrival of FSD v14 Lite, which was promised to them last year for a release sometime this year.
The Earnings Call is set to take place on Wednesday at market close.
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
