A small gear built by one of the company's third-party suppliers is to blame, and Tesla figures less than five percent of the 53,000 recalled vehicles might have the part -- but better safe than sorry. The replacement process takes only 45 minutes, and assuming every potentially affected vehicle is brought in to Tesla, the recall process will be over by October 2017.

The move is typical for Tesla: It issued an early recall of 90,000 Model S sedans in November 2015 for safety concerns (again, before a flaw caused any accidents) and pulled back its just-released Model X SUVs in April 2016. Heck, it even recalled and replaced almost 30,000 wall chargers back in 2014.