this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2024
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I know it has to be called a recall, but they really should find another name for these things now that OTA SW updates for issues are a thing, not only for Tesla but also other manufacturers.
Nah I like the term recall. Just because the fix is "easy" doesn't mean the product wasn't broken. Automakers should take the software in their cars seriously especially the ones that market their cars like a cell phone.
Broken software shouldn’t be accepted as much as it is. Especially in safety critical systems like cars, especially when they remove manual controls for things like steering, brakes, hand brakes and door handles. Fly/drive by wire is more dangerous when the software is unreliable. Mechanical linkages fail immediately or take a long time. Bad software fails in uncertain and potentially chaotic ways.
I just think it's useful to have different words for things that can be easily fixed without having to go get the car to a mechanic and having no immediate safety impact, and things that may require you to take the vehicle to a mechanic ASAP because there is immediate serious danger. They should not be in the same category, and people should be aware that they require different levels of attention and urgency. When it's all just referred to as a "recall", people will start to not take them seriously when they more often than not are minor things like this.
I think a "recall" has a very specific legal definition, where the manufacturer has strictly defined responsibilities (identifying and notifying owners of affected vehicles would be one of those). It wouldn't surprise me if there was some external agency that acted as an auditor on that.
On the other hand, manufacturers can put out a "service action" bulletin, where a particular repair is free to the vehicle owner, but none of those recall responsibilities are in place. This means that, for example, vehicle owners are not notified, so you just need to bring your vehicle in with the complaint specified in the service action. In this case, the vehicle owner might need to point out that there's a service action, because a shady dealer will pretend it doesn't exist, charge you for the repair, and also submit the repair to the manufacturer for reimbursement. This was a lot easier to do before the internet, since the information about that service action wasn't readily available to the public.
A recall implies the product is irreparably damaged, or too expensive to repair, and needs to be returned/replaced.
This framing benefits corporations, because the average recall is relatively minimal and inconsequential, the public will grow to consider "recalls" as normal instead of "potentially deadly failure/defect", and make it easier for corporate sociopaths like Space Karen to scream gubberment overreach. The wording should reflect the risk to life/public health (e.g. potential to cause harm/death) as well as the cost to repair/replace (quantify the severity of the failure/defect).
The greater the access and granularity consumers have to this type of data, the greater the benefit to society. Any corporation, politician or lobby group arguing otherwise is your enemy.
No, it does not. I can't think of an automotive recall that wasn't repaired and resulted in a buyback. I'm sure there was one or two, I just can't think of them. Edit: Here's the list. And most of those have to do with bad welds or badly adhering paint (which affects windshields in collisions).
Lots of cars from all manufacturers end up with recalls that get fixed as a matter of course.
Tesla owners are not notified as such when the recalls are fixed by SW updates, they just get an update pushed to the car and a request in the car that there is an update ready to install.
Maybe that counts as the notification? I've never owned a car that does OTA shit. All the recalls that have applied to any of my cars have been mailed to me directly, sometimes even well before they are even able to be repaired, waiting on parts availability.
They absolutely do have to notify people of mandatory recalls and it's not even up to the company. This person does not know what they are talking about. There's a difference between a mandatory recall (mandated by the NHTSA/Government), and a voluntary one. Every other car manufacture sends out information to their customers about mandatory recalls (yes, even software updates, yes, even when they're OTA fixes). Tesla isn't special. They still have to comply with the law.
Maybe, IDK...I've never had a car with a recall on it before.
It's not useful at all, knowing which brand sells shitty cars that have major issues is a good thing, this whole attitude that you can do OTA fix something therefore it's fine and we can ship bad product is fucking ridiculous attitude to a multi-ton weapon capable of killing multiple people
It’s worse than that, people will argue shipping good code is impossible. Good testing is hard, so it’s avoided for things like unit tests. Something that’s only equivalent to basic QA in manufacturing. Every software functions is a design change and the system needs to be fully validated and tested. That’s means driving the car, and not shipping the code and using the users cars to prove your design.
The problem is, and of course when it matters I forget the specifics, that there are many times when language is changed to soften how bad something is and it results in people not taking things seriously.
The issue here is cars being shipped in a broken state, that’s it. They recall the vehicles and force people to skip out of work or whatever to get this shit done because their products suck, and if they wanted to not deal with that then maybe they should products that don’t suck. They can also collect a bunch of these issues, seeing as they’re common, and either make a patch of several minor issues or just say that the problem will be addressed at the next service. This is entirely on the companies to save their image, not us to change our language to make them feel better.
But recall meaning you call the products back, so they can be fixed, or not? This seems not the case here, just a safety relevant bugfix..
As a software engineer, I would think to call this a patch or a hotfix. I agree that recall for this type of situation is a bit too dramatic, but I'd also say that patch or hotfix are too casual sounding
Seems to me just specifying that it's a software recall would be a good balance.
Yes absolutely. The term recall is supposed to be when they literally recall the cars, like bring them back in, in the same context as you recall your dog after he runs around the yard.
No cars are being brought back in. No dealers are involved here. It's just a bug fix for the next software release.
I also don't like how the ability to fix bugs is creating a huge number of 'recalls'. For example, last year Tesla had a 'recall' because NHTSA decided the warning icons on the dashboard screen weren't big enough. Like the icons for parking brake and seat belt. Which is frustrating because the car is operated for years with the original icons and nobody had a complaint.
But if this was an old style car, where those were individual LEDs silkscreened in an instrument cluster, that would never be a recall because it would cost millions to replace every single instrument cluster on every single car. But because it is remotely fixable, it becomes a recall.
They sold a bad product that needs fixed, bad software shouldn’t get an exception. The warning icons were probably not compliant and should never have left the factory.
The warning icons were the exact same size as the car I had before that. No recall on that car, and if anything icons were even easier to see because the contrast was higher and they are closer to your face.
They applied that font/icon change in Canada as well, and then Canada made them undo the change that NHSTA demanded. Double recall lol.
Which IMHO just shows that the recall in the first place was just NHTSA unnecessarily flexing on them
Well, I think rules are rules, and they do differ country to country, but this whole recall for something like that is what the problem is.
Bu nothing geneartes headlines like Tesla recalls every vehicle made in NA.
Rules are rules of course. But when the car was approved for sale, approved as being rule following, and then retroactively after the fact, after it's been out for years with literally millions of units on the road, suddenly it's no good...., that doesn't seem like fair enforcement to me.
You would absolutely take your vehicle in for service for a safety recall if the OTA didn't work. Which happens frequently enough that it still warrants being called a recall and the necessary steps once the vehicles are "recalled" in order to notify customers who might not otherwise set themselves up to get an OTA. It's not as simple as the car "just does it overnight" in every case.
Frequent software updates are part of having a Tesla. If the vehicle is unable to do a software update, then it is broken and would require service regardless of the recall.
My dude, the vehicle could be working fine but you could live somewhere with no broadband and poor 4G connection and not be able to receive the update. Don't assume that you just know how everyone who owns one of these cars lives their life because that's not helpful to the conversation, and it's not how the government functions. The government has to assume that if a recall for safety or security is being issued that people may not be able to receive that OTA over the air and may be required to go to a service center for it instead.
Almost all new cars have OTA software updates. If one of them breaks something and then the car can't get further updates, what then? You've never had a software update mess with your computer? Are you for real right now?
Guys, rail against the things that are true. There are enough of them that we don't need to exaggerate or make up new ones.
Regardless of what you think of Tesla, "recall" here doesn't mean what people expect it to mean.
Sorry we don't think like that anymore. Nuance and multiple truths are a waste of time. Elon supports a Republican that means he is bad and everything he does is bad and everything he has ever done is bad and he has no vision or leadership of his own he is just a rich asshole using Daddy's money to buy cars and rockets and Twitter. Thus he is unworthy of praise for anything at all that he has done since he was born into a life of luxury and anything he touches is automatically shit worthy of being canceled or outlawed.
The fix is simple correct informative headlining from media "Tesla issues over the air update to resolve X thing related safety recall affecting X amount of customer vehicles"
It's not NHTSA's fault media does their job badly.