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Just a reminder that cars are recalled all the time and the only reason you are seeing this article is because it is Tesla. Any other manufacturer and this woul

by slg 5y ago

Just a reminder that cars are recalled all the time and the only reason you are seeing this article is because it is Tesla. Any other manufacturer and this would be a non-story especially on HN. Did Ford recalling 185k vehicles a couple days ago make the front page of HN? How about Toyota recalling 200k vehicles also a couple days ago?[2] Maybe Honda recalling 725k vehicles a month ago?[3] EDIT: Lots of people are taking this as a defense of Tesla. That isn't my intention here. I am providing context to this issue. Someone who isn't familiar with the frequency that cars are voluntarily recalled is going to conclude that this is a bigger deal than if viewed in the context of the auto industry as a whole. [1] - https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/ford/2021/12/28/ford-recalls-nearly-185-000-f-150-trucks-over-driveshaft-issue/9033644002/ https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/ford/2021/1... [2] - https://www.justicepays.com/news/toyota-recalls-over-200000-vehicles-due-to-power-assist-braking-failure https://www.justicepays.com/news/toyota-recalls-over-200000-... [3] - https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a38425033/honda-passport-pilot-ridgeline-hood-recall/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a38425033/honda-passport-p...

lillecarl 5y ago
There's more to the story. Ford, Toyota and Honda makes significantly more cars and models than Tesla.
- slg 5y ago
  I am not trying to start a fight about the quality of Tesla's vehicles compared to other manufacturers. Maybe you are right and Teslas are recalled at a higher frequency. I don't know enough about it to have an opinion either way. I am simply pointing out that a solitary voluntary recall, which is what this article is about, is barely newsworthy and is only being posted/upvoted because it is Tesla.
  - lillecarl 5y ago
    And it is upvoted through the roof because it is Tesla. The one car manufacturer valued as high as "all other" (very many) car manufacturers together. Tesla is different, why treat them like everyone else?
    - slg 5y ago
      >And it is upvoted through the roof because it is Tesla. That was my point so we agree.
      - lillecarl 5y ago
        Well yes, but you seem to think it's unfair treatment whereas I think It's perfectly reasonable to treat them differently if they are different(Which they are). So we disagree as well.
        slg 5y ago
        I never said it was unfair. People are projecting a lot onto my comments here.
        lillecarl 5y ago
        Before your edit many misinterpreted this, probably because the links you mention are not equal/close to equal and therefore not comparable to discuss.
        slg 5y ago
        I was limiting my search to recent weeks to highlight the frequency of these recalls, but that means there weren't limitless examples to choose from. Despite that, the Honda recall I linked to in my first comment was bigger in terms of total vehicles. I expanded that timeframe in another reply and linked to a Honda recall of 1.4m vehicles which is bigger in relation to annual vehicles sold.
- Rygian 5y ago
  Is your implication that Ford, Toyota and Honda, by being longer in business and having much more experience, should be needing less recalls?
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    This recall, as a percentage of the amount of vehicles that Tesla has ever sold, is significantly larger than the comparable percentages of other manufacturers' recalls.
    - wumpus 5y ago
      Looking forward to hearing your thoughts about every Rivian and Lucid recall in the next couple of years. Hint: new car companies have fewer models and larger recalls than companies with many models.
  - lillecarl 5y ago
    Well yes, and they have (per unit sold). They're still not valued to one trillion dollars.
serf 5y ago
just a reminder that product recalls (especially vehicles) are discussed all the time on HN [0], and Tesla isn't somehow special for being mentioned here. [0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=recall https://hn.algolia.com/?q=recall
- slg 5y ago
  None of the recalls I pointed to were discussed here. Here is one example of searching for another manufacturer.[1] Three articles including a pair of duplicates. The other article is 12 years old. They seemingly combined to receive 2 upvotes and 0 comments. Meanwhile this article already has over 50 upvotes in an hour with 25+ comments. We can't pretend that this community treats all of these issues the same regardless of manufacturer. [1] - https://hn.algolia.com/?q=recall+honda https://hn.algolia.com/?q=recall+honda
noah_buddy 5y ago
I disagree that those headlines are even nearly so newsworthy! This Tesla recall is only 20k less than all that they sold in 2020. Ford recalling 200k cars is only 5% of what they sold in that same year. This is a relatively large proportion of all Tesla's on the road.
- atwebb 5y ago
  That was my thinking, a major supplier / manufacturer recalling a year of (and 1/4 of all ever made) products is at least interesting. To OP's point though, it likely reached the front page so fast b/c it has Tesla in the name.
- slg 5y ago
  You can check this link[1] which I posted in another reply. There is a story there about Honda recalling 1.4m vehicles. That is right around a full year of sales in the US and exceeds annual sales for the last couple years[2]. That story got one upvote and zero comments when it was posted here last year. Once again, I am not trying to excuse Tesla for quality issues or say they make as good or a better quality car than any other manufacturer. I am simply pointing out that the name Tesla drives attention and clicks compared to their competitors and that is why you are seeing this story. [1] - https://hn.algolia.com/?q=recall+honda https://hn.algolia.com/?q=recall+honda [2] - https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/honda-us-sales-figures/ https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/honda-us-sales-figures/
  - wk_end 5y ago
    Not that it matters a lot - but we've subtlety moved from total worldwide sales (Tesla) to US sales (Honda). 1.5M is a much smaller fraction of global sales for Honda (~a third). It's true that the hype cycle around Tesla might unduly inflate the seeming significance of this. It's also true that this is unquestionably a very large, very significant recall.
    - slg 5y ago
      > we've subtlety moved from total worldwide sales (Tesla) to US sales (Honda). Fair enough. I will happily admit I am not an expert on global auto sales and was just Googling for information. But either way, I think the pattern is clear that car recalls generally don't garner much attention on HN unless they involve Tesla or some other interesting angle like the corruption and criminal behavior at Volkswagen.
standardUser 5y ago
One key difference is that for Tesla, 500k cars is a huge amount of the total cars it's sold in the last 5 years. More than a third. Has any automaker ever had a recall on such a huge proportion of their cars?
- vardump 5y ago
  Tesla has sold about 1.4M cars in just last two years. 500k last year and 910k (likely more) this year. Next year Tesla is going to sell probably at least 1.5M cars. Given they have two new factories, and Tesla Shanghai factory is expanding again, 2M wouldn't surprise me.
- wumpus 5y ago
  Only new automakers have a high % of production of a single model. I'm always surprised by how much hate new automakers get on a startup-oriented forum. BTW the Takada airbag recall was 100% of Teslas.
bestcoder69 5y ago
I don't get who you're calling out here. The upvoters? The press? Other car companies for not being as good at generating hype? Who messed up (other than Tesla)? If you're just raising awareness that HN finds Tesla articles interesting... that's fine I guess.
jeffbee 5y ago
If we have to hear about it every time Tesla is the best-selling brand for a single month in Estonia or Chile, but we never get to talk about all the other months and places some other brand is the top seller, it follows that we also have to talk about Tesla recalls, even though we never talk about Honda recalls.
tyrfing 5y ago
This is unnecessarily defensive. A quick search shows that other large recalls have been heavily upvoted on HN: Volkswagen, Hyundai, Fiat, Peloton, Amazon, and many others. Just a reminder that news about the 6th-largest company in the world, owned by the richest man in the world, isn't a personal attack on you.
- slg 5y ago
  Not all recalls have the same level of newsworthiness. Both the Volkswagen and Hyundai recalls were related to internal corruption and potential criminal activity making them more noteworthy. That is a failure in the regulatory system while Tesla's recall is the system working as intended. The Fiat recall was related to hacking so it will naturally get more interest on HN. I don't have data on this, but voluntary recalls seem to be much more common for cars than other retail products.
bumby 5y ago
What makes this more interesting to me is that is came about during a probe into the driver assist technology. This particular recall is of less interest than that probe. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-recalls-over-475000-electric-vehicles-2021-12-30/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...
Karupan 5y ago
I don't own a Tesla, nor do I know anyone who owns one. But the amount of noise I see on social media and the news makes it obvious that they have higher visibility across the board, and hence more scrutiny. I don't see anything wrong with that.
na85 5y ago
>Any other manufacturer and this would be a non-story especially on HN. Perhaps it's noteworthy due to Tesla's documented past behavior of playing fast and loose with safety, and quality assurance, coupled with Musk's arrogance in the media.
FullyFunctional 5y ago
Also, "recall" sounds like the cars have to physically move back to the factory. Reality: I took 10 sec to schedule a visit from a Mobile Technician who'll do the work in my driveway while I go on living my life. Big non-issue.
- alamortsubite 5y ago
  It may be a big non-issue for you, but having to deploy mobile technicians to a significant percentage of their customers' driveways sounds like a very real issue for Tesla.
  - FullyFunctional 5y ago
    For certain, but recalls are not unusual for any brand. As best I know Tesla is alone in having the option of an app-scheduled mobile-service which is massively more convenient for me and likely an order of magnitude cheaper for Tesla (compared to bringing in the car to a oversubscribed service center).
- gnicholas 5y ago
  From what I hear, Tesla is notorious for repair delays. Even if it's not inconvenient to have a tech service your vehicle, presumably doing this nearly half a million times will make the repair backlog even longer.
  - FullyFunctional 5y ago
    Sample size of 1: my service happens 6 days from now (Bay area). From past experience, getting a slot in the service center can be .. ahem .. difficult, but getting a service call has never been an issue. I bet it's easier to scale the mobile service than building new service centers.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - wumpus 5y ago
    What's your personal experience with Tesla mobile service?
curious_cat_163 5y ago
Ford trades at a Price to Earning ratio of 29. Fold also owns a 10% stake of Rivian. Tesla ratio is 351. It _does_ matter more when Tesla slips up. The expectations from this company are much higher. Your point would be valid if the expectations from all these companies were same.
mhh__ 5y ago
Just as you wouldn't see ford recalls you usually don't see them for other reasons too i.e. tesla the "not a car company" is special.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
gnicholas 5y ago
It's true that there are recalls all the time. The differences with Tesla are: • Tesla already has a service/repair backlog. This will make things worse for owners whose brand new cars leak when it rains, make odd noises, and have safety issues. • Other manufacturers have extensive dealer and third party repair networks. They can handle large recalls more easily/efficiently. • Other manufacturers have many more cars on the road, from selling for decades before Tesla existed. Have there been any other recalls that covered the same percent of any other manufacturer's fleet? If so, I assume those recalls were considered a very big deal. • Tesla is 'disrupting' the car manufacturing market and trying to prove that things can be done a different way. Critics have called out their QC failings. Each additional recall gives more credence to critics' claims.
- panick21_ 5y ago
  Tesla finances and number of EV produced have already proven everything that needed to be proven. Unless you want to argue this recall is gone have some massive impact on their finances its pretty much non issue. And arguing that would of course be nonsense.
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    >Tesla finances and number of EV produced have already proven everything that needed to be proven. It reads like you mean this in a positive way. I see it as the exact opposite. Tesla have made very few cars unless you compare it to brands like Lamborghini or other speciality cars. VW EVs already outsell Tesla even though they are just ramping up. Tesla's finances is also almost completely based on non-car sales. If Tesla only had income from car sales it would go bankrupt in a few months.
    - vardump 5y ago
      > VW EVs already outsell Tesla even though they are just ramping up. False. Tesla significantly outsells VW EVs. 2021 Q1-Q3, VW brand had sold 167800 EVs. Whole VW group 293100, including Skoda, etc. Tesla sold 627000 cars in the same time period. > Tesla's finances is also almost completely based on non-car sales. False. [0] Tesla had $2B GAAP operating income and 14.6% operating margin in Q3 2021. $1.6B of GAAP net income and $2.1B non-GAAP net income. Automotive gross margin was at 30.5% GAAP (28.8% without credits). Regulatory credits (which you were presumably referring to) were only $279M. > If Tesla only had income from car sales it would go bankrupt in a few months. False, it'd hardly make any difference. 0: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/20/tesla-tsla-earnings-q3-2021.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/20/tesla-tsla-earnings-q3-2021....

by slg 5y ago

lillecarl 5y ago

There's more to the story. Ford, Toyota and Honda makes significantly more cars and models than Tesla.

slg 5y ago
I am not trying to start a fight about the quality of Tesla's vehicles compared to other manufacturers. Maybe you are right and Teslas are recalled at a higher frequency. I don't know enough about it to have an opinion either way. I am simply pointing out that a solitary voluntary recall, which is what this article is about, is barely newsworthy and is only being posted/upvoted because it is Tesla.
- lillecarl 5y ago
  And it is upvoted through the roof because it is Tesla. The one car manufacturer valued as high as "all other" (very many) car manufacturers together. Tesla is different, why treat them like everyone else?
  - slg 5y ago
    >And it is upvoted through the roof because it is Tesla. That was my point so we agree.
    - lillecarl 5y ago
      Well yes, but you seem to think it's unfair treatment whereas I think It's perfectly reasonable to treat them differently if they are different(Which they are). So we disagree as well.
      - slg 5y ago
        I never said it was unfair. People are projecting a lot onto my comments here.
        lillecarl 5y ago
        Before your edit many misinterpreted this, probably because the links you mention are not equal/close to equal and therefore not comparable to discuss.
        slg 5y ago
        I was limiting my search to recent weeks to highlight the frequency of these recalls, but that means there weren't limitless examples to choose from. Despite that, the Honda recall I linked to in my first comment was bigger in terms of total vehicles. I expanded that timeframe in another reply and linked to a Honda recall of 1.4m vehicles which is bigger in relation to annual vehicles sold.
Rygian 5y ago
Is your implication that Ford, Toyota and Honda, by being longer in business and having much more experience, should be needing less recalls?
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  This recall, as a percentage of the amount of vehicles that Tesla has ever sold, is significantly larger than the comparable percentages of other manufacturers' recalls.
  - wumpus 5y ago
    Looking forward to hearing your thoughts about every Rivian and Lucid recall in the next couple of years. Hint: new car companies have fewer models and larger recalls than companies with many models.
- lillecarl 5y ago
  Well yes, and they have (per unit sold). They're still not valued to one trillion dollars.

serf 5y ago

just a reminder that product recalls (especially vehicles) are discussed all the time on HN [0], and Tesla isn't somehow special for being mentioned here. [0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=recall https://hn.algolia.com/?q=recall

slg 5y ago
None of the recalls I pointed to were discussed here. Here is one example of searching for another manufacturer.[1] Three articles including a pair of duplicates. The other article is 12 years old. They seemingly combined to receive 2 upvotes and 0 comments. Meanwhile this article already has over 50 upvotes in an hour with 25+ comments. We can't pretend that this community treats all of these issues the same regardless of manufacturer. [1] - https://hn.algolia.com/?q=recall+honda https://hn.algolia.com/?q=recall+honda

noah_buddy 5y ago

I disagree that those headlines are even nearly so newsworthy! This Tesla recall is only 20k less than all that they sold in 2020. Ford recalling 200k cars is only 5% of what they sold in that same year. This is a relatively large proportion of all Tesla's on the road.

atwebb 5y ago
That was my thinking, a major supplier / manufacturer recalling a year of (and 1/4 of all ever made) products is at least interesting. To OP's point though, it likely reached the front page so fast b/c it has Tesla in the name.
slg 5y ago
You can check this link[1] which I posted in another reply. There is a story there about Honda recalling 1.4m vehicles. That is right around a full year of sales in the US and exceeds annual sales for the last couple years[2]. That story got one upvote and zero comments when it was posted here last year. Once again, I am not trying to excuse Tesla for quality issues or say they make as good or a better quality car than any other manufacturer. I am simply pointing out that the name Tesla drives attention and clicks compared to their competitors and that is why you are seeing this story. [1] - https://hn.algolia.com/?q=recall+honda https://hn.algolia.com/?q=recall+honda [2] - https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/honda-us-sales-figures/ https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/honda-us-sales-figures/
- wk_end 5y ago
  Not that it matters a lot - but we've subtlety moved from total worldwide sales (Tesla) to US sales (Honda). 1.5M is a much smaller fraction of global sales for Honda (~a third). It's true that the hype cycle around Tesla might unduly inflate the seeming significance of this. It's also true that this is unquestionably a very large, very significant recall.
  - slg 5y ago
    > we've subtlety moved from total worldwide sales (Tesla) to US sales (Honda). Fair enough. I will happily admit I am not an expert on global auto sales and was just Googling for information. But either way, I think the pattern is clear that car recalls generally don't garner much attention on HN unless they involve Tesla or some other interesting angle like the corruption and criminal behavior at Volkswagen.

standardUser 5y ago

One key difference is that for Tesla, 500k cars is a huge amount of the total cars it's sold in the last 5 years. More than a third. Has any automaker ever had a recall on such a huge proportion of their cars?

vardump 5y ago
Tesla has sold about 1.4M cars in just last two years. 500k last year and 910k (likely more) this year. Next year Tesla is going to sell probably at least 1.5M cars. Given they have two new factories, and Tesla Shanghai factory is expanding again, 2M wouldn't surprise me.
wumpus 5y ago
Only new automakers have a high % of production of a single model. I'm always surprised by how much hate new automakers get on a startup-oriented forum. BTW the Takada airbag recall was 100% of Teslas.

bestcoder69 5y ago

I don't get who you're calling out here. The upvoters? The press? Other car companies for not being as good at generating hype? Who messed up (other than Tesla)? If you're just raising awareness that HN finds Tesla articles interesting... that's fine I guess.

jeffbee 5y ago

If we have to hear about it every time Tesla is the best-selling brand for a single month in Estonia or Chile, but we never get to talk about all the other months and places some other brand is the top seller, it follows that we also have to talk about Tesla recalls, even though we never talk about Honda recalls.

tyrfing 5y ago

This is unnecessarily defensive. A quick search shows that other large recalls have been heavily upvoted on HN: Volkswagen, Hyundai, Fiat, Peloton, Amazon, and many others. Just a reminder that news about the 6th-largest company in the world, owned by the richest man in the world, isn't a personal attack on you.

slg 5y ago
Not all recalls have the same level of newsworthiness. Both the Volkswagen and Hyundai recalls were related to internal corruption and potential criminal activity making them more noteworthy. That is a failure in the regulatory system while Tesla's recall is the system working as intended. The Fiat recall was related to hacking so it will naturally get more interest on HN. I don't have data on this, but voluntary recalls seem to be much more common for cars than other retail products.

bumby 5y ago

What makes this more interesting to me is that is came about during a probe into the driver assist technology. This particular recall is of less interest than that probe. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-recalls-over-475000-electric-vehicles-2021-12-30/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...

Karupan 5y ago

I don't own a Tesla, nor do I know anyone who owns one. But the amount of noise I see on social media and the news makes it obvious that they have higher visibility across the board, and hence more scrutiny. I don't see anything wrong with that.

na85 5y ago

>Any other manufacturer and this would be a non-story especially on HN. Perhaps it's noteworthy due to Tesla's documented past behavior of playing fast and loose with safety, and quality assurance, coupled with Musk's arrogance in the media.

FullyFunctional 5y ago

Also, "recall" sounds like the cars have to physically move back to the factory. Reality: I took 10 sec to schedule a visit from a Mobile Technician who'll do the work in my driveway while I go on living my life. Big non-issue.

alamortsubite 5y ago
It may be a big non-issue for you, but having to deploy mobile technicians to a significant percentage of their customers' driveways sounds like a very real issue for Tesla.
- FullyFunctional 5y ago
  For certain, but recalls are not unusual for any brand. As best I know Tesla is alone in having the option of an app-scheduled mobile-service which is massively more convenient for me and likely an order of magnitude cheaper for Tesla (compared to bringing in the car to a oversubscribed service center).
gnicholas 5y ago
From what I hear, Tesla is notorious for repair delays. Even if it's not inconvenient to have a tech service your vehicle, presumably doing this nearly half a million times will make the repair backlog even longer.
- FullyFunctional 5y ago
  Sample size of 1: my service happens 6 days from now (Bay area). From past experience, getting a slot in the service center can be .. ahem .. difficult, but getting a service call has never been an issue. I bet it's easier to scale the mobile service than building new service centers.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- wumpus 5y ago
  What's your personal experience with Tesla mobile service?

curious_cat_163 5y ago

Ford trades at a Price to Earning ratio of 29. Fold also owns a 10% stake of Rivian. Tesla ratio is 351. It _does_ matter more when Tesla slips up. The expectations from this company are much higher. Your point would be valid if the expectations from all these companies were same.

mhh__ 5y ago

Just as you wouldn't see ford recalls you usually don't see them for other reasons too i.e. tesla the "not a car company" is special.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago
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gnicholas 5y ago

It's true that there are recalls all the time. The differences with Tesla are: • Tesla already has a service/repair backlog. This will make things worse for owners whose brand new cars leak when it rains, make odd noises, and have safety issues. • Other manufacturers have extensive dealer and third party repair networks. They can handle large recalls more easily/efficiently. • Other manufacturers have many more cars on the road, from selling for decades before Tesla existed. Have there been any other recalls that covered the same percent of any other manufacturer's fleet? If so, I assume those recalls were considered a very big deal. • Tesla is 'disrupting' the car manufacturing market and trying to prove that things can be done a different way. Critics have called out their QC failings. Each additional recall gives more credence to critics' claims.

panick21_ 5y ago
Tesla finances and number of EV produced have already proven everything that needed to be proven. Unless you want to argue this recall is gone have some massive impact on their finances its pretty much non issue. And arguing that would of course be nonsense.
- Dah00n 5y ago
  >Tesla finances and number of EV produced have already proven everything that needed to be proven. It reads like you mean this in a positive way. I see it as the exact opposite. Tesla have made very few cars unless you compare it to brands like Lamborghini or other speciality cars. VW EVs already outsell Tesla even though they are just ramping up. Tesla's finances is also almost completely based on non-car sales. If Tesla only had income from car sales it would go bankrupt in a few months.
  - vardump 5y ago
    > VW EVs already outsell Tesla even though they are just ramping up. False. Tesla significantly outsells VW EVs. 2021 Q1-Q3, VW brand had sold 167800 EVs. Whole VW group 293100, including Skoda, etc. Tesla sold 627000 cars in the same time period. > Tesla's finances is also almost completely based on non-car sales. False. [0] Tesla had $2B GAAP operating income and 14.6% operating margin in Q3 2021. $1.6B of GAAP net income and $2.1B non-GAAP net income. Automotive gross margin was at 30.5% GAAP (28.8% without credits). Regulatory credits (which you were presumably referring to) were only $279M. > If Tesla only had income from car sales it would go bankrupt in a few months. False, it'd hardly make any difference. 0: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/20/tesla-tsla-earnings-q3-2021.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/20/tesla-tsla-earnings-q3-2021....