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I was curious how frequently automakers have recalls, because it seems to me that Elon linked companies tend to get treated 'differently' by the media. The answ

I was curious how frequently automakers have recalls, because it seems to me that Elon linked companies tend to get treated 'differently' by the media. The answer was extremely surprising. Here is a list. [1] Just in 2022: Ford - 67 Volkswagen - 46 Daimler Trucks North America - 42 Chrysler - 38 Mercedes Benz - 34 GM - 32 Kia - 24 Hyundai - 22 Tesla - 20 BMW - 20 Pretty wild, because these rarely if ever make the news. [1] - https://www.carpro.com/blog/automakers-with-the-most-recalls-in-2022 https://www.carpro.com/blog/automakers-with-the-most-recalls...

jandrese 3y ago
It should also be noted that most of those Tesla "recalls" are over the air software updates that happen automatically. This one is noteworthy because the owners have to physically bring their vehicle to the service center.
- athorax 3y ago
  That is objectively not true https://www.tesla.com/support/annual-and-recall-service https://www.tesla.com/support/annual-and-recall-service
  - jandrese 3y ago
    You are right. This makes it 9 of the 20 that were just software updates.
    - rootusrootus 3y ago
      Well that puts a damper on the oft-stated claim that Tesla makes superior software. Sounds like they are relying on their frequent OTA updates to allow them to half-ass the initial design and just fix it later.
      - jandrese 3y ago
        True, but that ends up comparing not so bad to traditional car makers that half-ass their software and then never update it.
ronnier 3y ago
Most of the Tesla recalls are just software updates that are done from home over the air
- albertopv 3y ago
  Source?
  - dymk 3y ago
    Anyone who owns a Tesla knows this
    - bingbingbing777 3y ago
      A minority of people own Tesla's.
    - croes 3y ago
      But is the difference that it's just a software update or that it's OTA?
  - vitaliyf 3y ago
    https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-recalls-262ec9a7 https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-recalls-262ec9a7 The article has a chart that sources NHTSA data.
- mynameisvlad 3y ago
  “Most” is pulling a lot of undeserved weight there. Some recalls have been software updates. There have been plenty (like rear camera harnesses failing, the media CPU overheating, rear seatbelts being incorrectly attached, faulty MMC modules, and the incident being talked about here) that have required hardware fixes.
  - yreg 3y ago
    >“Most” is pulling a lot of undeserved weight there. So were most OTA updates or not? That is either objectively true or objectively false, not "pulling a lot of undeserved weight".
danparsonson 3y ago
I don't think that single number by itself says very much though as it's not normalised, for example by the number of different product lines a manufacturer produces or the total number of vehicles manufactured.
- schiffern 3y ago
  Why would you normalize by number of vehicles sold? If a large-volume vehicle gets recalled, it should be a bigger news story than a niche car.
  - _aavaa_ 3y ago
    It sounds like they're talking about normalizing by number of models (SKUs) not number of units. But in the case of Tesla, I would still want to know normalized since those niche cars are being trumpeted as mroe revolutionary and better than everyone else.
    - schiffern 3y ago
      Actually their post suggested both normalizations (notice the word "or"), however both are flawed. "Being trumpeted as [more] revolutionary" still has nothing to do with number of models and/or units. If you only give extra attention to certain brands because of their marketing, just say so. There's no need to connect it to unrelated factors, and there's no need to introduce 'normalizations' that don't normalize for anything.
  - danparsonson 3y ago
    Maybe you wouldn't - my thought was that (to exaggerate) if company A produces 10 vehicles and issues 5 recalls, whereas company B produces 1,000,000 vehicles and issues 10 recalls, then company B isn't doing twice as badly as company A despite issuing twice as many recalls, because they've manufactured 100,000 times as many vehicles, and we probably need to factor that in somehow. Likewise the number of vehicles affected by each recall. As the other commenter said, I also think number of SKUs is important as each one represents a different design and BOM.
abadpoli 3y ago
Of course Elon gets treated differently. No other car company CEO is on Twitter drawing attention to himself like Elon. Tesla itself is also the darling car company of the decade, with the highest market cap. And the Cybertruck, by design, is basically a celebrity on wheels on every road/parking lot it traverses. I’d be blown away if a full recall of the cybertruck wasn’t top headline news.
- llamaimperative 3y ago
  This is one of those things that makes no sense about the Elon/Trump fanbase(s): they engage in absolutely incessant, flamboyant exuberance at every word out of their mouth to the degree it is nearly impossible to escape it, short of unplugging the internet and TV. Then they act shocked when negative news is also amplified. Like yeah, there are both rewards and hazards to placing yourself in the spotlight 24/7/365. As there should be.
- fransje26 3y ago
  No other car company is as overvalued on the stock market. And an accelerator pedal stuck in full acceleration state, on a vehicle that can go from 0-100 in 3 seconds, allegedly because of an unapproved, amateuristic change on the production line, is an excellent case-in-point of how detached from reality that valuation is. Mistakes happen, but when such a life-threatening mistake happens, yet again, because of corner cutting and because the basics of quality control of car production are not mastered, it deserves all the bad press it gets.
- bobmcnamara 3y ago
  Why'd he even put a gas pedal in there? Isn't self driving a solved problem?
AlexandrB 3y ago
They rarely make the tech news. There's plenty reporting on recalls in traditional media[1][2][3][4][etc]. I think a lot of Tesla fans have a persecution complex when it comes to reporting on Tesla. [1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-toyota-canada-recalls-28000-cars-over-transmission-flaw-that-raises/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-toyota-cana... [2] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/international-business/us-business/article-ford-recalling-more-than-450000-vehicles-in-us-over-loss-of-drive/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/international-busin... [3] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-toyota-canada-repeats-recall-warning-for-7300-cars-as-part-of-decade/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-toyota-cana... [4] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ford-recalls-93000-explorer-suvs-in-canada-due-to-potential-hazard/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ford-recalls-...
- ripjaygn 3y ago
  You're saying tech news and the articles that make HN's front page make a lot of tech people wrongly assume that Tesla is way worse with recalls than other car companies? Like we are seeing all over the comments here. Looks like "a lot of Tesla fans" are right then. Now add the fact that headlines and HN post titles about Tesla software recalls omitting that it's a software update and just stating that millions of Tesla cars are being recalled. A neutral observer would agree but not Tesla haters.
  - mynameisvlad 3y ago
    For clarity, the specific recall talked about in this article is not a software update. You can’t software update a stuck accelerator pedal.
  - croes 3y ago
    How many recalls of the other manufacturers are software updates just without the possibility, of OTA? How many different models do the other manufacturers have, how many has Tesla? And don't forget that Musk acts like Tesla is special and doesn't have the same problems as the old lame boring companies.
phatfish 3y ago
The amount of attention "the media" gives a company is correlated to the number of shit posts per day the CEO makes on Twitter.
athorax 3y ago
These numbers are pretty meaningless without more context, Ford manufactures ~3x more vehicles per year than Tesla
- neogodless 3y ago
  Number of models would also be relevant.
  - schiffern 3y ago
    "Models" is a marketing distinction, which is subject to fudging. For instance Ford lumps their F-150 / F-250 / F-350 models together, calling them all "F Series." Many other manufacturers would have classified them as separate models sharing a platform, but that decision shouldn't influence the recall performance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law
- mkipper 3y ago
  Also not all recalls are created equal. I have a VW that was recalled a few years ago for this: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2019/RIONL-19V615-0655.pdf https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2019/RIONL-19V615-0655.pdf > If the build-up happens, it may be possible to remove the key from the ignition switch without the shift lever being in the “P” park position because the system is unable to recognize that the vehicle is not in “P” park That's obviously not a good thing and I'm glad it was caught, but it's not quite as dangerous to the public as a 7000lb truck's accelerator getting stuck or a car catching on fire when it gets rear-ended. That's not to say those other automakers haven't had recent recalls just as bad as the Cybertruck's -- I have no idea.
  - kube-system 3y ago
    I had a vehicle recalled because it was missing a single sentence in the owners manual. It was resolved my mailing me a sticker with the sentence on it, and instructions on where it should be applied in the manual.
7e 3y ago
Um, all of these manufacturers make more varieties of models and have sold, cumulatively, a lot more cars than Tesla. This means more opportunity for recall. You need to normalize by total sales over the past ten years. Tesla also has a monopoly on the service of their cars, so they can hide recalls. Most Tesla recalls only started to occur during the Biden administration, as regulatory bodies became less impotent.
aredox 3y ago
A company with a good QA (that doesn't stop at the vendor's gate) and putting safety above all will have more recalls. This is the wrong metric to compare.
JangoSteve 3y ago
First, I agree it's important to put Tesla recalls in context with the greater automotive industry, so I think what you posted is great info. The only thing I'd disagree with is that the numbers compared to Tesla, and relative media coverage, is surprising. It seems expected to me. Tesla bills itself not as an automaker, but a tech company. So, it makes sense they'd have a larger media footprint, which covers not just the automotive industry, but the tech industry media as well. This isn't unfair, considering they get the benefit of a tech-based market cap to go with it [1]. They also put themselves in headlines more often than other car companies with outlandish claims such as Musk saying, "At this point, I think I know more about manufacturing than anyone currently alive on earth." [2] When Musk and the company put themselves in headlines so often, it makes sense that the media would cover them more. This is likely a direct result of their advertising strategy, to create buzz [3], so I think media coverage of failures is a direct result. You could argue that's Musk, not the company, but they made the strategic decision that Musk is their PR function when they became the only car company to dissolve their PR department in 2020 [4]. One last thing I noticed was that the source of the recall data comes from the NHTSA [5], and they don't seem to distinguish recalls between different brands owned by the same company (for example, Ford's recalls seem like they would include both Ford and Lincoln, GM includes Chevrolet, GMC, etc.) Tesla's 20 recalls in 2022 cover I believe the four models they made in 2022, while Ford's 67 recalls are across the 39 models under the Ford brand and five models under Lincoln (I counted these by looking at the drop-down selectors on KBB's value estimator [6]). In short, Tesla exploits the hype machine; is it surprising that their recalls are hyped as well? [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-market-cap-eclipses-that-top-5-rival-carmakers-combined-2021-10-26/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-... [2] https://www.thestreet.com/markets/elon-musk-ted-talk https://www.thestreet.com/markets/elon-musk-ted-talk [3] https://fourweekmba.com/tesla-marketing-strategy/ https://fourweekmba.com/tesla-marketing-strategy/ [4] https://electrek.co/2020/10/06/tesla-dissolves-pr-department/ https://electrek.co/2020/10/06/tesla-dissolves-pr-department... [5] https://datahub.transportation.gov/Automobiles/NHTSA-Recalls-by-Manufacturer/mu99-t4jn https://datahub.transportation.gov/Automobiles/NHTSA-Recalls... [6] https://www.kbb.com/car-prices/ https://www.kbb.com/car-prices/
tibbydudeza 3y ago
The Ford one was the worst - we had cases of people cars burning out and one person died. It was due to the Kuga 1.4 Ecoboost 4 cylinder - there were a design defect that caused cracks that caused fuel to leak onto a hot cylinder head and then your car broke into flames. Thanks to social media pressure think Ford bought back all models or offered generous trade in values - the resale value of the 1.4 Ecoboost tanked in our markets. Ford discontinued the 1.4 Ecoboost completely.
- cameronh90 3y ago
  In the UK, lots of people are finding their 1.0 Ecoboost engines are catastrophically failing at 50,000 miles or less (hence the nickname Ecoboom). Ford have been useless. This has been going on for years now, and they have finally said they'll help, but only if the repair was done at the dealer, you have a FSH and the car is less than 7 years old. Outside of that you're SOL. They've refused to recall and fix the underlying issue. Obviously this tanks their resale value but Ford do not care.
bdcravens 3y ago
Probably because these other manufacturers have more than 4-5 models.
seanhunter 3y ago
I am not knowledgeable about cars so please correct me if I'm mistaken but surely that number isn't useful unless we also have the number of models and vintages are in service? I would think Ford have way more models in play than Tesla for example, and additionally brands with a long history would have multiple years of models. I mean BMW and Ford have been building cars since before WWI and have a very wide range so there are probably at least 10 or 20 years of models that might conceivably have a recall. It's not fair to compare them directly I would think.
Jtsummers 3y ago
A major reason they don't make the news is that many aren't that critical. The most serious recall I had was for an electric harness that could catch fire (or cause a fire?), one of the least serious was a light (not a headlight or taillight, a light in the door that illuminated the ground and lower part of the vehicle when you opened it) would just stop working. The former may have made the news, I don't know, the latter had no reason to. I've even had a couple (specifics forgotten) that were entirely aesthetic (interior, not exterior like issues with paint peeling, that was on a car from the 90s).
- iknowstuff 3y ago
  Right, but do you feel tesla changing icon sizes was critical?
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
    Information impacting safety features is critical. Either the font was complaint with the specs or it was not.
    - iknowstuff 3y ago
      Haha yes and the world is black and white
- PurelyApplied 3y ago
  > A major reason they don't make the news is that many aren't that critical. My favorite recall was the letter I got last year for 23V048000. The instructions for how to engage the defroster in my car manual were suboptimal. You actually _don't_ want it to be on full-blast. Please report to your nearest Nissan dealer to get a piece of paper to put in your car manual.
- SkyPuncher 3y ago
  My Ford truck currently has a recall with an unknown fix. Axle bolts can sheer off, leaving only the rotors and caliper mount to keep the wheels on the car. But, you're right, most of these recalls are not "instant death machine you can't stop". While a fire can be dangerous, you will have time to react to that one.
wcunning 3y ago
I work in automotive and have had to handle the procedures after a recall was decided against code I owned (though had not written). The important distinction here is in how many vehicles are affected by the recall and the severity of it. Also, potentially in the party at fault (Takata vs every single OEM, for example). The thing to note here is that Tesla had to recall every single Tesla with FSD or Autopilot because NHTSA demanded it, over Tesla's express wishes. That is much worse than pretty much any other recall. The other component to this is that many of those other recalls are probably software/calibration recalls, with no parts touched, and Tesla has been doing OTA updates for years longer than the other OEMs. In some ways that's good, since they can fix things without the need to issue a full recall and get the fix out to customers much faster. In some ways that's really really really bad because they push fixes to a range of hardware with limited customer ability to opt out, and I have zero reason to believe that they're managing the complexity/testing problem on that orders of magnitude better than the rest of the OEMs, since I sat through a lot of meetings trying to come up with a way to really thoroughly handle it to no avail. I distrust that kind of operation immensely and it's probably the primary reason I won't own a Tesla and have little interest in anything being produced today. Maybe a Mazda, maybe. That said, I spent 5 years at Ford and I can't say I'm at all surprised that they lead this list...
okdood64 3y ago
Doesn't mean much without a breakdown of volume & model year.
- daveguy 3y ago
  And you also need to see percent of production. Of course Ford is going to have more trucks recalled than Tesla. Tesla has only put a few thousand on the road (trucks ie cybertruck, not cars).
mvdtnz 3y ago
Here we go. The inevitable post in every single thread about a Tesla recall. We get it, other manufacturers have recalls too. We get it, other manufacturers' recalls don't get as much news coverage or HN discussion. Please. No one cares.

jandrese 3y ago

It should also be noted that most of those Tesla "recalls" are over the air software updates that happen automatically. This one is noteworthy because the owners have to physically bring their vehicle to the service center.

athorax 3y ago
That is objectively not true https://www.tesla.com/support/annual-and-recall-service https://www.tesla.com/support/annual-and-recall-service
- jandrese 3y ago
  You are right. This makes it 9 of the 20 that were just software updates.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    Well that puts a damper on the oft-stated claim that Tesla makes superior software. Sounds like they are relying on their frequent OTA updates to allow them to half-ass the initial design and just fix it later.
    - jandrese 3y ago
      True, but that ends up comparing not so bad to traditional car makers that half-ass their software and then never update it.

ronnier 3y ago

Most of the Tesla recalls are just software updates that are done from home over the air

albertopv 3y ago
Source?
- dymk 3y ago
  Anyone who owns a Tesla knows this
  - bingbingbing777 3y ago
    A minority of people own Tesla's.
  - croes 3y ago
    But is the difference that it's just a software update or that it's OTA?
- vitaliyf 3y ago
  https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-recalls-262ec9a7 https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-recalls-262ec9a7 The article has a chart that sources NHTSA data.
mynameisvlad 3y ago
“Most” is pulling a lot of undeserved weight there. Some recalls have been software updates. There have been plenty (like rear camera harnesses failing, the media CPU overheating, rear seatbelts being incorrectly attached, faulty MMC modules, and the incident being talked about here) that have required hardware fixes.
- yreg 3y ago
  >“Most” is pulling a lot of undeserved weight there. So were most OTA updates or not? That is either objectively true or objectively false, not "pulling a lot of undeserved weight".

danparsonson 3y ago

I don't think that single number by itself says very much though as it's not normalised, for example by the number of different product lines a manufacturer produces or the total number of vehicles manufactured.

schiffern 3y ago
Why would you normalize by number of vehicles sold? If a large-volume vehicle gets recalled, it should be a bigger news story than a niche car.
- _aavaa_ 3y ago
  It sounds like they're talking about normalizing by number of models (SKUs) not number of units. But in the case of Tesla, I would still want to know normalized since those niche cars are being trumpeted as mroe revolutionary and better than everyone else.
  - schiffern 3y ago
    Actually their post suggested both normalizations (notice the word "or"), however both are flawed. "Being trumpeted as [more] revolutionary" still has nothing to do with number of models and/or units. If you only give extra attention to certain brands because of their marketing, just say so. There's no need to connect it to unrelated factors, and there's no need to introduce 'normalizations' that don't normalize for anything.
- danparsonson 3y ago
  Maybe you wouldn't - my thought was that (to exaggerate) if company A produces 10 vehicles and issues 5 recalls, whereas company B produces 1,000,000 vehicles and issues 10 recalls, then company B isn't doing twice as badly as company A despite issuing twice as many recalls, because they've manufactured 100,000 times as many vehicles, and we probably need to factor that in somehow. Likewise the number of vehicles affected by each recall. As the other commenter said, I also think number of SKUs is important as each one represents a different design and BOM.

abadpoli 3y ago

Of course Elon gets treated differently. No other car company CEO is on Twitter drawing attention to himself like Elon. Tesla itself is also the darling car company of the decade, with the highest market cap. And the Cybertruck, by design, is basically a celebrity on wheels on every road/parking lot it traverses. I’d be blown away if a full recall of the cybertruck wasn’t top headline news.

llamaimperative 3y ago
This is one of those things that makes no sense about the Elon/Trump fanbase(s): they engage in absolutely incessant, flamboyant exuberance at every word out of their mouth to the degree it is nearly impossible to escape it, short of unplugging the internet and TV. Then they act shocked when negative news is also amplified. Like yeah, there are both rewards and hazards to placing yourself in the spotlight 24/7/365. As there should be.
fransje26 3y ago
No other car company is as overvalued on the stock market. And an accelerator pedal stuck in full acceleration state, on a vehicle that can go from 0-100 in 3 seconds, allegedly because of an unapproved, amateuristic change on the production line, is an excellent case-in-point of how detached from reality that valuation is. Mistakes happen, but when such a life-threatening mistake happens, yet again, because of corner cutting and because the basics of quality control of car production are not mastered, it deserves all the bad press it gets.
bobmcnamara 3y ago
Why'd he even put a gas pedal in there? Isn't self driving a solved problem?

AlexandrB 3y ago

They rarely make the tech news. There's plenty reporting on recalls in traditional media[1][2][3][4][etc]. I think a lot of Tesla fans have a persecution complex when it comes to reporting on Tesla. [1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-toyota-canada-recalls-28000-cars-over-transmission-flaw-that-raises/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-toyota-cana... [2] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/international-business/us-business/article-ford-recalling-more-than-450000-vehicles-in-us-over-loss-of-drive/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/international-busin... [3] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-toyota-canada-repeats-recall-warning-for-7300-cars-as-part-of-decade/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-toyota-cana... [4] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ford-recalls-93000-explorer-suvs-in-canada-due-to-potential-hazard/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ford-recalls-...

ripjaygn 3y ago
You're saying tech news and the articles that make HN's front page make a lot of tech people wrongly assume that Tesla is way worse with recalls than other car companies? Like we are seeing all over the comments here. Looks like "a lot of Tesla fans" are right then. Now add the fact that headlines and HN post titles about Tesla software recalls omitting that it's a software update and just stating that millions of Tesla cars are being recalled. A neutral observer would agree but not Tesla haters.
- mynameisvlad 3y ago
  For clarity, the specific recall talked about in this article is not a software update. You can’t software update a stuck accelerator pedal.
- croes 3y ago
  How many recalls of the other manufacturers are software updates just without the possibility, of OTA? How many different models do the other manufacturers have, how many has Tesla? And don't forget that Musk acts like Tesla is special and doesn't have the same problems as the old lame boring companies.

phatfish 3y ago

The amount of attention "the media" gives a company is correlated to the number of shit posts per day the CEO makes on Twitter.

athorax 3y ago

These numbers are pretty meaningless without more context, Ford manufactures ~3x more vehicles per year than Tesla

neogodless 3y ago
Number of models would also be relevant.
- schiffern 3y ago
  "Models" is a marketing distinction, which is subject to fudging. For instance Ford lumps their F-150 / F-250 / F-350 models together, calling them all "F Series." Many other manufacturers would have classified them as separate models sharing a platform, but that decision shouldn't influence the recall performance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law
mkipper 3y ago
Also not all recalls are created equal. I have a VW that was recalled a few years ago for this: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2019/RIONL-19V615-0655.pdf https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2019/RIONL-19V615-0655.pdf > If the build-up happens, it may be possible to remove the key from the ignition switch without the shift lever being in the “P” park position because the system is unable to recognize that the vehicle is not in “P” park That's obviously not a good thing and I'm glad it was caught, but it's not quite as dangerous to the public as a 7000lb truck's accelerator getting stuck or a car catching on fire when it gets rear-ended. That's not to say those other automakers haven't had recent recalls just as bad as the Cybertruck's -- I have no idea.
- kube-system 3y ago
  I had a vehicle recalled because it was missing a single sentence in the owners manual. It was resolved my mailing me a sticker with the sentence on it, and instructions on where it should be applied in the manual.

7e 3y ago

Um, all of these manufacturers make more varieties of models and have sold, cumulatively, a lot more cars than Tesla. This means more opportunity for recall. You need to normalize by total sales over the past ten years. Tesla also has a monopoly on the service of their cars, so they can hide recalls. Most Tesla recalls only started to occur during the Biden administration, as regulatory bodies became less impotent.

aredox 3y ago

A company with a good QA (that doesn't stop at the vendor's gate) and putting safety above all will have more recalls. This is the wrong metric to compare.

JangoSteve 3y ago

First, I agree it's important to put Tesla recalls in context with the greater automotive industry, so I think what you posted is great info. The only thing I'd disagree with is that the numbers compared to Tesla, and relative media coverage, is surprising. It seems expected to me. Tesla bills itself not as an automaker, but a tech company. So, it makes sense they'd have a larger media footprint, which covers not just the automotive industry, but the tech industry media as well. This isn't unfair, considering they get the benefit of a tech-based market cap to go with it [1]. They also put themselves in headlines more often than other car companies with outlandish claims such as Musk saying, "At this point, I think I know more about manufacturing than anyone currently alive on earth." [2] When Musk and the company put themselves in headlines so often, it makes sense that the media would cover them more. This is likely a direct result of their advertising strategy, to create buzz [3], so I think media coverage of failures is a direct result. You could argue that's Musk, not the company, but they made the strategic decision that Musk is their PR function when they became the only car company to dissolve their PR department in 2020 [4]. One last thing I noticed was that the source of the recall data comes from the NHTSA [5], and they don't seem to distinguish recalls between different brands owned by the same company (for example, Ford's recalls seem like they would include both Ford and Lincoln, GM includes Chevrolet, GMC, etc.) Tesla's 20 recalls in 2022 cover I believe the four models they made in 2022, while Ford's 67 recalls are across the 39 models under the Ford brand and five models under Lincoln (I counted these by looking at the drop-down selectors on KBB's value estimator [6]). In short, Tesla exploits the hype machine; is it surprising that their recalls are hyped as well? [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-market-cap-eclipses-that-top-5-rival-carmakers-combined-2021-10-26/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-... [2] https://www.thestreet.com/markets/elon-musk-ted-talk https://www.thestreet.com/markets/elon-musk-ted-talk [3] https://fourweekmba.com/tesla-marketing-strategy/ https://fourweekmba.com/tesla-marketing-strategy/ [4] https://electrek.co/2020/10/06/tesla-dissolves-pr-department/ https://electrek.co/2020/10/06/tesla-dissolves-pr-department... [5] https://datahub.transportation.gov/Automobiles/NHTSA-Recalls-by-Manufacturer/mu99-t4jn https://datahub.transportation.gov/Automobiles/NHTSA-Recalls... [6] https://www.kbb.com/car-prices/ https://www.kbb.com/car-prices/

tibbydudeza 3y ago

The Ford one was the worst - we had cases of people cars burning out and one person died. It was due to the Kuga 1.4 Ecoboost 4 cylinder - there were a design defect that caused cracks that caused fuel to leak onto a hot cylinder head and then your car broke into flames. Thanks to social media pressure think Ford bought back all models or offered generous trade in values - the resale value of the 1.4 Ecoboost tanked in our markets. Ford discontinued the 1.4 Ecoboost completely.

cameronh90 3y ago
In the UK, lots of people are finding their 1.0 Ecoboost engines are catastrophically failing at 50,000 miles or less (hence the nickname Ecoboom). Ford have been useless. This has been going on for years now, and they have finally said they'll help, but only if the repair was done at the dealer, you have a FSH and the car is less than 7 years old. Outside of that you're SOL. They've refused to recall and fix the underlying issue. Obviously this tanks their resale value but Ford do not care.

bdcravens 3y ago

Probably because these other manufacturers have more than 4-5 models.

seanhunter 3y ago

I am not knowledgeable about cars so please correct me if I'm mistaken but surely that number isn't useful unless we also have the number of models and vintages are in service? I would think Ford have way more models in play than Tesla for example, and additionally brands with a long history would have multiple years of models. I mean BMW and Ford have been building cars since before WWI and have a very wide range so there are probably at least 10 or 20 years of models that might conceivably have a recall. It's not fair to compare them directly I would think.

Jtsummers 3y ago

A major reason they don't make the news is that many aren't that critical. The most serious recall I had was for an electric harness that could catch fire (or cause a fire?), one of the least serious was a light (not a headlight or taillight, a light in the door that illuminated the ground and lower part of the vehicle when you opened it) would just stop working. The former may have made the news, I don't know, the latter had no reason to. I've even had a couple (specifics forgotten) that were entirely aesthetic (interior, not exterior like issues with paint peeling, that was on a car from the 90s).

iknowstuff 3y ago
Right, but do you feel tesla changing icon sizes was critical?
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
  Information impacting safety features is critical. Either the font was complaint with the specs or it was not.
  - iknowstuff 3y ago
    Haha yes and the world is black and white
PurelyApplied 3y ago
> A major reason they don't make the news is that many aren't that critical. My favorite recall was the letter I got last year for 23V048000. The instructions for how to engage the defroster in my car manual were suboptimal. You actually _don't_ want it to be on full-blast. Please report to your nearest Nissan dealer to get a piece of paper to put in your car manual.
SkyPuncher 3y ago
My Ford truck currently has a recall with an unknown fix. Axle bolts can sheer off, leaving only the rotors and caliper mount to keep the wheels on the car. But, you're right, most of these recalls are not "instant death machine you can't stop". While a fire can be dangerous, you will have time to react to that one.

wcunning 3y ago

I work in automotive and have had to handle the procedures after a recall was decided against code I owned (though had not written). The important distinction here is in how many vehicles are affected by the recall and the severity of it. Also, potentially in the party at fault (Takata vs every single OEM, for example). The thing to note here is that Tesla had to recall every single Tesla with FSD or Autopilot because NHTSA demanded it, over Tesla's express wishes. That is much worse than pretty much any other recall. The other component to this is that many of those other recalls are probably software/calibration recalls, with no parts touched, and Tesla has been doing OTA updates for years longer than the other OEMs. In some ways that's good, since they can fix things without the need to issue a full recall and get the fix out to customers much faster. In some ways that's really really really bad because they push fixes to a range of hardware with limited customer ability to opt out, and I have zero reason to believe that they're managing the complexity/testing problem on that orders of magnitude better than the rest of the OEMs, since I sat through a lot of meetings trying to come up with a way to really thoroughly handle it to no avail. I distrust that kind of operation immensely and it's probably the primary reason I won't own a Tesla and have little interest in anything being produced today. Maybe a Mazda, maybe. That said, I spent 5 years at Ford and I can't say I'm at all surprised that they lead this list...

okdood64 3y ago

Doesn't mean much without a breakdown of volume & model year.

daveguy 3y ago
And you also need to see percent of production. Of course Ford is going to have more trucks recalled than Tesla. Tesla has only put a few thousand on the road (trucks ie cybertruck, not cars).

mvdtnz 3y ago

Here we go. The inevitable post in every single thread about a Tesla recall. We get it, other manufacturers have recalls too. We get it, other manufacturers' recalls don't get as much news coverage or HN discussion. Please. No one cares.