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This always comes up. A “recall” is not a description of the remediation, it is a description of the problem. A recall is a public dangerous defect notice. The

by Veserv 2y ago

This always comes up. A “recall” is not a description of the remediation, it is a description of the problem. A recall is a public dangerous defect notice. The dangerous product version can no longer be deployed, existing systems suffering from the dangerous defect are identified, and then the version with those dangerous defects is removed from the market with all due speed by either refunding, replacing, or remediating at the manufacturer’s expense. The defective version is thus no longer present, i.e “recalled”. The term has a precise meaning as I laid out. Unfortunately, it has been so thoroughly intentionally poisoned by bad actors in recent years that the term should be retired. We should use the descriptive term: “Public Dangerous Defect Notice” to avoid such bad faith misrepresentation going forward.

tareqak 2y ago
To your point, both things can be true. The CyberTruck can have recalls worse than 91% of all 2024 cars, but many of its recalls can be cheap to for Tesla to fix. I think that is where the two clusters of people that I see commenting here are converging / possibly arguing past each other. One popular form of headline that comes to my mind from business new channels of which I remember no specific instance basically goes like this: “Car manufacturer recalls X many cars costing over them Y dollars because of some fault”. X is usually in the tens of thousands or more and Y is usually in the millions of dollars (now maybe tens of millions of dollars).
TeMPOraL 2y ago
[flagged]
- egeozcan 2y ago
  On https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls#recalls-7746 https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls#recalls-7746 it says: > A recall is issued when a manufacturer or NHTSA determines that a vehicle, equipment, car seat, or tire creates an unreasonable safety risk or fails to meet minimum safety standards. Most decisions to conduct a recall and remedy a safety defect are made voluntarily by manufacturers prior to any involvement by NHTSA. > Manufacturers are required to fix the problem by repairing it, replacing it, offering a refund, or in rare cases repurchasing the vehicle. So the person you're replying to seems to be correct, or is there another source that shares your claim that "the focus is, and always has been, on the physically give your car back to manufacturer part"?
  - schiffern 2y ago
    There's a lot here about technical and legal definitions, but from the customer's perspective what they mostly care about is the inconvenience associated with a physical recall. Most people are accustomed to our phones and devices (auto-)updating, so software recalls just get mentally bundled in with that. The reporting seems dishonest because (in the mind of most readers) the headline exaggerates the inconvenience of Tesla ownership. Even though logically people shouldn't necessarily conclude that (because of the technical/legal definition of "recall" already discussed), that's still going to be the general public perception.
    - lapcat 2y ago
      > There's a lot here about technical and legal definitions, but from the customer's perspective what they mostly care about is the inconvenience associated with a physical recall. No, customers care about the safety of their vehicles. If there wasn't a safety issue, then customers could safely ignore the recall notice and experience no inconvenience.
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        > No, customers care about the safety of their vehicles. Yes. But safety is a spectrum, and is denominated in inconvenience against perceived expected loss - perceived, because people round the loss down to 0 when they feel like it won't happen to them. See: how many people don't fasten their seat belts, or hold a phone in their hand while driving, despite both being highly dangerous to life, limb and wallet, and against huge social and regulatory pressure. See also: how many people ignore or tape over error lights on the dashboard; how many people don't repair stuff until absolutely necessary. See also: how many people try to bribe their way through yearly inspections, and would happily skip them entirely if the law didn't force them. So it's like GP said: people mostly care about how much time and money they're going to waste on the newly discovered problem. A recall involving the car being physically taken to manufacturer is hugely disturbing, possibly very costly (it's not like most people drive for fun). A recall involving an OTA update? That's "just another auto-update ¯\_(ツ)_/¯". Most people won't even notice it happening. Putting the two types of "recall" in the same class is, from regular person's POV, deception through equivocation.
alkonaut 2y ago
> A recall is a public dangerous defect notice. Yes that's a much better term. In peoples minds "recall" means MY vehicle has to be transported somewhere to be fixed. For the individual customer, a recall can be a massive frustrating hassle, which an OTA isn't. That doesn't change the severity of the issue, but a model that has 9 physical recalls to fix some brake issue, and 1 OTA update is going to be seen as a disaster, while a model that has 0 physical recalls and 10 OTA updates will be seen as a pleasure to own. Recalls in consumers' minds are a frustration measurement more than a safety record. Most recalls are about very small/hypothetical risks, so the risk I want to avoid when I look at manufacturers recall history is the risk of having to fix my vehicle physically. Because that's a real/large risk, while the risk of it catching fire spontaneously could be catastrophic but is usually tiny.
- lapcat 2y ago
  > Recalls in consumers' minds are a frustration measurement more than a safety record. Most recalls are about very small/hypothetical risks, so the risk I want to avoid when I look at manufacturers recall history is the risk of having to fix my vehicle physically. Recalls are frustrating precisely because they're safety issues. Otherwise, customers could safely ignore recall notices and experience no frustration. There's no law that says a customer has to respond to a recall. That's entirely voluntary.
  - alkonaut 2y ago
    True, but tiny risk of catastrophic failure will be addressed by owners almost no matter how trivial. And it won't see as a relief by me that I managed to fix it before it spontaneously caught fire, I'll still see it as a frustrating failure by the manufacturer. Because I can both see it as a near-zero risk, and still do it with near 100% certainty. Especially if I don't know whether the window for fixing it easily/for free could close and it could affect the second hand value of the car.
    - lapcat 2y ago
      > And it won't see as a relief by me that I managed to fix it before it spontaneously caught fire, I'll still see it as a frustrating failure by the manufacturer. In this respect, there's no difference between OTA updates and dealership repairs.

by Veserv 2y ago

tareqak 2y ago

To your point, both things can be true. The CyberTruck can have recalls worse than 91% of all 2024 cars, but many of its recalls can be cheap to for Tesla to fix. I think that is where the two clusters of people that I see commenting here are converging / possibly arguing past each other. One popular form of headline that comes to my mind from business new channels of which I remember no specific instance basically goes like this: “Car manufacturer recalls X many cars costing over them Y dollars because of some fault”. X is usually in the tens of thousands or more and Y is usually in the millions of dollars (now maybe tens of millions of dollars).

TeMPOraL 2y ago

[flagged]

egeozcan 2y ago
On https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls#recalls-7746 https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls#recalls-7746 it says: > A recall is issued when a manufacturer or NHTSA determines that a vehicle, equipment, car seat, or tire creates an unreasonable safety risk or fails to meet minimum safety standards. Most decisions to conduct a recall and remedy a safety defect are made voluntarily by manufacturers prior to any involvement by NHTSA. > Manufacturers are required to fix the problem by repairing it, replacing it, offering a refund, or in rare cases repurchasing the vehicle. So the person you're replying to seems to be correct, or is there another source that shares your claim that "the focus is, and always has been, on the physically give your car back to manufacturer part"?
- schiffern 2y ago
  There's a lot here about technical and legal definitions, but from the customer's perspective what they mostly care about is the inconvenience associated with a physical recall. Most people are accustomed to our phones and devices (auto-)updating, so software recalls just get mentally bundled in with that. The reporting seems dishonest because (in the mind of most readers) the headline exaggerates the inconvenience of Tesla ownership. Even though logically people shouldn't necessarily conclude that (because of the technical/legal definition of "recall" already discussed), that's still going to be the general public perception.
  - lapcat 2y ago
    > There's a lot here about technical and legal definitions, but from the customer's perspective what they mostly care about is the inconvenience associated with a physical recall. No, customers care about the safety of their vehicles. If there wasn't a safety issue, then customers could safely ignore the recall notice and experience no inconvenience.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      > No, customers care about the safety of their vehicles. Yes. But safety is a spectrum, and is denominated in inconvenience against perceived expected loss - perceived, because people round the loss down to 0 when they feel like it won't happen to them. See: how many people don't fasten their seat belts, or hold a phone in their hand while driving, despite both being highly dangerous to life, limb and wallet, and against huge social and regulatory pressure. See also: how many people ignore or tape over error lights on the dashboard; how many people don't repair stuff until absolutely necessary. See also: how many people try to bribe their way through yearly inspections, and would happily skip them entirely if the law didn't force them. So it's like GP said: people mostly care about how much time and money they're going to waste on the newly discovered problem. A recall involving the car being physically taken to manufacturer is hugely disturbing, possibly very costly (it's not like most people drive for fun). A recall involving an OTA update? That's "just another auto-update ¯\_(ツ)_/¯". Most people won't even notice it happening. Putting the two types of "recall" in the same class is, from regular person's POV, deception through equivocation.

alkonaut 2y ago

> A recall is a public dangerous defect notice. Yes that's a much better term. In peoples minds "recall" means MY vehicle has to be transported somewhere to be fixed. For the individual customer, a recall can be a massive frustrating hassle, which an OTA isn't. That doesn't change the severity of the issue, but a model that has 9 physical recalls to fix some brake issue, and 1 OTA update is going to be seen as a disaster, while a model that has 0 physical recalls and 10 OTA updates will be seen as a pleasure to own. Recalls in consumers' minds are a frustration measurement more than a safety record. Most recalls are about very small/hypothetical risks, so the risk I want to avoid when I look at manufacturers recall history is the risk of having to fix my vehicle physically. Because that's a real/large risk, while the risk of it catching fire spontaneously could be catastrophic but is usually tiny.

lapcat 2y ago
> Recalls in consumers' minds are a frustration measurement more than a safety record. Most recalls are about very small/hypothetical risks, so the risk I want to avoid when I look at manufacturers recall history is the risk of having to fix my vehicle physically. Recalls are frustrating precisely because they're safety issues. Otherwise, customers could safely ignore recall notices and experience no frustration. There's no law that says a customer has to respond to a recall. That's entirely voluntary.
- alkonaut 2y ago
  True, but tiny risk of catastrophic failure will be addressed by owners almost no matter how trivial. And it won't see as a relief by me that I managed to fix it before it spontaneously caught fire, I'll still see it as a frustrating failure by the manufacturer. Because I can both see it as a near-zero risk, and still do it with near 100% certainty. Especially if I don't know whether the window for fixing it easily/for free could close and it could affect the second hand value of the car.
  - lapcat 2y ago
    > And it won't see as a relief by me that I managed to fix it before it spontaneously caught fire, I'll still see it as a frustrating failure by the manufacturer. In this respect, there's no difference between OTA updates and dealership repairs.