Tesla fans have taken issue with the word “recall” in the past when the company has proven adept at fixing its problems through over-the-air software updates. But they likely will have to admit that, in this case, the terminology applies.
Even if Tesla sucks super hard, I agree with these complaints. I immediately checked to see if this was a “real” recall or a software one. Since they all need some physical work on them it definitely applies, but I really wish they used a different term for software update “recalls”. It’s confusing word choice.
What’s confusing about it? A recall in the automotive world has a very specific definition, and it covers not only software related issues but hardware related ones as well.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is a part of the US Department of Transportation, and they publish a 20 page pamphlet that describes what a recall is. Here are the relevant parts from that brochure:
The United States Code for Motor Vehicle Safety (Title 49, Chapter 301) defines motor vehicle safety as “the performance of a motor vehicle or motor vehicle equipment in a way that protects the public against unreasonable risk of accidents occurring because of the design, construction, or performance of a motor vehicle, and against unreasonable risk of death or injury in an accident, and includes nonoperational safety of a motor vehicle.” A defect includes “any defect in performance, construction, a component, or material of a motor vehicle or motor vehicle equipment.” Generally, a safety defect is defined as a problem that exists in a motor vehicle or item of motor vehicle equipment that:
-
poses a risk to motor vehicle safety, and
-
may exist in a group of vehicles of the same design or manufacture, or items of equipment of the same type and manufacture.
Furthermore:
The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act gives NHTSA the authority to issue vehicle safety standards and to require manufacturers to recall vehicles that have safety-related defects or do not meet Federal safety standards.
In other words, federal law gives NHTSA the authority to issue recalls for any defect that is considered a safety defect. There is no qualifier for it having to be mechanical in nature.
I’ve had software-related recalls issued for both a Toyota and a Honda that I used to own. The Toyota one resulted in them sending me a USB stick in the mail and telling me how to install it in the car (basically plug it into the entertainment system and wait). The Honda one required a trip to a dealer to update the software in the ECU to prevent the cars battery from dying due to the alternator being disabled improperly. Just because these were software related in no way means they weren’t recalls. They were both mandated by NHSTA, both resulted in official recall notices, etc.
Edit: Just for fun you might want to go to https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls and do a search there. If you enter “Tesla” in the field for “VIN or Year Make Model” you can browse all their recalls. The very first one on this page is titled “Incorrect Font Size on Warning Lights”. That’s most definitely a software recall. It’s assigned NHSTA recall #24V051000, and they list the affected components as “ELECTRICAL SYSTEM”. If you read further it also shows the remedy was an over-the-air software update.
I love seeing comments like this on Lemmy. Reminds me of early reddit. Super informative.
Just because the government defined it that way 60 years ago when software updates weren’t even a thing doesn’t mean it makes sense to call a user-applicable fix a recall. It’s literally in the name. Is it being re-called back to the manufacturer or not
It’s a legal term of art. Even over the air updates are literally recalls. It doesn’t need a new term.
Yes, and as I said it is inaccurate. Legalese can be updated to better match the meaning of the word. Why is that such an unacceptable concept?
Edit: I’m really worked up about this. Seriously, why is changing the term that unimaginable to you people?
It’s seems like you’re saying “we should change the legal term of art ‘payment intangible’ because it’s something that is general intangible under which the account debtor’s principal obligation is a monetary obligation.”
But that’s already what “payment intangible” means.
-
Software updates should absolutely be recalls. Ship a complete vehicle or don’t. I absolutely do not want cars to turn in what games are today. I do not want hotfixes on my car because they didn’t test. Fuck an OTA update too, I don’t want that either, if they need an update it’s a recall and the cars have to go back to the shop. I want it to hurt and appropriately damage the company’s reputation.
In my opinion it points to a more dangerous thing, “continuous delivery” software mindset seeping into safety critical systems.
It’s fine, good even, that web developers can push updates to “prod” in minutes. But imagine if some dork could push largely untested control system updates to your car’s ECU… it’s one thing for a website site to get a couple errors, but it’s a very bad thing if it makes your steering wheel stop working.
Unfinished products make more money, and it’s high time a consumer protection law clamped down on this.
Oh yeah don’t stop.
Our cars are computers and we are beta testers. They spy on you, need updates and features are behind paywalls. Heated seats anyone? that’ll be $9.99 a month… That’s under 10 bucks!
I dont disagree with anything you said, I just think there should be a different, but equally severe term for clarity. It’s not hurting Tesla so much as devaluing the word “recall”. Make it hurt, Tesla is reckless with the way they ship unfinished products, but as I said before, I wasn’t even sure what “recall” meant in this sense.
I’m saying upgrade what it’s considered to recall. No OTA hot fix, car goes back to the shop. A proper recall just like any other recall. A software issue is just as dangerous as a hardware issue for something like an accelerator pedal. To be clear, this isn’t Tesla hate, this is modern “sell unfinished products” hate. I’d say the same thing for any other manufacturer.
If the blinker pattern needs to be updated, that’s fine for OTA in my opinion, and shouldn’t be a recall. Problems with the accelerator, brakes, steering, anything safety critical - nah. Recall for that, proper recall.
Recalls still require the customer to take action. They’re much less likely to go into the shop to have it fixed than press a button on their phone and have the car fix itself overnight.
Your suggestion for not allowing safety software fixes OTA is dangerous.
Other way around. Unsupervised OTA updates are dangerous.
First: A car is a piece of safety-critical equipment. It has a skilled operator who has familiarized themselves with its operation. Any change to its operation, without the operator being aware that a change was made, puts the operator and other people at risk. If the operator takes the car into the shop for a documented recall, they know that something is being changed. An unsupervised OTA update can (and will) alter the behavior of safety-critical equipment without the operator’s knowledge.
Second: Any facility for OTA updates is an attack vector. If a car can receive OTA updates from the manufacturer, then it can receive harmful OTA updates from an attacker who has compromised the car’s update mechanism or the manufacturer. Because the car is safety-critical equipment — unlike your phone, it can kill people — it is unreasonable to expose it to these attacks.
Driving is literally the most deadly thing that most people do every day. It is unreasonable to make driving even more dangerous by allowing car manufacturers — or attackers — to change the behavior of cars without the operator being fully aware that a change is being made.
This is not a matter of “it’s my property, you need my consent” that can be whitewashed with a contract provision. This is a matter of life safety.
You do realize your entire first point is invalidated by the comment you’re replying to? I just said the customer has to press a button on their phone to initiate the update. On that same phone they can view release notes that clearly outline the recall. Additional on first use, the car will display those same release notes on the screen.
Sure, safety vs convenience is a huge factor in software development. The biggest factor to safety is unpatched software. You know, the kind that requires significant effort to update, such as needing to bring your car into the shop to apply.
Overall your doom and gloom argument against OTA safety updates is pretty weak.
Oh good, hackers can’t bypass button presses. I was worried for a bit, appreciate you helping us out.
Fair enough.
What should the term be?
Put your hate for Tesla aside for a moment. If a car company can fix an issue with a simple OTA software update, it’s way more convenient for both the customer and the manufacturer. Quality control of an update is a separate issue but I don’t imagine there’s a difference whether your car updates itself or gets taken in for the update- the same patch gets applied in either case.
It’s not Tesla that I hate. It’s shipping products too quickly.
The inconvenience is the point. I want people to be inconvenienced, myself included. That means people complain to one another. I’ll know which models suck simply by talking to people around me. I do not want quiet stealthy patches for things like an accelerator pedal. Either do it right or pay the price. We used to make cars without hot fixes, we don’t need to start. It will allow auto manufacturers to further cut corners and push for faster releases with less testing, and we pay the price with our lives.
Think of the inverse though- it used to be that in every case when your car had an issue you needed to either take it in yourself or have the technical knowhow to fix it yourself.
I do agree that it’s a slippery slope for automakers to get lazy and cut corners, but I think stricter regulation is the better solution than forcing an unnecessary inconvenience onto the customers.
- it used to be that in every case when your car had an issue you needed to either take it in yourself or have the technical knowhow to fix it yourself.
That knowledge is mostly trivial. 7/10 repairs a regular Joe could do. Or worse comes to worse you can take it to a mechanic of your choosing.
I’ll take that level of service.
With the Tesla model, you very like end up with a 100k brick that no one can work on except very expensive very specialized very limited service centers.
A Tesla battery is expensive…now look at install costs. And if you’re not using an authorized installer, you’re locked out of the supercharger network.
That knowledge is mostly trivial. 7/10 repairs a regular Joe could do. Or worse comes to worse you can take it to a mechanic of your choosing.
That’s not true anymore. Modern cars have really complex problems that even mechanics struggle to fix. Especially when it’s a software problem… usually those problems just never get fixed.
As a software developer (not an automotive one) my take is the fix is to have everyone be running the same software, so that fifty thousand dollars diagnosing and fixing a problem for one car will result in it being fixed for all cars. Spread the cost out like that and it’s affordable. Otherwise it just won’t get fixed at all.
Should we go back to basic cars? I think so yes… but then I ride a motorcycle that doesn’t even have water cooling or a battery. But most people aren’t like me. They want lane keeping cruise control/etc.
“When it’s a software problem…”
Correct…now we are back to talking about vendor lock in and very specialized techs to install the updates.
I’m amazed how many people here drive Teslas. I think there’s only one Tesla dealership in the entire state. It would take a good 2 hours to get there from here. I guess they’re okay with having to pay for a tow all that way if something seriously goes wrong since there’s no local mechanic who will be able to fix it.
They are dirt cheap around me, which is why I see so many of them. I saw a 2016 Model S with the Ludacris update go for 13k. I kind of wanted it just to drive one, then I looked up the repair prices.
Sure… I’d get a maybe 200 mile range out of it in the summer…but once winter hit I was looking at like 25k-50k to replace the battery and the motors.
I can swap the motor and transmission in my car for less than 10k and have a mostly new car.
Or worse comes to worse you can take it to a mechanic of your choosing.
That’s also what I meant when I said “taking it in.” In either case you’re taking your car somewhere to get it repaired for X hours instead of applying an update at your home.
A Tesla battery is expensive…now look at install costs. And if you’re not using an authorized installer, you’re locked out of the supercharger network.
We aren’t talking about batteries.
I just think there’s more nuance to the situation and saying that cars should be as inconvenient as possible to fix isn’t a good solution to lazy auto software that requires future patching. Rigorous safety testing and regulation around car software sounds like a better plan to me- automakers will be held to really high standards and the consumers will still benefit from simple OTA patches to fix their vehicles when necessary.
I guess my position is if a car needs an OTA update, it’s a critical failure by the manufacturer. They should be 99.999%.
Just had to do a Chrysler recalls that is a software update and it is a safety issue. The Traction, ABS and stability control would disable itself randomly on the Pacifica. Another one from Chrysler is the defog would not work on the Grand cherokee Hybrids. All of those are software, but also safety issues. Tesla had one where the self driving would kill people.
Tesla had one where the self driving would kill people *if the driver wasn’t paying attention
They nerfed the car because people were abusing the system. Fuck Tesla, but that whole ordeal was stupid as hell.
Tesla’s cruise control that steers sometimes is basically the opposite of those radar activated brakes some cars have.
Some cars will detect a potential collision and will apply the brakes, possibly before the driver (who is in full control of the vehicle) might react, averting the collision entirely or reducing the energy of the collision. It errs on the side of caution slightly more than the driver does, and will take control of the vehicle pretty much only to bring it to a stop.
Teslas intend to take full control of normal operation, expecting the driver to watch out for unsafe conditions that either the driving environment or the car itself create, and then take control in time to avert an accident. Drivers aren’t trained for this. This isn’t how the system is marketed. This shouldn’t be legal on our roads.
I see you haven’t used autopilot. It’s basically just the advanced cruise control/lane keep of other cars that you’ve described. It, too, drives more cautiously than most humans and only applies brakes to avoid collision rather than swerving or what have you.
Are you referring to Full Self Driving?
I’m referring to whatever the hell is in the videos I’ve seen of Teslas accelerating toward pedestrians. My '03 Chevy hasn’t made that decision once in a quarter million miles of driving.
Is this one of the staged videos by Dan O’Dowd or from someone legit?
This is a bad take. Software updates that fix life threatening defects are as serious as any recall.
It’s motivated reasoning. Either the people making this argument are Tesla owners, simps, or shareholders and are trying to protect the phantasmagorical value of the company.
Saying “my car’s drive-by-wire software gets more firmware updates than my printer” is not a flex.
Right, because the recall for the icons on the screen needing to be a tad bigger is as serious as uncontrolled acceleration of a giant hunk of metal.
They need a new name for software update recalls and physical recalls. They both need to be serious, but a distinction is needed.
You understand that recalls for minor non life-threatening issues were a thing before cars were even capable of receiving software updates right?
This is not a new practice. This is what a recall entails. The term isn’t being arbitrarily applied. It’s a recall.
And how often were they actually followed vs discarded because the customer just didn’t care?
This is Elon Musk
The fact that anyone who thought buying one of these was a good idea has enough money to do so is proof that we don’t live in a meritocracy
Elon’s reality distortion field is almost as strong as Jobs’ was. The difference is that Jobs knew how to make a good product.
Jobs didn’t know shit. He made a bunch of predictions, some of them right, some of them not at all right. He just took credit for other peoples’ work, mostly Wozniak’s. The man was every bit the piece of shit Elon is.
Worth listening to the 3-part series on Jobs from Behind the Bastards: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-the-terrible-secret-of-156343561/
I’m not saying he wasn’t a piece of shit, I’m just saying he would never sell a product with such piss poor quality as the Cybertruck like Elon does.
Yeah OK that’s fair.
Maybe that drink-o-drive billionaire didn’t whiskey throttle into that pond after all?
EDIT: It was a Model X SUV, nevermind
Not defending Tesla, but that wasn’t a cybertruck
You’re right, it was a model X SUV, my bad.
Oh no. Car I havent ever seen irl has some factory defects. Anyways…
