Turns out “move fast and break things” doesn’t work that well in the auto industry
Where does that work well? A demolition derby?
In contexts where mistakes don’t cost people’s lives.
Somewhere where you can fix whatever you broke in minutes.
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the automaker said it’s providing a free software update to fix the problem.
I know it has to be called a recall, but they really should find another name for these things now that OTA SW updates for issues are a thing, not only for Tesla but also other manufacturers.
Nah I like the term recall. Just because the fix is “easy” doesn’t mean the product wasn’t broken. Automakers should take the software in their cars seriously especially the ones that market their cars like a cell phone.
Broken software shouldn’t be accepted as much as it is. Especially in safety critical systems like cars, especially when they remove manual controls for things like steering, brakes, hand brakes and door handles. Fly/drive by wire is more dangerous when the software is unreliable. Mechanical linkages fail immediately or take a long time. Bad software fails in uncertain and potentially chaotic ways.
I just think it’s useful to have different words for things that can be easily fixed without having to go get the car to a mechanic and having no immediate safety impact, and things that may require you to take the vehicle to a mechanic ASAP because there is immediate serious danger. They should not be in the same category, and people should be aware that they require different levels of attention and urgency. When it’s all just referred to as a “recall”, people will start to not take them seriously when they more often than not are minor things like this.
I think a “recall” has a very specific legal definition, where the manufacturer has strictly defined responsibilities (identifying and notifying owners of affected vehicles would be one of those). It wouldn’t surprise me if there was some external agency that acted as an auditor on that.
On the other hand, manufacturers can put out a “service action” bulletin, where a particular repair is free to the vehicle owner, but none of those recall responsibilities are in place. This means that, for example, vehicle owners are not notified, so you just need to bring your vehicle in with the complaint specified in the service action. In this case, the vehicle owner might need to point out that there’s a service action, because a shady dealer will pretend it doesn’t exist, charge you for the repair, and also submit the repair to the manufacturer for reimbursement. This was a lot easier to do before the internet, since the information about that service action wasn’t readily available to the public.
A recall implies the product is irreparably damaged, or too expensive to repair, and needs to be returned/replaced.
This framing benefits corporations, because the average recall is relatively minimal and inconsequential, the public will grow to consider “recalls” as normal instead of “potentially deadly failure/defect”, and make it easier for corporate sociopaths like Space Karen to scream gubberment overreach. The wording should reflect the risk to life/public health (e.g. potential to cause harm/death) as well as the cost to repair/replace (quantify the severity of the failure/defect).
The greater the access and granularity consumers have to this type of data, the greater the benefit to society. Any corporation, politician or lobby group arguing otherwise is your enemy.
A recall implies the product is irreparably damaged, or too expensive to repair, and needs to be returned/replaced.
No, it does not. I can’t think of an automotive recall that wasn’t repaired and resulted in a buyback. I’m sure there was one or two, I just can’t think of them. Edit: Here’s the list. And most of those have to do with bad welds or badly adhering paint (which affects windshields in collisions).
Lots of cars from all manufacturers end up with recalls that get fixed as a matter of course.
Tesla owners are not notified as such when the recalls are fixed by SW updates, they just get an update pushed to the car and a request in the car that there is an update ready to install.
Maybe that counts as the notification? I’ve never owned a car that does OTA shit. All the recalls that have applied to any of my cars have been mailed to me directly, sometimes even well before they are even able to be repaired, waiting on parts availability.
They absolutely do have to notify people of mandatory recalls and it’s not even up to the company. This person does not know what they are talking about. There’s a difference between a mandatory recall (mandated by the NHTSA/Government), and a voluntary one. Every other car manufacture sends out information to their customers about mandatory recalls (yes, even software updates, yes, even when they’re OTA fixes). Tesla isn’t special. They still have to comply with the law.
Maybe, IDK…I’ve never had a car with a recall on it before.
It’s not useful at all, knowing which brand sells shitty cars that have major issues is a good thing, this whole attitude that you can do OTA fix something therefore it’s fine and we can ship bad product is fucking ridiculous attitude to a multi-ton weapon capable of killing multiple people
It’s worse than that, people will argue shipping good code is impossible. Good testing is hard, so it’s avoided for things like unit tests. Something that’s only equivalent to basic QA in manufacturing. Every software functions is a design change and the system needs to be fully validated and tested. That’s means driving the car, and not shipping the code and using the users cars to prove your design.
The problem is, and of course when it matters I forget the specifics, that there are many times when language is changed to soften how bad something is and it results in people not taking things seriously.
The issue here is cars being shipped in a broken state, that’s it. They recall the vehicles and force people to skip out of work or whatever to get this shit done because their products suck, and if they wanted to not deal with that then maybe they should products that don’t suck. They can also collect a bunch of these issues, seeing as they’re common, and either make a patch of several minor issues or just say that the problem will be addressed at the next service. This is entirely on the companies to save their image, not us to change our language to make them feel better.
But recall meaning you call the products back, so they can be fixed, or not? This seems not the case here, just a safety relevant bugfix…
As a software engineer, I would think to call this a patch or a hotfix. I agree that recall for this type of situation is a bit too dramatic, but I’d also say that patch or hotfix are too casual sounding
Seems to me just specifying that it’s a software recall would be a good balance.
Yes absolutely. The term recall is supposed to be when they literally recall the cars, like bring them back in, in the same context as you recall your dog after he runs around the yard.
No cars are being brought back in. No dealers are involved here. It’s just a bug fix for the next software release.I also don’t like how the ability to fix bugs is creating a huge number of ‘recalls’. For example, last year Tesla had a ‘recall’ because NHTSA decided the warning icons on the dashboard screen weren’t big enough. Like the icons for parking brake and seat belt. Which is frustrating because the car is operated for years with the original icons and nobody had a complaint.
But if this was an old style car, where those were individual LEDs silkscreened in an instrument cluster, that would never be a recall because it would cost millions to replace every single instrument cluster on every single car. But because it is remotely fixable, it becomes a recall.
They sold a bad product that needs fixed, bad software shouldn’t get an exception. The warning icons were probably not compliant and should never have left the factory.
The warning icons were the exact same size as the car I had before that. No recall on that car, and if anything icons were even easier to see because the contrast was higher and they are closer to your face.
They applied that font/icon change in Canada as well, and then Canada made them undo the change that NHSTA demanded. Double recall lol.
Which IMHO just shows that the recall in the first place was just NHTSA unnecessarily flexing on them
Well, I think rules are rules, and they do differ country to country, but this whole recall for something like that is what the problem is.
Bu nothing geneartes headlines like Tesla recalls every vehicle made in NA.
Rules are rules of course. But when the car was approved for sale, approved as being rule following, and then retroactively after the fact, after it’s been out for years with literally millions of units on the road, suddenly it’s no good…, that doesn’t seem like fair enforcement to me.
You would absolutely take your vehicle in for service for a safety recall if the OTA didn’t work. Which happens frequently enough that it still warrants being called a recall and the necessary steps once the vehicles are “recalled” in order to notify customers who might not otherwise set themselves up to get an OTA. It’s not as simple as the car “just does it overnight” in every case.
Frequent software updates are part of having a Tesla. If the vehicle is unable to do a software update, then it is broken and would require service regardless of the recall.
My dude, the vehicle could be working fine but you could live somewhere with no broadband and poor 4G connection and not be able to receive the update. Don’t assume that you just know how everyone who owns one of these cars lives their life because that’s not helpful to the conversation, and it’s not how the government functions. The government has to assume that if a recall for safety or security is being issued that people may not be able to receive that OTA over the air and may be required to go to a service center for it instead.
Almost all new cars have OTA software updates. If one of them breaks something and then the car can’t get further updates, what then? You’ve never had a software update mess with your computer? Are you for real right now?
Guys, rail against the things that are true. There are enough of them that we don’t need to exaggerate or make up new ones.
Regardless of what you think of Tesla, “recall” here doesn’t mean what people expect it to mean.
Sorry we don’t think like that anymore. Nuance and multiple truths are a waste of time. Elon supports a Republican that means he is bad and everything he does is bad and everything he has ever done is bad and he has no vision or leadership of his own he is just a rich asshole using Daddy’s money to buy cars and rockets and Twitter. Thus he is unworthy of praise for anything at all that he has done since he was born into a life of luxury and anything he touches is automatically shit worthy of being canceled or outlawed.
The fix is simple correct informative headlining from media “Tesla issues over the air update to resolve X thing related safety recall affecting X amount of customer vehicles”
It’s not NHTSA’s fault media does their job badly.
Every time there’s a recall, I remember the equation from Fight Club and how the company has to make a decision to recall or absorb the costs. Tesla has had A LOT of recalls mostly with the cyber truck. Musk doesn’t seem like the kind of person to be cautious and recall to be on the safe side.
So… What AREN’T they recalling?
Tesla may have figured out how SpaceX deals with the muskrat. They basically have a team of people that run interference with tons of busywork they shove in his face when he visits, so that he can’t actually do anything.
If Trump’s people have half a brain, they will talk to the people that give the British rich and powerful the run around.
How is it possible for the Muskrat to not be aware of all this, if we in the public are?
You think a billionaire that spends most of his “very busy” schedule tweeting nonsense cares to read the news?
There’s probably a dedicated intern that gives him daily briefings while Musk scrolls twitter for a new Nazi to retweet. The intern knows better than to upset the Muskrat, and keeps news about Tesla issues to a minimum.
The intern knows better
I like this sentence.
I think I’m gonna have it printed on a shirt. ;-)
Tweets and Diablo IV
He curates his input and surrounds himself with sycophants to give him the skewed view of reality that he prefers.
Recalls aren’t just something that magically happen. Usually there’s an investigation (by the NHTSA, or the company themselves). That investigation concludes that a recall is warranted or necessary and, in the case of voluntary recalls they do a cost to benefit analysis (like how Ford did when the Pinto was a bomb just waiting to be rear ended, and they realized they would save money by not recalling them).
But the NHTSA does force quite a few car manufacturers to do mandatory recalls regardless of whether they want to or not, usually to do with health and safety. You know. To prevent the Ford Pinto scenario.
So it’s not so much what they aren’t recalling (although I’m sure there’s quite a lot). The real question should be, why do they have so many recalls? Why aren’t they fixing the problems before they public gets a hold of these vehicles. And it’s not just Tesla we should be asking that question of.
That sounds like magic to me. To get anything involved with the government not throwing a temper tantrum and make it about themselves.
They do fight. But usually it doesn’t end well for them. Usually they drag their feet and waste time hoping that most of the cars will be out of commission before the recall is forced on them or they fight the government over a proposed recall in court and lose. https://apnews.com/article/ford-nhtsa-fine-recall-slow-244e2318b794e2be10196414eba9a029
https://www.dailyjournal.com/articles/376533-tesla-recalls-too-little-too-late
Right now I know (brother is a tech) that Ford has problems with water pumps but no recalls have been issued. I suspect this is because of the cost to fix them and the fact that these cars are still in warranty, so it’s cheaper to have the people in warranty come information service and have it discovered that their water pump is shot than it is to tell them their water pump may be bad because the cooling system is contaminated. It cuts down the number of cars they have to fix significantly. Which is why (yes even if you’re not taking your car to a dealership) you should have your car inspected regularly if you aren’t going to do it yourself.
For this kind of recall, the expense can be insanely low. It’s just a software update that can be done over the air. Something that would warrant a recall is the type of thing they would fix for future builds. So they already put money into it to update the software for future builds. Just pushing it to older builds is simple. Ergo the part of the formula for “the cost of doing the recall” is, as previously mentioned, insanely low. This makes it very easy to have that cost be lower than the amount to settle out of court.
Why does it feel like they recall more cars than they sell?
AFAIK they’re all just software updates that install automatically
Not all of them, like the gas pedal rivet.
They’re an idea company that makes cars on the side.
I need one of these but for tesla recalls
I’m still not sure why people buy this pos strapped to wheels? The quality is sub par at best.
Cool factor I think. Tech enthusiasts who wanted a car full of tech. The funny thing is automotive is having a tough time building quality vehicles recently across the board. The pandemic only seems to have exacerbated the problem but the trend is that even experienced car manufacturers are having recalls up the whazoo.
Affluent people like novelty.
at least they look stupid as all fuck
If Elon’s DOGE department is as efficient and top-notch in terms of quality, I think the US is on its way to golden times. amirite
The man who conned a generation.
lmao
Why the cybertruck picture? They aren’t trying to say that there were already 700.000 crappy tin boxes in the wild, or are they? 😉
The article isn’t really clear, it doesn’t exactly name the vehicles affected. But only mentions & shows the cybertruck.
The article isn’t really clear, it doesn’t exactly name the vehicles affected.
Yeah. But of course we know that so many cybertrucks have never been built.
only mentions & shows the cybertruck.
Here I am still wondering:
Was it a fanboi who was thinking because cybertruck is the latest model it deserves to dominate all the news and so on?
Or was the author smugly adding this news about a big mistake to their biggest failure in general?
Gotta isolate the bad press to the obvious turd even though I bet they all have a similar system with similar flaws
