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.
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.
Disagree. Sounds like you acknowledge other recalls get reported, but those other recalls aren’t going to hit hacker news, Reddit, and other more mainstream places. Like I bet this will be on most social media platforms.
I think the issue was that the headlines omitted the fact that it was a software update changing the size of some icons in the car's UI. And instead just stated that millions of Tesla cars were recalled, the default assumption being they were recalled to a service dealership instead of an OTA update at home.
The oil lobbyists and Tesla haters absolutely don't want the phrase 'software' in any of the media headlines or HN titles relating to Tesla software recalls and vehemently argued against it. The media grants their wishes.
It's hardly surprising that Tesla fans are not demanding that the word recall not be used for this car hardware issue, even they're more rational and less delusional about car recall phrasing than Tesla haters who seem to be agenda driven to create negative perception about Tesla, and the media happily accommodates them all the time.
This spin on things is hilarious. It wasn’t the “Tesla haters” screaming “don’t mention our precious software! It’s just a recall!”, it was the Tesla fans. “How can it be a recall if it can be fixed without my car going anywhere? The media just wants to make Tesla look bad! This isn’t a recall because Tesla can update it OTA, something the dinosaurs can’t!”
(Which ignores that while Tesla can update more than most other manufacturers, my car gets regular OTA updates too.)
Meanwhile Lincoln sent me a “fix” for a recall that involved neither software or my car moving an inch.
“We identified an issue in your vehicles user guide that could lead to improper seat operation. Please place this piece of paper between pages 168 and 169 of your guide.”
There is a straw man that you have concocted that says that "Tesla haters" (and I will own my bias here, despite being the target audience[1] for Tesla, I am a fan neither of the vehicles or the CEO) who are in the software industry are pressing for these recalls to be called out as recalls and not "just a software update".
Some of these are "recalls that can be fixed with software, often OTA". They're still recalls, no matter how you spin it. Because they affect safety. Maybe in a minor way, in an edge case, in some cases, but nonetheless, despite your sarcastic pouting of "I guess it's a light because pixels glow".
Just like it's a recall when Lincoln says "insert this page into your owner's handbook", or Toyota says "affix this sticker at the bottom of p 232".
> Do you think NYPost or the CNN shouldn't have added 'software' in the headline, perhaps before the word recall?
I, personally could not care less whether the word software appears or does not appear in the headline. I care that it's called a recall. I'm sorry that that hurts some Tesla fans feelings in that they think it makes things sound less safer. OTA updates for safety issues were still a safety issue. And I have zero sympathy when I listen, as I have here on HN, to same fans insisting that its a conspiracy to insist on it, while pretzeling themselves into saying that my user manual examples are still recalls "because I still had to do something about them, while their issue was fixed in their sleep".
Sorry. No. If placing a sticker in an owner's manual is a safety recall, so is your OTA update.
[1] liberal, environmentally conscious, heavy tech fascination gadget geek who likes adrenaline and acceleration.
Yet doing everything to spread FUD about the car company that did and is doing the most for the environment., because Musk... bad. Bollocks. I agree Musk isn't great since Covid, but I was not going to burn the environment over it like all the liberal media and liberal folks like you.
If people who supposedly care about the environment don't care two shits about the most popular EV that can make many people get into EVs, I don't care about spending my hard earned money to pay extra for an EV, since it won't matter anyway and it's a group effort which is failing.
The oil lobby pays the right wing, Musk does not. So they demonize Tesla and EVs and the left has joined them since a few years, to my disgust.
I used to be a die hard liberal, I only lately realized that liberal media and many liberals don't care two hoots about climate change. I used to defend them all the time. They've been publishing hit pieces and even fake news about Tesla just because they don't like Musk. They lost the moral high ground about fake news. Those are heavily upvoted on liberal social media like HN and Reddit. I don't like what Musk has been doing lately but I do care about the environment and don't hate Tesla and SpaceX like people on here. I was going to buy an EV even at a price premium but now I don't care. I'll buy a gas guzzler like the rest.
I am too old for climate change to affect me and it turns out the young ones don't care enough about it themselves. I used to be very liberal but seeing how Tesla is maligned on HN and Reddit changed me. I don't think I will vote red but I will never vote blue from now on. And then more liberals will wonder why the vote is so close come November.
I have such skepticism on these things. I don't think you alter your fundamental world view on things like human rights, the environment and such because of "liberal media".
I think exposure to viewpoints that either validate your biases or contradict your worldview strengthen your position, and rarely change it.
In short, I am always skeptical about "I used to be a liberal, but..." (and for clarity, "I used to be conservative, but...") - it's almost exclusively a weird argument to authority. "I know, I understand, I got you. But I saw the light." No, you were probably always conservative, deep down.
This can also differ if you're talking exclusively the political parties, who generally fall under "all suck" in my view.
> I don't think you alter your fundamental world view on things like human rights, the environment and such because of "liberal media"
I haven't, it's part of the reason I said I probably won't vote right.
> In short, I am always skeptical about "I used to be a liberal, but..."
I guess I could link you to my past social media where I used to argue with conservatives over fake news on the right etc.
I can't stand fake news. So then when I saw fake news against Tesla in prestigious media it changed something in me to see liberal hypocrisy. And no, I didn't turn into a conservative.
Electric cars are cool and all but they really aren't that big a deal in terms of the environment. The environmentalists I know hate personalized transportation, full stop. Tesla wants to pave the earth just like any other car company out there. Liberal hypocrisy my ass.
> Meanwhile Lincoln sent me a “fix” for a recall that involved neither software or my car moving an inch.
> “We identified an issue in your vehicles user guide that could lead to improper seat operation. Please place this piece of paper between pages 168 and 169 of your guide.”
Great and perfect example, thanks for bringing that up.
I searched for that issue and every single news article I could find [1] had "missing owner's manual information" or the equivalent right in the headline.
Only Ford or Lincoln haters would argue that removing that information in the headline is a fair and acceptable thing to do.
Are you still going to argue that Tesla is treated the same as Lincoln by the media and on HN? Is hoping for more context in the headlines a bad and unreasonable thing?
Your mistake here is assuming that people are comprised of "haters" and others.
I couldn't care less about Lincoln. I own a Navigator. My partner drives it 99% of the time. It was just the first example that came to mind.
I think Tesla's are overrated for their price - the Model S has (I haven't been in one in 18 months, to be clear) luxury euro pricing for a build quality that is in many cases worse than an econobox Hyundai or Mazda. I lean on the dash in my Audi and it doesn't bow or flex or creak or make me worried that some plastic is about to break. It did in the S. My butt fell asleep after a few hours in a Tesla passenger seat. "Do not use a car wash if the vehicle will be in direct sunlight". Windshields not glued on, at all. Entire brakes missing. Different tires on all four wheels. These aren't teething issues, Tesla is more than two decades old at this point. And doubly so when your CEO gives interviews that have him saying with a straight face, "At this point, I know more about manufacturing than any person living on the planet."
You're just cherrypicking things, not to mention all cars have issues but only Tesla issues get magnified, so you think Tesla is worse. Propaganda works, that's why the liberals are doing what they're doing, spreading FUD about Tesla, and joining the oil lobby in it's crusade against EVs. That's why I don't consider myself a liberal anymore.
A recall is a recall. It might be convenient for the customer that the problem can be fixed via software, but it's ultimately irrelevant with respect to the fact that a safety related issue needed to be corrected.
When I do a simple search for ‘Tesla recall’ in my favorite search engine I get a bunch of results for the recent Tesla recalls. Many of the headlines call out the reasons, I see no persecution of Tesla in the way you describe. There is an easy way for Tesla to avoid all of this though, and it’s to design their vehicles better in the first place.
Looks like the media cares about facts and the fact is, Tesla has had _another_ recall. Tesla is slipping and there seems to be some who are more sensitive to that being discussed than others.
You made me spit out my coffee. The media literally made up fake news about the Tesla strike in Sweden. This is coming from someone who argued for year up until covid that fake news was exclusive to the right wing. It sad to see liberals and liberal media slip so much
To be fair, software recalls are just a scam by big post office. /s
(more seriously, software updates trigger a required mailed notification, even if the work has already been done. physical recalls do not trigger the same requirement)
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.
The OTA is the crucial point because as a customer you just don’t care that you wake up one day and your tesla starts displaying PARK instead of an icon after a „recall”. With other vehicles you gotta schedule service and leave it there.
My point is that other manufacturers' recalls could also be simple software updates but without OTA you need to visit a garage.
So just because Tesla could fix most of their problem oer OTA doesn't mean other manufacturers have more severe malfunctions, just a more complicated way of fixing it.
And OTA is nice until someone finds an unfixable bug and changes your brake setting per malicious OTA.
As a customer, I do care if someone can change important systems in my car without me noticing or being able to prevent it.
If it's a software update that only a service center can fix then few folks are going to take their time out to do that expeditiously, like with hardware recalls. Assuming their address is current and they even know about it. Whereas an OTA update is either automatically done or in their face the next time they drive.
The cost to the company for a recall is also a thing so accurate headlines matter. Having to spend money paying service reps to do software and hardware changes at a service center is way more expensive than pushing out an OTA software. Which is why a good chunk of the media won't mention it when it comes to Tesla.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
True, but in the case of the one I had (and I forgot to mention) it was a fire when the vehicle was off. Definitely an urgent problem since this meant it could happen when no one was around.
> 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.
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.
"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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
This is a good point. As long as Tesla continuously churns out software that breaks the car the percentage of “woops the accelerator stuck because they mixed soap with the pedal glue” issues gets smaller and thus less relevant
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.
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.
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).
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...