Tesla is recalling 1.62 million vehicles in China over the same autopilot safety control issue that forced it to upgrade over two million vehicles in the US.
There’s got to be another way to describe this than as a “recall”. New buyers seeing the term “recall” could shake their confidence in the EV industry as a whole and needlessly perpetuate the sale of ICE vehicles.
Nah, recalls happen all the time to ICE vehicles and no one eschews them for the train or metro. Integrity begins with what is said and how. It is important to be direct, even if our own personal biased want to show.
The issue comes in that, historically, recalls require you to take your car in for service… hence the name. With OTA updates, the issues are often fixed before the consumer even knows there is an issue and the “recall” effectively just becomes communication that there was a problem.
These communications definitely need to continue happening and should remain mandatory by law, but calling them the same thing that requires a trip to the mechanic or dealership, to replace parts, is specifically being broadcast as a means to discredit the technology.
People that aren’t informaed about the difference end up believing these issues will prevent their car from working or reduce reliability when they are simple software patches that happen without the need for additional resources.
People said the same thing recently when Tesla was required to do an OTA update in the US. The thing is that while they don’t have to physically work on each vehicle, it’s labeled a recall because it’s a regulatory action that compelled them to do it. Tesla didn’t decide to do these updates on their own - they were directed to do so by the government, first in the US and now in China.
Voluntary recalls are actually more common than ordered recalls. Manufacturers usually don't wait for the NHTSA to get involved.
What makes it a recall is that either the manufacturer or the NHTSA determine that there's a safety defect or that the vehicle doesn't confirm to the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard.
So I believe the terminology is required by the NHTSA if it fits the above definition regardless of how the issue is addressed.
Of course this is for the US and this is a recall in China but I'm assuming similar legal requirements are involved.
I would hope people could at least read the full headline of “over autopilot safety controls” and realize that has nothing to do with how the vehicle is powered.