Tesla recalls 53,000 cars over brake issue
bbc.com
bbc.com
Core issue: "A small gear may be defective in some cars; you should come into the service center and get it checked. If it breaks, you may be unable to disengage the parking brake."
Headline: "Massive recall over brake issue!"
It's not technically wrong. But it misleads more than it informs.
You're right, that would be very newsworthy! Of course, it's not true, which I think rather supports my point about the headline.
(If you read the article, the number of repairs needed is actually only ~1k, because only 2% of the 53k cars actually has a faulty gear that needs replacement. The recall is for 53k cars because they don't know which 2% has the issue, so the headline is technically true, but there's a big difference between "Tesla shipped 53k defective cars" and "Tesla shipped 1k defective cars". The former is much more newsworthy! But also false.)
I'm pretty used to the Tesla/Elon sycophants on HN (and Reddit and Twitter for that matter) but fabricating a headline to knock down is pretty brazen.
Parent's "quote" was just a paraphrase. Calling it a fabrication is a bit much, don't you think?
Anyway, it deserves a knock down, IMO, because the first instinct when reading it is that there is an issue with the breaks that people most commonly use. Using the parking break isn't nearly as common or frequent as the regular breaks. Simply adding "parking" into the headline would have made it far less sensational and far more accurate.
How comes if Ford f'ed up, it's Ford. If Toyota f'ed up, it's Toyota. If Tesla f'ed up (doors, brakes) it's a supplier?
Granted, from what I understand Tesla paid for everything and fixed his car; it's only his time that was spent on this, but every car breaks down at some point too.
Oh, and they were able to eventually move his car by elevating it onto a set of rolling beds, and then rolling it onto a truck that way. It looked pretty funny :)
As a fun example, my ford was recalled last year because the windshield wipers might be flammable. Did you read about that in the news?
People have been more tolerant of Tesla issues because of attachment to the mission/Elon and their role as early adopters. Now as Tesla moves toward the mainstream greater scrutiny, such as recall notices, should be given to them.
This is probably true for now when the Teslas in production are mostly in the hands of people who can work out time and have a job secure enough to allow for that kind of thing.
Tesla keeps having issues like this - and if they don't fix it by the time the Model 3 hits, this kind of thing could be their killer. They're basically throwing money at the problem right now - and I could be wrong, but that probably won't scale so well. They really need to up the ante on their quality control.
EDIT: Wow, some serious Tesla fan boys around here... should have expected that I guess.
This is an extremely common, routine even, thing that happens in the automotive industry. Every make and model of car has recalls from time to time, for issues just as minor as this. It scales.
Just speaking based on 3rd party hearings about Tesla service.
Anecdotally, our Camry broke down today, and sucked up hours of our time, and still isn't fixed. No magical genie appeared to take it to service for me, so time sucked up on my end is just as much as any other service. At least Tesla requires virtually no maintenance, outside of occasional bugs and tires.
In a statement the firm said the electric parking brakes installed on Model S and Model X "may contain a small gear that could have been manufactured improperly by our third-party supplier".
If the gear were to break, the parking brake would continue to keep the car from moving, but the parking brake would be stuck in place, it added.
Though commonly called an e-brake, the parking brake is actually intended to be used when parking, especially when parking on a hill.
That's 1,060 cars altogether are affected.
Source: I received recall notice.