Why is a simple software update described as "recall"? Just for clicks?
Alternative headline:
"Tesla is improving their cars for the 17th time this year, at no cost to owners"
Alternative headline:
"Tesla is improving their cars for the 17th time this year, at no cost to owners"
While not a recall in the sense of having to surrender your car back to an official shop, this is far from an improvement. It's reasonable to expect any car built in the last 50 years to operate as normal after hitting a pothole.
Same failure mode, though.
If you are not moving, you are literally grinding the tires into the pavement with the entire weight of the car on them, if you are rolling it is easier.
It'll still be very hard.
The brakes on the Prius stopped working if you hit a bump or pothole, which is a pretty similar issue.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls/vehicle-safety-recalls-week
It's reasonable to expect any car built in the last 50 years to have "recalls" such as this. Most, won't be fixed over an OTA update like this. Instead, you'd have to take it into the dealership and waste time that way.
This has been fixed already OTA.
Low profile sidewalls beg to differ.
I think OTA recall implementations are a terrific innovation, and far better than the old system of taking your car to a dealership (though the other automakers are adapting - I got a call the other day offering to send a tech to my house to apply the fix for a recall on my car). But fixing a defect in the car at the manufacturer’s expense is, quite literally, the bare minimum required.
It is a formal notice of a safety defect by a manufacturer to all affected parties that they have a defective product. It identifies the nature of the problem, the consequences of the problem, the affected parties, and the known remedy or steps the affected parties should take. It also requires the fixes to be offered to all affected parties free of charge.
A recall is supposed to be issued in all cases that a safety defect is detected to guarantee that all customers are informed of potential problems and that the manufacturers are on the hook for solving them.
"According to [Tesla], the affected cars have problems with their power-steering assist system when driving on rough roads or after hitting a pothole. The issue would leave drivers without the assistance to move the steering wheel with the help of the electric technology, forcing drivers to use a lot of force to move the steering wheel and increasing the likelihood of crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)."
"The problem began when Tesla rolled out an update for a new calibration value for their electronic power assist steering system only to have alerts about the update a week later, according to the NHTSA.
Tesla has released a firmware update to recalibrate the issue already. According to Tesla, 97% of the recalled vehicles had an update installed that addressed the issue. There have been no official reports of injury linked to the potential loss of steering assistance."
Also, FTA:
“The problem began when Tesla rolled out an update for a new calibration value for their electronic power assist steering system only to have alerts about the update a week later, according to the NHTSA.
Tesla has released a firmware update to recalibrate the issue already”
So, Tesla claims otherwise. Power steering ¿nowadays? isn’t simply “multiply the force the driver exerts”. You want to use the same hardware for lane assist, for example. That certainly involves software. I don’t know how potholes would interact with that, but I do not see any reason this must also involve a hardware change.
OTA is truly an innovation! Screw doing our own testing in house, just push it to users and then hurry out a patch if they notice anything!