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Obviously attention should be drawn to the fact that there is a critical safety update being pushed OTA, but "recall" is too overloaded a term if it means both "we're taking this back and destroying it because it's fundamentally flawed" vs. "a software update is being pushed to your vehicle (which may or may not be fundamentally flawed...)"

How many times in history has a vehicle recall meant the cars were returned and destroyed?

What makes this situation any more confusing than all the previous times vehicles were recalled?

In this scenario 'recall' is a legal/compliance term. It's appropriately used.

I think recall is just fine. Recall offers no ambiguity in my mind. It means the manufacturer fucked something up, big time. Everything else is just details.

In the current world of forced updates (looking at you Android), the word "update" itself is kind of toxic, and doesn't (and I would argue cant) represent what has happened here, even if its technically more correct.