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Comment by ripjaygn | Hacker News Reader

Toyota's wheels have been literally falling off their cars.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/24/cars/toyota-bz4x-tundra-recal...

What is their reputation on reliability on here? How many decades have they been making cars compared and how mature is their manufacturing process?

You just don't hear about other carmakers' recalls on here, so everyone makes those assumptions you just did, that Tesla is disproportionately bad with quality issues..

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At least the wheels falling off slow the car down.

At least you can steer the car with unintentional acceleration, unlike with wheels falling off.

You can steer as long as you've got three wheels. Not as well as with four of course. With a modern brake system, you should have some braking power too. I know someone who lost a wheel on an 1965 truck with a single chamber brake cylinder, so there was no pressure in the system as brake parts fell off with the wheel.

If you press both the accelerator and brake in a Tesla, it slows the car down and shows a message in the instrument cluster that both pedals are pressed: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/while-breaking-if-yo...

Disproportionately? Does Tesla ship as many vehicles as Toyota? You have made me curious about the numbers you are using.

Tesla doesn't even register in the top 10 most recalls per car company in 2023.

https://i.imgur.com/bygtzk2.png

What data are you using?

How many of Ford Motor's 58 recalls in 2023 made HN's front page?

Meanwhile Tesla updates the car UIs icon sizes via a software update, and there are headlines all over the media including HN stating that Tesla recalled millions of cars, omitting that it was a software update.

That makes people like the GP think Teslas have disproportionately worse issues, which appears to be the objective.

> What data are you using?

I’m not the one claiming anything about proportions. I didn’t claim to have any data. How did you arrive at your proportions?

I had linked it in the very comment you replied to...please reread.

I see only a link to an infographic about recalls in 2023.

How is recalls per company a valid metric? Should it be at least normalised by number of models (e.g. if we assume design flaws)?

By that metric Fords 58 are normalised by 40 odd models (only counting current) while Teslas 20 are normalised by 6 models (counting any car/truck build).

Why would number of recalls be proportional to number of vehicles shipped? I think number of recalls would be more proportional to number of car models available. And number of vehicles recalled would be proportional to number of vehicles shipped. In this case 3,878 vehicles were recalled.

To me, “disproportionately bad with quality issues” would be about total units shipped.

Total units shipped since the inception of the company?

I think the NHTSA was only formed in 1970.

Which metric are you using when you use the word disproportionately?

Linked it in the other comment that you had replied to.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40086651

That says 2023. I don’t see Toyota mentioned in there at all. Maybe I’m missing something.

Toyota had a recall just a couple of days ago. That story wasn't even submitted to HN, while the Cybertruck already made the front page a couple of times and will probably continue to do so. That's a perfect example of disproportionate coverage leading to several commenters on this story automatically assuming Tesla is worse than other manufacturers. And somehow you didn't ask them for data saying you were curious but immediately jumped on my comment. That's typically not the behavior of someone that's starting with no data and neutral.

I asked about the data you are using when you say it is disproportionate. It sounds like you don’t have any.

As the saying goes, you can take a horse to the water, but you cannot make it drink it. Cannot help those who cannot help themselves.

You did not post any data. You made some assertions about Toyota and Tesla. I asked which data you were using. You linked to an infographic and an article about a recent recall. You seem to have a bias. You should think about that.

Ford recalled 6 million vehicles last year. For some context, they sold around 2 million last year.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2024/01/12/vehicle....

edit: To add, this isn't some one off event. In 2022 Ford recalled 8.6 million vehicles.

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