Elon Mask is objecting, saying a software update is not a recall
(Picture: Britta Pedersen/AP)Last week, it was reported that Tesla was recalling nearly 1.1 million vehicles in the United States because the windows in some of its cars were faulty. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said this is a violation of federal safety standards because these vehicles might not react correctly after detecting an obstruction, such as fingers, or pooches who poke their noses into the wind.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk strongly objected to the term ‘recall’ because these cars will not be physically recalled to a Tesla dealership for repair. Instead, the fix can occur ‘over the air’ (OTA) via a software update. So is it fair to consider this a product recall?
“The terminology is outdated and inaccurate,” Musk tweeted, clearly raging at the perceived injustice. “This is a tiny over-the-air software update,” he added for good measure. And there is far more than pride involved, too, seeing as Tesla stock dropped 4.59 per cent when the story broke.
What’s the difference between a product recall and a software update?
Most people associate a product recall with a physical return, and especially so with cars. Yet Tesla has embraced a more software-oriented approach than its rivals because the vehicles are designed to have regular over-the-air (OTA) updates. In some ways, these cars are more akin to computers on wheels.
And, in the world of computing, most people wouldn’t recognise an OTA update as anything more than a patch — certainly nothing as scary sounding as a product recall.
The most high-profile product recall in the tech space in recent years was the Samsung Galaxy Note 7, which was physically recalled and immediately discontinued due to worries about exploding batteries. Nice phone – but few people wanted to risk one in their pocket.
Dr Dong Zhang, a lecturer in Automotive Design at Brunel University, agrees with Musk that the term recall might be outdated now that so many motoring fixes can be delivered via OTA software updates.
“In the future, intelligent vehicles are quite like our smartphones,” he told The Standard, before adding that: “I would say that a vehicle has to physically return to a garage in order to be recalled.”
In the US, the official FDA definitions are less fluid. “Recall means a firm’s removal or correction of a marketed product that the FDA considers to be in violation of the laws it administers and against which the agency would initiate legal action,” the entry reads.
The word “correction” is important here, as the same page describes this as a “repair, modification, adjustment, relabeling, destruction, or inspection (including patient monitoring) of a product without its physical removal to some other location.”
Whether Elon Musk likes it or not, the Tesla fault does seem to technically qualify as a recall, purely because it involves physical safety, in a way that other downloadable software updates — such as fixing a Bluetooth bug in the sound system — would not.
Regardless of the semantics, the nearly 1.1 million owners of the affected Tesla Model Y, Model 3, Model S, and Model X should receive a letter during November 2022 that will instruct them to download the new OTA software update. Until then, watch those fingers.
