from Hacker News

Tesla recalls 380k vehicles in US over power steering assist issue

by themgt on 2/21/25, 3:57 PM with 167 comments

• by Oarch on 2/21/25, 4:04 PM

  I don't understand this 'recall' language. Isn't it just a software update?

  "The company has released an over-the-air software update to fix the issue, it said."

• by josefresco on 2/21/25, 4:22 PM

  "In 2023, 23% or 82 out of 356 vehicle recalls involved software fixes, up one percent from 2022."

  https://news.dealershipguy.com/p/software-related-vehicle-re...

• by tromp on 2/21/25, 6:02 PM

  As a service to the many people who still think of recalls as being physical in nature, they could call it a soft recall (as opposed to a hard recall).

• by tzs on 2/21/25, 11:02 PM

  > Tesla on Friday said it was recalling 376,000 of its electric vehicles in the U.S., due to a failure of the power steering assist feature that could make the vehicles harder to steer, particularly at low speeds, raising the risk of a crash.

  I'm curious what happens if this fails and you try to use FSD. Is it:

  • Power steering assist only applies to manual steering so FSD notices nothing different,

  • Power steering assist does assist FSD's steering, but FSD uses feedback from what the car actually does to decide how to steer and so it will compensate for the change in steering characteristics,

  • It will notice something is off with the steering and tell the human to take over, or

  • Something else.

• by renewiltord on 2/21/25, 4:20 PM

  I don’t get why we have these here on HN all the time. Lots of cars have recalls https://www.caranddriver.com/recalls/

• by HumblyTossed on 2/21/25, 5:57 PM

  A recall on a car means that the manufacturer has identified a safety-related defect in the vehicle and is taking some action to correct it. It doesn't matter if it's OTA or the customer has to bring it in. Can we please stop pissing about the language every single time?

• by bwoj on 2/21/25, 6:43 PM

  I guess DOGE will set its sights on NHTSA next.

• by ProfessorZoom on 2/21/25, 4:05 PM

  Anytime they have a software update for a "recall", I imagine what the headlines would look like if Apple had to "recall 2 billions iPhones for a security fix"

• by avgDev on 2/21/25, 4:16 PM

  Here we go again with Tesla cultist trying to change what the word "recall" means.

• by debacle on 2/21/25, 4:13 PM

  Is this a physical recall or a software "recall?"

• by potato3732842 on 2/21/25, 6:16 PM

  Meta rant:

  What drives me up the wall is the cognitive dissonance.

  Toyota or Volvo or any other "good" brand recalls something and everyone is all "ooh, they're taking things back to fix them at great expense, look how much they care about their customers"

  Tesla, Chrysler or any "bad" brand recalls something and it's all "hurr durr, steaming pile of crap is unfit for the road"

• by numpad0 on 2/21/25, 5:23 PM

    In a filing with NHTSA, Tesla said some 2023 Model 3 sedans and Model Y crossovers running older software could face an overvoltage breakdown, potentially overstressing motor drive components on the printed circuit board.
  

  Doesn't sound like a pure software issue to me. "It's just update not a recall" doesn't apply. This is software mitigation and/or bugfix to software-hardware design failure, the kind that simply shouldn't ship.

  They swiss-cheesed something elementary as EPAS and had to waste time and money pushing an update. That's an "L", as kids these days say.

• by londons_explore on 2/21/25, 4:51 PM

  > Tesla said that if this overstress condition occurs while the vehicle is in motion, the steering remains unaffected, and a visual alert is triggered. But once the vehicle stops, the steering assist may fail and remain disabled when it moves again.

  IMO, this isn't a safety issue worthy of a recall then.

  Any component failure that pops up a warning and allows the driver to safely pull over to be towed for a repair is not a safety concern.

  Obviously, users might expect more of an expensive car - but that's what warranties and consumer protection laws are for, not safety recalls.