>I wonder if you exclude "recalls" resolved by software updates, for all cars, where it would rank then?
Why have you put "recalls" in quotes? It gives the impression you think this makes it somehow lesser. The cybertruck, for example, was subject to a recall because the rearview camera wouldn't come up, but the mirrors are insufficient to back the vehicle up safely without the camera.
That's a safety issue, irrespective of whether or not the fix was in software.
The problem is that those issues shouldn't happen on a public road vehicle to begin with. Tesla's approach is shipping beta software to customers, and using them as testers. This is an insidious practice in modern software development, but is criminal when that software is running a 3-ton vehicle, regardless if it can be fixed with an OTA update or not. There are reasons why strict car safety regulations exist. You can't just sell early access cars and fix issues as customers experience them.
Absolutely. It's easy to see that with Volvo - they had their own operating system called Sensus that could only be upgraded at the dealership and you know, maybe it wasn't the flashiest thing but it worked fine. I've owned a car with it for nearly 5 years and it has never crashed for me once or really did anything weird - it's as stable as any automotive software should be imho. And then they swapped over to AOSS(android based) and it's a complete mess, people have been complaining about bugs and crashes literally constantly, and forums are just full of people going "are you on 3.452.123? They fixed that bug in 3.465.234, you need that update" and the updates literally come out every week, but now owners are worried whether an update actually fixes anything or of it makes things worse again. And I 100% blame the OTA updates for this, they just come in fast and thick clearly without the engineering rigor that automotive software should have.
Is AOSP running any of the critical systems that would make the car undrivable or unsafe if it crashed? Or just IVI stuff? If the former that is horrifying.
It's running the infotainment display(the one in the centre of the car) , but not the driver display. Fortunately I've never heard about the driver display crashing while driving, so at least Volvo had the good sense of making sure that is solid - but the infotainment display is known to crash frequently requiring a hard restart(you hold the button under the display for at least 10 seconds then the entire thing reboots), which maybe it's critical but means you can't change any of the climate controls(other than windows demist since it has its own button, thankfully) while the screen reboots.
Correct, the car can function without the infotainment system but you lose conveniences like climate control, the backup camera, and sometimes even audio, which is weird because you get no feedback from the turn signals. It’s not great but not an immediately pulling over kinda thing.
As an embedded software developer: 100% yes. Having a cheap OTA option will always lead to more sloppiness in development; the problem is that this makes it possible and easy to delay "features" in general when software projects are behind schedule (instead of delaying everything), these delayed features/releaes alone are then additional surface for bugs/regressions to slip through testing.
For the manufacturer this is still mainly a win I'd say... possibly even for the customer (because he gets features and fixes faster, at least), even though it sounds bad.
I would argue that often the car or other hardware being delayed is not an option and so you get rushed software anyway, that has to be dealer serviced. We’ve seen that a lot in cars now that they’ve started having non-trivial amounts of software that is expected to multi-task. I don’t even know how many networks your typical EV has, it’s usually at least 4 or 5.
Think about how, even in software, knowing that a physical shipping of a product (CD / Blu-ray) can be updated from "day 1" has led to poor quality releases with last minute patches.
The cost of having to physically recall / resend CDs back in the day meant that what went out had to work. The cost of sloppy software has now been externalised.
Back in the day it was a major milestone for video game projects to "go gold". It meant that the rigorous QA process was passed, and that retail copies were ready to be manufactured. Since that involved significant costs and physical logistics, companies certainly didn't want major bugs shipped at this stage. There were some exceptions, but ultimately this led to much higher customer satisfaction. Removing this "inconvenience" for companies and allowing them to ship updates and fixes at any point is a major reason why most modern game releases are a clusterfuck at day one. They treat it as public betas, and day one customers (or, worse, preorder suckers) are testers and a replacement for a QA process they don't have. It's essentially crowdsourced development. This also allows them to hype the game up to boost initial sales, and then go "oops, sorry" while they finish implementing it. This scam has been pulled numerous times over the past decade+, yet these companies keep doing it because it's profitable and there's no legal accountability for it.
The fact these practices are now seeping into software on which human lives depend is criminal, and should be prosecuted and strictly regulated.
Physical media is almost entirely dead, and will not exist in a few years anyway. So, yeah, the move to digital releases, pervasive DRM, and live service games make preservation difficult.
I hope industry heads realize that they're actively pushing consumers towards piracy. These days you often get a better experience with a pirated game than a legally bought one: it runs better without DRM and doesn't infect your system, you can play it offline, and no license change will take it away from you. At least GOG seems to be the only store giving you DRM-free and offline installers, but not all games are released on it.
Right but physical media is not dead because of consumer demand. PS4 physical games were huge.
In the US there are still a lot of regions where a 50-100 GB download is just not reasonable.
I know console manufacturers hate retail and the used market, and want that sweet direct income. but it would be a powerful brand move to set higher standards for the physical release. I believe Nintendo has gone this direction.
I get it's wrong in cars. But who the hell cares about games? So your game updates after a month with a fix. So what? It's not like you pay for the update.
People who pay for a working game to play probably care. I'm not a gamer but I occassionally will try to pop something in every six months or so. Two hours later after I have to sign in from a controller, update the OS, then update the game I'm over it. I can't say that's all from shitty software development but some of it probably is.
It’s bad business because it gives your most enthusiastic customers the worst experience. It’s good business because it pulls revenue forward and sometimes pulls revenue into higher seasonality.
Those two somewhat offset and you end up with the classic business decision of whether quality is important.
Tell that to your kid this December, when you gift them a new console and a newly released game. Watch the wonderful experience of it taking forever to download a few gigabytes of patches from overloaded servers, and then not starting anyway because auth/billing/DRM/other bullshit server couldn't handle the demand.
Game studios love releasing around Christmas. I'm surprised they're not being held accountable for ruining that holiday for kids year over year.
People say this a lot but there were in fact examples of software being released back before ubiquitous internet patching that were broken.
For example, no copy of Space Station Silicon Valley for the N64 is completable because of a bug that prevents you from collecting the final plot device.
I'd say it's definitely worse now, with nothing meaningful being on the disc you pay $70 being insane.
Like I said, there were some exceptions. But the current state is reversed: most games ship broken/incomplete at launch, and the exceptions are when a game is actually complete and relatively bug-free.
It's not a matter of not relying on patches or updates altogether. The issue is when companies use this as a crutch to offset their shoddy development practices. Or worse: scamming consumers into buying their broken/incomplete game, and then taking years to deliver a stable experience or what they advertised (No Man's Sky, Fallout 76, Cyberpunk 2077, etc.), shutting down (Redfall, The Day Before, etc.), or straight up taking the money and running. Consumers are lucky if they even get their money back. Thankfully most storefronts have decent refund policies, but that's not an excuse.
The saddest thing is that a lot of people either don't care, or end up forgetting about this if companies appear to work hard to ship updates, which is how they eventually gain their good will back. The reputations of studios like Hello Games, CDPR and even Bethesda are practically untarnished despite of their scams, which gives them the freedom to keep doing this.
It sure seems to be that way with pure software products. I'd not be surprised if is the same with embedded software in things like cars if they can be easily updated.
Back in the days before home internet was common I worked at a place that developed software for personal computers. The software was sold in retail stores such as Egghead, CompUSA, etc on floppy or CD.
Management was very insistent on high software quality. If a bug got through that was bad enough that an update to existing customers was needed the only option, aside from the small number of customers who would be able to use a modem to download an update from a dial up BBS, would be for us to mail them a floppy or CD with the update.
Even minor bugs that could be easily worked around by the customer were bad, because we had no means of contacting our customers except by writing or calling those who had filled out and returned in the prepaid registration card that was in the box when they bought the software. Instead what would happen is they would call our toll free support line.
Remember, this was not a subscription service. It's a one time purchase. If someone needs a long support call to solve a problem that could easily wipe out all profit made on that customer and more.
This wasn't just about bugs. If they had trouble using some feature due to poor UI or inadequate documentation that also meant calls to the toll free support line and so management also was very insistent on clear, well written, comprehensive documentation.
Compare to today. Updates are easy, you can have FAQs and searchable support articles on your website, someone will make a Reddit group where your customers can help each other, there will be bloggers and YouTubers posting tricks and solutions that in the old days would have been in the manual, and no one expects everything to work in any given release.
Its not just car manufacturers, ever since SW stopped shipping in CDs the pressure to just ship and fix it with a patch has permeated everywhere. If there was no further opportunity to fix later I wonder would the Boeing issues have been as prevalent.
Because car industry regulations haven't caught up with cars being software on wheels yet. Most regulations in general haven't caught up with software eating the world and the "move fast and break things" mentality. This is not just an arguably bad mentality, but when human lives are at stake, it's a very dangerous one as well.
Besides, companies the size and influence of Tesla can lobby their way out of regulations. With Musk now becoming more politically involved, it's doubtful we'll see any of this change in the next 4 years at least.
I'm not sure I agree. From the perspective of a customer, not being able to drive the car due to it being unsafe is the part that matters, not where and how the manufacturer has to fix it.
If you're opposed to it based on the assumption that it wouldn't take as long, I agree that might be true, but by that logic we should be categorizing _all_ recalls based on length (regardless of whether it's a software update or otherwise), since I'm not convinced that the average length of time until a problem is fixed will always be perfectly split with the software ones being super quick and the ones that would need to happen in person being super slow. What if the mechanics are already aware of how to fix the issue and can do it the same day, or if the software issue turns out to take a long time due to the developers needing a lot of time to fix the bug?
If you're opposed to it purely from the perspective of linguistics and "recall" sounds like "return to the manufacturer", I think I'd disagree due to the word "recall" not being super commonly used for that in other circumstances. If anything, the other usage of the word that springs to mind most readily to me is recalling someone or something "from service", which I think fits perfectly here.
It still doesn't sound right to me. Sure we can get adapted to the new meaning of the term as time goes on, but to me the term has strong implications to physically bring it back, and it is weird that people are claiming that it doesn't.
Surely this causes a lot of confusion at the very least people thinking those vehicles actually have to be brought back.
Recall is the act of officially summoning someone or something back to its place of origin. A product recall is defined as a request to return, exchange, or replace a product after a manufacturer or consumer watch group discovers defects that could hinder performance, harm consumers, or produce legal issues for the producers.
and
A product recall is a request from a manufacturer to return a product after the discovery of safety issues or product defects that might endanger the consumer or put the maker or seller at risk of legal action. Product recalls are one of a number of corrective actions that can be taken for products that are deemed to be unsafe.
It specifically says "request to return."
It's very important because the word "recall" to me is rather about the cost to the business and consumer rather than severity of an issue or it being specifically safety issue.
Recall could be something that is done as a response to a safety issue, but recall could be done for some other reasons as well. E.g. the product could not just be performing as well, but not be a safety issue. There's a defect that means product lifetime will be limited, etc.
I did, just to be safe, once again look up the legal definition of recall (both in regard to cars and other products) and continue to find that it was never written in a way that would make OTA not fit the term. It isn't limited to vehicles, but extends even to perishables for which a physical return directly to the manufacturer is not expected even using a more liberal interpretation of the word.
Here, this is what recall, in this context means:
> A recall is issued when a manufacturer or NHTSA determines that a vehicle, equipment, car seat, or tire creates an unreasonable safety risk or fails to meet minimum safety standards. Most decisions to conduct a recall and remedy a safety defect are made voluntarily by manufacturers prior to any involvement by NHTSA.
> Manufacturers are required to fix the problem by repairing it, replacing it, offering a refund, or in rare cases repurchasing the vehicle.
OTA falls under that. Can you perhaps find some source saying the contrary somewhere on the internet (just like one can find numerous sources proclaiming the earth to be flat)? Yes.
Does that change the legal definition as it has been in place for decades? No.
And if you want to fully ho by whatever some random person may believe recall to mean, then does that mean that product recalls for produce, milk, etc. do not exist according to you, because the item isn’t necessarily interfacing with the manufacturer again, but may just get disposed?
That was my point. If people feel this definition should be changed, more power to them, but arguing that OTA have as of yet not been covered by the definition is just dishonest.
I'd be partial to calling these recalls something akin to "Mitigating unreasonable safety issue", but I feel that for some reason, some people may feel compeled to argue that this wouldn't be fair to Tesla either, no matter how dangerous or forseeable a fault might be.
It’s not dishonest to not want to call something that is not a recall a recall.
You might note that while the definition presented doesn’t explicitly exclude over the air updates, it also didn’t explicitly include them. Very likely because it was written before they were a thing.
In my opinion this definition of the recall uses the original definition, and people are now saying that since an OTA update is not specifically precluded from being a recall under this definition, surely that must be part of the original meaning of the word (which the parent comments have already established is incorrect).
Yeah, the argument is about the legal definition being misleading and confusing and what should be changed, because of the bias and meaning of the word "recall". The fact that most google results will imply physical return of the product is evidence of popular definition and legal definition diverging. In addition the word inherently implies bring it back because of the "re". It doesn't imply "there's a safety issue that needs to be addressed".
> some people may feel compeled to argue that this wouldn't be fair to Tesla either, no matter how dangerous or forseeable a fault might be.
Also the point isn't about whether it's fair to Tesla or not. I don't care about Tesla here. It could be any manufacturer, point is that it makes it seem like it's a financial and logistical nightmare to come, but clicking on headline, it's just a software update.
Of course by now, I've personally seen this in headlines many times and grown indifferent, but it occurs to me still every time.
In my native language the term "recall" has even stronger implications of physical return, it means "call to bring it back". It sounds even more bizarre than in English for a software update.
> [...] point is that it makes it seem like it's a financial and logistical nightmare to come, but clicking on headline, it's just a software update.
If we go by what "it seem[s] like" (to a layperson), we could reasonably argue that the word (scientific) "theory" should be changed because a significant part of the populus confuses that with the definition of hypothesis.
This also, again, ignores that, long before OTA was a thing for cars, the logistics behind recalls for items ranging from meat, over mattresses, to medical equipment, etc. differed widely in execution and financial impact, yet again, have all been covered under the same term.
This started because you stated that by considering severe safety issues as recalls we'd have to adapt to a "new meaning", simply because you felt it is weird that OTA addressable safety issues are covered by that, when this has historically been the accepted, commonly used and well worn definition. If you want to change it, than more power to you, but don't claim that yours is the original definition, when it isn't. Especially since terms like these are regulated to ensure companies cannot weasel around them.
> In my native language the term "recall" has even stronger implications of physical return, it means "call to bring it back".
German? If we go purely by the literal definition of words, then I'd question why no one ever saw fit to complain that a recall/Rückruf rarely contains an actual call (or shout in the case of German) to the customers affected.
Add to that, is it really reasonable to just point at the most literal definition a, both well established and for good reasons regulated, word has? One that, again, has been in use for decades across many product types where the remedy was not having to bring the item to a garage for a fix to get wrenched on?
Idiomatic expressions exist, I hope deadlines aren't taken literally at any modern workplace.
Nilpferd also sounds bizarre considering they are closer to whales than horses, evolutinary speaking, yet we somehow manage, so I feel Rückruf isn't even close to the worst offender in that regard.
Not German. Okay, from other side of the view. Why not change it? It's clearly confusing a lot of people, and with such an important topic, where people would have to pay attention.
> but don't claim that yours is the original definition, when it isn't. Especially since terms like these are regulated to ensure companies cannot weasel around them.
I'm not claiming it's an original definition. It's just a very confusing and misleading term, that gets used in odd ways.
Someone in here suggested "Public Dangerous Defect Notice". Doesn't have to be this, but what about something similar?
In general, I think trying to replace a word gets increasingly hard the longer the replacement is than the original (in terms of letters for writing and syllables for speaking). I have a hard time imagining people being bothered enough by the current term to be willing to say something four times as long (or using five times as many characters-worth of space on the page in an era where online news is already struggling to keep people's attention).
And the word "Email" has strong implications to actually putting a piece of paper in an envelope with stamp, and physically delivering it to their mailbox. But the world adapted and survived the change in the strong implications of the word "mail", somehow, and continues to turn on its axis.
Is there no difference between a software "recall" and a software update?
I'm imagining (uneducated guess) that the software is updated more often than it is recalled, and so a "recall" is an update that addresses a safety issue.
Specifically speaking on software and tesla most/all recalls are for items that no longer comply with a government rule. No argument, the rules should be followed but I do believe there is a shade of gray as a number of them are imo tail events. They should be fixed but I would not classify them as the car cannot be used because safety is an issue.
"The Boombox function allows sounds to be played through an external speaker while the vehicle is in motion, which may obscure the Pedestrian Warning System (PWS) sounds. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 141, "Minimum Sound Requirements for Hybrid and Electric Vehicles"
"A software error may cause a valve in the heat pump to open unintentionally and trap the refrigerant inside the evaporator, resulting in decreased defrosting performance. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 103, "Windshield Defrosting and Defogging Systems."
" A factory reset muted the Pedestrian Warning System (PWS) sounds. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 141, "Minimum Sound Requirements for Hybrid and Electric Vehicles."
"An incorrect font size is displayed on the instrument panel for the Brake, Park, and Antilock Brake System (ABS) warning lights. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 105, "Hydraulic and Electric Brake Systems" and 135, "Light Vehicle Brake Systems."
Outside of these there are a handful of FSD recalls and a couple that are more critical, like rear-view cameras not working due to software. Stating again for the eventual naysayers, all of these absolutely should be fixed but I believe they are shades of gray in terms of how critical they are to safety.
Honestly, some of these read like “Three ton car can be driven into people if the steering wheel is applied in the wrong direction. Constitutes danger to public safety and cannot be used.”
That was my only point too. Tesla has lots of issues and the cyber truck is no stranger to it but most of the recalls people cite are not true safety issues.
Yeah, I think there's a significant difference between "Tesla decided to push a software update to their cars on their own" and "the government said the cars are unsafe, so Tesla was required to push a software update", and that's worth capturing in the language we use to describe those events.
You are aware I said most right? I am responding to the typical Tesla hyperbole. All issues that warrant a recall classification absolutely should be fixed but I would not go as far to say the vehicle should not be used due to safety. I think I can manage even though the font size in the instrument cluster is incorrect.
That's not to say there are not more serious issues like the rear-view camera that did not work for specific models/software version combos.
My model y has had a number of recalls and I never knew about it. From things to the UI not meeting government requirements to other software issues. It was never unsafe to drive.
Have you even looked at the recall list or are you just spewing the usual Tesla hyperbole? Recalls should be fixed regardless but the vast majority of Tesla recalls are not base case safety fixes. Sure they comply with a government rule for some tail case but hardly the earth shattering situation where the car sits unable to drive because it’s unsafe. Font sizes, boom box drowning out the pedestrian noise…all kinds of things. Hence why I said every recall that I have gotten was not a true safety item. Unless you have experience or facts stop with the hyperbole.
Recall is the industry-standard (and populace-understood) term for “this vehicle has a safety or reliability issue that must be resolved by the manufacturer.” It is all encompassing; anything from possibly loose lugnuts to faulty airbags to engine failures to yes, the reverse camera failing to appear. It doesn’t matter if the manufacturer ships an OTA update, shows up at your house with a loaner and a flatbed to take your car, or requires you to go into the dealership for service, it’s a recall.
It might be industry-standard term, but it’s certainly not understood that way by layman, including car customers. To the public, “recall” will always carry the implication that the vehicle needs to go back to the manufacturer for a fix.
I don't think that's true. Most people are accustomed to there being many "recalls" for trifling matters which can be simply ignored until maybe the next time they bring the car into the shop. A typical conversation about recalls:
> "I changed your oil, and I also replaced one of your door seals because there was a recall for the rubber cracking in cold weather"
> "Oh, okay."
It doesn't colloquially imply that the manufacturer is going to come take your car due to some major issue.
Maybe for you? All the recall notices I’ve ever seen are of the “Device may electrocute you if used improperly” variety. Those were definitely very strong suggestions to immediately discontinue use and get a replacement.
Maybe this is one of those situations where the US uses this term differently from the rest of the world? In a way that waters the term down so much that it might as well be meaningless?
>Recall is the industry-standard (and populace-understood) term for “this vehicle has a safety or reliability issue that must be resolved by the manufacturer.”
Exactly. But not just for vehicles or other durable goods. We see recalls of all sorts of food products[0] pretty regularly, and no one has to bring their carrots or ground beef back to the store/manufacturer to "remediate" the issue. Rather, you just throw it away.
And such activities are unfailingly called recalls.
> "recall" is a legal term, it means the vehicle is not road-legal and requires immediate action
No it doesn't. Sometimes it does, but certainly not always.
I drive a Ford Everest (SUV version of the Ranger). It has an open recall at the moment for a software issue where if you obstruct the power windows while they're closing, they may not detect the obstruction and stop automatically.
I can continue to drive the vehicle, I just need to get the issue rectified when I next get it serviced.
If I have a flat tyre it's not a recall. Not everything about not being road-legal and requiring immediate action is a recall. That's a bad definition.
It wasn't a definition. The person you replied to used "means" in the sense of "necessarily implies", not in the sense of "is precisely equivalent to". That's what the symbols in my earlier comment meant.
E.g.
> "Murder" is a legal term, it means the act was premeditated.
Somebody who says that is not claiming that all premeditated acts are murder.
There’s been recalls over paint, watertight seals, etc issues that impact a vehicle’s lifespan. Generally the kind of thing a company fixes not to be sued, or just cheaply maintain a solid reputation.
There’s also a “safety recall” system run by NHTSA, which is what most people think of by recall. Which then has a bunch of reporting requirements so people who aren’t taking their cars to the dealership still get notified.
Note that many recalls have nothing to do with legality to drive or immediate action.
Last time I took my car in they handled two recalls: the bracket for the spare tire could crack (mine wasn’t) and a floor drain plug was the wrong size.
Very few recalls are urgent or prohibit the car from being g driven.
It might be the correct technical term, but general interest publications like Wired should avoid jargon that confuses laypeople, especially in headlines.
Because the term "recall" often technically means "issue that put public safety at risk". But would you want that spelled out every time if you were a marketer?
This is a point which comes up regularly when discussing right to privacy laws (hello EU). Startup culture wants to move fast and break things - including my bones in this case - while evil regulations only come in the way of progress.
> Startup culture wants to move fast and break things - including my bones in this case - while evil regulations only come in the way of progress.
All car companies comply with thousands of regulations, and it's fine. If you have a simple view of the world, I don't think inverting it and claiming the people you think are the baddies hold that inverted view is going to get anyone closer to understanding anything.
> You can't just sell early access cars and fix issues as customers experience them.
But then how will you know what you HAVE to fix. /s
To be frank I find the whole Tesla cult to be mind blowing. Seems to be the realization of believing in something that seems so good to be true alwith a company who promises to do so many great things, delivers non road worthy vehicles and people still dedicate their time and money defending them.
Is it sunk cost fallocy? Or just people who just wish Tesla was what they promised they would be?
If you remember how some kids in school argued over which gaming consoles were best or whichever Transformer would win over another. I think it is the same concept 'fanboyism' among those Tesla apologists.
Of which sunk cost were a huge thing. Your parents bought you only one...
All of my Tesla updates have been production updates. All software has bugs, and Tesla is one of the most innovative and responsible software companies. Compare that to Microsoft, for example. Or Oracle. Lots of their software runs medical systems that are mission critical.
How about the latest Palo Alto networks vulnerability? Lots of critical infrastructure behind their firewalls.
All in all, I'd say Tesla is among the top on software and hardware engineering, and I'd hire any of their engineers in a heartbeat.
It's not just Tesla. All the online services you depend on are run this way, and none of it's regulated. Governments don't know how to regulate software companies like Tesla. They know how to regulate people constructing homes, cooking food, and building bridges but most attempts at regulating software development have petered out. This is a good thing. Thanks to Tesla's modern approach to car manufacturing it is now possible for anyone in the middle class to purchase a self-driving bulletproof truck that's faster than a Lamborghini. You can't make this stuff up. I swear.
Why do Tesla people see servitization and paying for something in perpetuity forever as being such an enabling thing for people? We need to own the things we pay for, not rent them. In a decentralized way. A car is a machine that needs to be capable of functioning completely independent of everything else. There is no reason it should be a PaaS other than to extract as much value out of the market as possible.
Companies need to leave some value for regular people to live.
If Tesla is a software company rather than a car company, then did you also consider Wework one rather than office rentals? Honestly interested why their, as of now, main product shouldn’t define the type of company they are.
You can apparently lease a Cybertruck starting at $1000/month. That is definitely within range for someone on a 90k income, even if it is isn't the most financially smart thing you can do.
Was it MKBHD who made some weird claim that he spoke to a bunch of people, "most of whom thought the cyber truck was closer to $1M and were amazed to hear it was more like $100K"?
I have NEVER heard that. It makes zero sense and sounds more like the fever dream of a Teslarati: "Wow, I know the median home price in my area is $500K, and the median household income $80K, but all of a sudden there is this explosion of million dollar Teslas on the road!"
I need to ask - is this a joke? No, Tesla is not particularly bulletproof compared to other cars. Its doors may stop a 9mm sure enough, but the windows won't manage even that, and anything above 9mm will go through the doors as well. And 9mm is not even that common among criminal shooters, they usually go for bigger calibers / higher penetration naturally already.
I think recall in quotes because the original meaning of recall was that you had to return (recall) the thing to the shop so that it could be fixed. Like when the brakes might fail and I have to schedule an appointment to bring my car into the shop for a week seems different from pushing out a software fix to adjust the AC temperature or whatever. It seems more like an "update" like when Apple pushes out a fix to the iPhone. They call that an update, not an iPhone recall. (However, your camera example does sound like a major issue.)
Well, the OED definition of 'recall' is "official order to return to a place" and a software update or fix requires no return to the place of purchase. I wonder how may legally defined 'recalls' Microsoft Windows has experienced with each new version.
I think the gist is "recall" is the same saying "safety issue that needs to be fixed in the software or hardware" since we don't have a word for software issues, which carry a bit more weight on a fly-by-wire vehicle like the Cybertruck.
Interesting to note that this thread seems to be full of a lot of people choosing to be pedantic over the word "recall" rather than taking a critical look at the Cybertruck and it's issues. While I agree that language is important (and dynamic), I suspect that discussion around this vehicle is also charged by politics and sycophantic thinking.
If I remove my personal opinions about Musk, I find that I actually do not hate the Cybertruck. Sure, I think it looks absolutely stupid and it bothers me that the flat paneling does not line up perfectly, but I am also cheering on it's attempts to break some rules, try something different and possibly spark some future innovation. With that in mind, it's easy for me to expect that it will have problems since anything new that breaks the mold tends to, so with that reframing, a lot of recalls make sense and could even be looked at as good since solutions are being developed.
People are pedantic over this because they have a strong association from their past with this term and now it is being used unexpectedly. No matter how bad Tesla's issue might be, then maybe a different wording has to be used to highlight the issue. As right now it seems as if when the term is used it is almost intentionally made to seem as if the vehicle has to be physically transported back which would be a logistical and financial disaster. Sure, safety issues can be bad, but it is entirely different level of feasibility of physically recalling back all those vehicles. Why are people pretending it is not?
The whole issue is a spectrum of consequences. Right now it seems that the term used confusingly is always justified because the issue is binarily bad in the first place.
> Interesting to note that this thread seems to be full of a lot of people choosing to be pedantic over the word "recall" rather than taking a critical look at the Cybertruck and it's issues.
Being pedantic over a single word out of 100 is HN's bread and butter. How many times have you read a comment here that boiled down to "The author's entire article is invalid because in paragraph 3, word 65 he used the wrong word!"
Bonus points when the poster is himself also wrong about the meaning of the word, as is the case in this thread where people don't know what a "recall" is in the automotive world.
I suppose that is probably true, but I hate to generalize...then again, I am guilty of generalizing and being pedantic, myself.
We do kind of exist in a strange space where the meaning and intention of words matter for the sake of clarity, but to ignore the dynamic nature of language results in less clarity. If that makes any sense?
I think the 'pedantry' is actually trying to push back against the politics and whatnot, in a way.
As others have noted, 'recall' brings to mind physically returning an item. I have, repeatedly, had to clarify to people that it was actually an OTA software update, which - to most people - is a lot less significant than the idea of having to return your car several times a year.
They are called recalls because that’s what the term for legalisation mandates. They are issued when a vehicle is unsafe to drive and they are mandated because a manufacturer is required to take a lot of steps to remedy their failure. If they fail to repair the issue they are forced to issue full refunds as an example.
So no, the word recall is used because is the official terminology used for these issues regardless of the solution required to fix them.
The word does have its origin in a world where solutions were rarely software updates. That they are software issues make them no less serious though. I suspect that in some cases the software issues might indeed be far more dangerous than errors which mandate physical recalls.
The important part is the legal obligation to produce a safe product.
If that doesn't happen there are legal consequences.
The fact that software is involved changes exactly nothing. And honestly - the entire industry needs to get over the bizarre belief that software has a magical right to be less performant, less competent, less reliable, less robust, and more consumer hostile than hardware, just because it can be updated.
At the very least, it puts the quality control of Tesla in question, as those are failures which should have been caught PRIOR to a commercial launch.
Tesla is treating its product-launches like it's just some browser-game in the cloud, instead of treating it as what it is: The handover of a 6000 pound bullet into the hand of a customer who will fire it into a crowd in expectation to not hit anyone...
The word recall sort of implies that the vehicle is recalled to the manufacturer. Calling a software update that happens in your garage at night and takes 20 minutes a “recall” definitely is worthy of quotes.
The word bug sort of implies that the device was struck by a terrestrial arthropod animal. Calling a software defect that happens due to a programming error a "bug" definitely is worthy of quotes.
(The etymology of a word can be quite different from its current meaning today.)
Focusing on the dictionary definition of the word "recall" seems pedantic.
Not all recalls are for big mechanical problems. I've received several recall notices for issues that just required the dealership to flash the ECU or some other controller with new firmware. Whether that update is flashed OTA or with a special dongle at the dealership doesn't really make a difference if you're looking at it from the perspective of vehicle safety/reliability/stability. The point is that a recall is a significant enough issue that the manufacturer _must_ notify their customers about it.
I agree that if you count _every_ OTA update as a recall, you can't really do an apples-to-apples comparison. The cost of pushing an OTA update is much lower than the cost of a recall, so Tesla probably pushes a bunch of minor OTA updates that other manufacturers wouldn't bother with. But it's a fair comparison if only some subset of OTA updates are counted as recalls (i.e. updates addressing a safety issue).
> The word recall sort of implies that the vehicle is recalled to the manufacturer.
It does not, no more than gaslighting implies lighting a gas lamp or the phrase crossing the Rubicon implies actually crossing a river in Italy, in any case. It hasn't meant anything of that sort since the mid-sixties.
Recall is what legislation requires you to call it if something is unsafe for public use and it has to be withdrawn for the market until it's remedied. It doesn't matter how that's done. The NHTSA guidelines don't include physically getting the product to a manufacturer or a distributor as a requirement to issue, or as a criteria for fulfillment, of a recall. (I don't think recall guidelines in any industry do, it's just the NHTSA's that apply in this case).
Yes, this also applies for firmware upgrades. No, it doesn't matter where they're performed. The FDA has issued firmware-related recalls for devices with programmable logic since programmable logic in medical devices was a thing so like... fourty years. If anyone in some company's safety staff just learned about that's let's all please give them a warm welcome to the 20th century.
The main reason why recalls typically involve returning the product to the manufacturer (or, more often, as the vast majority of recalls are for food, medicine or cosmetics, to the distributor) is traceability. Manufacturers need to maintain documentation that shows they took reasonable action to notify all customers, that depending on how they chose to handle it they made repairs for free, replaced them for free, or that the refund they issued made reasonable allowances for depreciation, and so on. Some foodstuffs or medicine also have disposal safety rules that require you to maintain adequate documentation as well. It's just the easiest way to deal with it, both in terms of remedying the actual issue, and in terms of legal risk.
But it's got nothing to do with returning something to the factory, it hasn't meant anything of that sort in like half a century.
Once again, an intelligent post such as yours has been lazily downvoted simply because somebody doesn't agree with it, and they can't be arsed composing a coherent rebuttable. This leads to unpopular ideas being buried, groupthink and a lack of intelligent discourse.....
....And yes, this IS leading to this place becoming more and more Reddit like (no, that isn't a tired cliché, no matter what the FAQs claim).
Downvoting needs to be reserved for comments that detract from the conversation. At this rate, we will need some form of meta moderation to ensure this happens.
> Downvoting needs to be reserved for comments that detract from the conversation.
I understand where you're coming from but truth is a post like that one does detract from the usual excusemaking conversation that some companies enjoy here, so I'm not surprised it was downvoted :-). It's one of the many ways in which karma points killed online discourse. I just happen to be old enough to have racked up a lot of pre-karma posting (including, of course, flamewars, what would life be without spice?) so downvotes don't really register on my radar.
If you think about the financial implications then probably yes. Software issues, safety related or not, can probably easily be fixed OTA and thus don’t even cause a fraction of the costs a (let’s call it "real") recall costs.
Also, in the head of most people, I think, a recall is something where the car needs to be returned physically. But still, obviously, the issues can be as serious as physical issues. It’s just that we’re used to physical recalls.
Getting an OTA software update to your vehicle is far less disruptive to your life than having to take it in to the dealer. Obviously safety issues shouldn't happen, but how easy they are to fix also matters.
"Recall" is wording that means (to me) the vehicle needs to be physically returned to a dealer workshop for something to be done.
That it's used for OTA updates just (to me) means they should use some more suitable wording for it. And yeah, as other people have pointed out it's the word used for the legislation. I still think they should use some kind of different wording though.
Maybe, to eliminate ambiguity (and make it sound cooler), they should call it a "roadworthiness directive", similar to "airworthiness directive" for aircraft. Of course airworthiness directives are issued by the authorities (the FAA in the US), while "recalls" are from the manufacturers, but still...
Maybe Tesla doesn't deserve to have the world redefined around them to make their products look less shit?
This conversation happens every single time Tesla produces a product that is legally unsafe. We keep having this conversation because Tesla keeps making an unsafe product.
A recall is about the issue, not how it's resolved. A recall means there are some serious security flaws that needs fixing. Even if they can be fixed OTA, they're still a flaw, and Tesla has had many of those.
Couldn't agree more. Recall means "sufficiently dangerous to need to recall the vehicle to the manufacturer" - yes, in the modern world it can be fixed OTA, but it's still dangerous enough to require a mass fix to a fast-moving death machine.
>The cybertruck, for example, was subject to a recall because the rearview camera wouldn't come up, but the mirrors are insufficient to back the vehicle up safely without the camera.
Every vehicle since 2018 has been required to have one for safety. No car or truck is sufficiently safe without one.
I suspect that’s a bit of an exaggeration by the author. If the mirrors were not required by law and therefore comply with the law they wouldn’t exist. “The best part is no part”
Yeah the cost is negligible if you are already planning to have a screen running chrome on Ubuntu server, but I hope it was still an option not to have that.
Uh no. Pretty much every single backup camera on every single vehicle is the exact same little module that produces analog video and literally just runs a component cable to the head unit which has a standardized analog video input.
Well, "recall" implies both a safety issue and a convenience issue. Pre-Tesla OTA updates a "recall" was a logistical nightmare, meaning you had to take the day off work, wait at the dealership all day, sometimes deal with a loaner car, etc.
To a lot of folks, maybe older than the average HN user at this point, the reason recalls were such a hated thing was not primarily that it implied a safety defect, but because they were super inconvenient.
For example, I had a recall on my Tesla having to do with the automatic window closing being dangerous. That is a safety issue, and I do have kids, so I realize that there's a very small chance they could damage or lose a finger with it, so I do want it fixed. But because it was fixed OTA, I don't really mind it or hold it against them. In contrast, if fixing it meant taking it into a dealership and losing a day, it would be a hugely negative thing! I ascribe a negative sentiment to the fact that there was a safety issue in proportion to the chance of damage and how severe it was, so: minor.
In other words, I know why it's called a "recall" and it makes sense. But on the other hand, you have to realize why people put it in scare quotes, too. The plain denotation of the word hasn't changed, but the connotation is really disproportionate to the experience of someone with a Tesla.
Very few others have recalls that can be done OTA. Even if it is just software, expect an hour to days at a service center to do the update, if the techs can figure it out.
For Tesla, the software recalls are nearly automatic (one click install, just like other update), such that few owners even know that their car ever had a recall.
Sure, but "recall" in the automotive market has a very precise meaning, and refers to safety issues (at production line level, so impacting many VINs)that needs to be fixed. In Tesla's case, unlike most of other vendors, generally these recalls can be fixed with an OTA update.
The CT OTOH had many "classical" physical recalls due to hardware issues.
This is kind of true. Say what you want about Tesla, but they have the best software experience out of the other car manufacturers. I love my BMW i4, but had to take into the shop just to fix a botched softwares update. Well, at least the cabin is silent.
I've bought several new cars in the past few years and zero of them have had a recall I'm aware of, software or otherwise. My old car went almost 20 years with just two recalls that I can remember.
Even ignoring software recalls, then, the Cybertruck has a significantly higher recall rate (per unit time) than anything I've owned, so the fact that it has had even more recalls that could be serviced OTA is really neither here nor there. The user-facing software systems in these modern luxury cars really do seem to cause a lot of issues.
I've seen plenty of articles, contemptuous tweets, etc. that conflated OTA updates that were classified as 'recalls' by the safety authorities with physical issue recalls.
And I'm annoyed that the article didn't provide the answer itself.
(I'm in the "I think Elon is a dick but Tesla is pretty cool and SpaceX is awesome" camp personally, so bad criticism of Tesla annoys me not just on a basis of hating bad criticism of things in general but also because I get doubly annoyed when somebody criticises somebody I believe *is* worth of criticism and then manages to do it inaccurately ... you're in a target rich environment! Stop shooting at squirrels instead!)
> I wonder if you exclude "recalls" resolved by software updates, for all cars, where it would rank then?
Why would you?
A recall is part of *safety* process, where company internal safety lifecycle failed to a level that adults had to step in and say "this is actually unsafe, fix your shit or it gets pulled out of market".
The fact that issue can be remedied with software update is irrelevant, because in the end the core issue is that an unsafe product was distributed to the market.
The fact that you put recall into quotes is telltale sign how Tesla managed to undermine public safety concerns drawing a divide between software-only and hardware fixes.
Recalls come in two types, soft recalls that can be fixed by a software update, and hard recalls that cannot. Many people are still not used to regarding the former as recalls, as they associate the word not with the safety issue itself but the way it gets resolved. It would be nice for articles discussing recalls to point out what type it entails, both for being more immediately informative, and to get people used to software updates being able to qualify as recalls.
> I wonder if you exclude "recalls" resolved by software updates, for all cars, where it would rank then?
While I agree that the term "recall" is overloaded, the Cybertruck has had some pretty spicy safety related "recalls". Issues that, frankly, it should not have been allowed onto public roads with.
> I wonder if you exclude "recalls" resolved by software updates, for all cars, where it would rank then?
That depends, are you also going to exclude recalls for other cars, like one I got last year, "Please insert this piece of paper between page 129 and 130 of your owner's manual. It contains supplemental information about the operation of a vehicle system"?
Or will only CyberTruck get this special treatment?
Completely unrelated to safety, these vehicles don't look like they are aging well. They are all completely new but the ones I am seeing on the road already look a bit beat up. That finish on them and their general styling emphasize every minor blemish.
Car panels are convex on nearly all other cars for very good reason. Flat panels are structurally susceptible to damages which wouldn’t mark a standard panel. Adding a highly reflective surface was another great move.
This has been normal/understood since pre-demo phases.
The "car youtuber" culture around shitting on this car is almost as laughable as the car itself.
I wonder what tests car companies generally do to predict how durable a style choice is (how scratches, corrosion, etc will impact the look). Protecting your brand is also about what people will see in the future, not just what is on the showroom now. If 5 years from now all of these vehicles look terrible that won't help sales for any of their models.
I know in the past they've looked at data from used cars, and they also have HALT/HASS (highly accelerated life/stress) testing which does things like e.g. spray the car with concentrated salt solution in a wind tunnel, things like that.
I believe many manufacturers also look at data from people like Munro & Associates who tear down cars, figure out what they're made from, and how they were made.
You ever notice how all cars look like all the other cars? There's rarely an exception, they mostly just copy each other. They seem to stick to a design, then someone makes an enormously brave move of slightly changing some small thing, and next year they all copy it.
I thought their having a 'patina' from use was part of the original schtick, before they even came out? I know that was one aspect that made me go "huh" and think they might be onto something interesting.
Stainless steel can definitely rust. Leave your favorite knife in the sink for a few weeks and watch what happens, especially if it has any scratches on it.
It has been terrible! I’ve been asked to transport large items for friends, and had to deal with excited children wanting to take pictures with it. When there was an extended power outage recently I didn’t get the chance to have the “real” outage experience because my truck powered my house. If only I had listened to HN and Reddit.
Just poking fun :P You can't drop one hundred thousand dollars on one of the ugliest gimmick vehicles ever made and not expect at least a little bit of stick.
The PNW is distinctly dry during the summer, which would compose at least half of the months you have owned it.
Also, in my experience, it’s road salt/ice melt chemicals that really exacerbate rust rather than just rain. I assume that is why I see a lot more old cars everyday in PNW compared to the northeast.
Salt was bad for cars. (Having had a 80s car that was rusting badly). There was a hole in one of my rear wheel wells. Salt/ sand got into the hollow steel and rusted from the inside out at the base of the passenger door. It was was bad all over however.
Cars are galvanized now so they don’t rust. Is that truck running bare stainless with no finish?
Yeah my truck has been running bare this whole time and I don’t plan to change that. I’ve parked it near a house by the ocean for days on end so it probably got some salty condensation on it.
most people care about scratches because they look like shit.
paint is a bit more than just corrosion protection at this point, otherwise mfgs would just slap on the thickest toughest machine-tool grade enamel and call it a day.
To each their own on this matter because styling is a matter of taste. I remember the shift from the '70s style boxy cars to the mid to late '80s rounded style cars. I wasn't a fan of that new style when it came out but it did eventually grow on me.
For me the cybertruck looks like something out of a low budget'70s Sci-Fi movie. Who knows in 10 years maybe it will start to appeal to me but for right now it doesn't.
Nah, it's objectively not good-looking, and in a few years it'll be more obvious. There are probably more than 0 people who still genuinely think the Pontiac Aztek looks good, and they're wrong.
I’ll agree that there are cars that just look bad.
I love my Honda Element, but even I admit it’s not a great looking vehicle.. it’s old enough that it’s no longer sticks out, though easy to find in a parking lot as few cars are shaped that boxy.
The article has about equal time about what Cybertruck owners dont care about, safety, reliability, etc.
> Similar to other critics (earlier this year, a CNN reviewer called the pickup a “disturbing level of individual arrogance in hard, unforgiving steel”)—Drury believes Cybertruck buyers are people “who think ‘I don’t care if I kill people when I drive this thing down the street,’” he says. “There aren’t many of those people out there, so there’s a relatively small market for the Cybertruck.”
What's the term right wing folks use? Virtue Signaling? The cyber truck is that.
People buy them because they are politically charged, and you can be seen as a tribe member.
But I kinda think it's sad, because I think most tribes make fun of the cyber truck buyer, so they've bought a very expensive, very shoddy ticket into an in group, only to mark themselves as an outsider who bought their way in.
Like nearly all gigantic trucks driven in cities (and almost never off road), though the cybertruck is a new low in likelyhood to kill innocent pedestrians. The most accurate term for this phenomenon is either Emotional Support Vehicle or Gender Affirming Vehicle.
CT owner here. Maybe I’m just more boring than the usual person who gets this truck, but my reasoning for getting one was a lot more simple than this. “My Teslas have been great, this one looks cool, my family can benefit from having a truck, I’ll put down a deposit!”
Not sure which group I was supposed to be buying a ticket into. Around where I live the group seems to be Asian men with families, but I was already a member of that group before the truck :)
I hate the idea that just being a hater is a bad thing and horrible and you're smearing the good, honest, hardworking Tesleratti.
Sorry, these are expensive, multiple-ton machines being sold at incredible profit, and we all deserve to get to take pot shots at it. We collectively pay for the privilege
Why are people spending so much money for something so hideous and so defective? Is this a weird fashion thing? My old 2017 Kia Soul costs about 5x less and has had 0 defects.
One might, but that would be incorrect. Trump received ~77,000,000 votes[0], which was 49.9% of the votes cast. As such, plurality is the appropriate term in this case.
What's more, there were ~240,000,000 eligible voters and ~161,000,000 registered voters at the time of the 2024 election.[1]
So the winner received less than a majority of votes cast by a small margin, and less so among registered voters (~48%) and even less so among eligible voters (32%).
Being anti cyber truck is also a political statement. It’s just a truck but for some reason it tends to trigger so many people because it’s “ugly” even though there are plenty of ugly cars (G wagons, Kia Souls, new Broncos, etc) that don’t elicit such a strong response.
Not only do they pay, they come here and rabidly defend all its flaws in the face of so much evidence to the contrary!
"Oh the recalls are just software updates, so it's fine there were so many safety issues with my car, they fix them quickly and I don't even buy half the regulations are important anyways"
"Oh it's fine if the trunk cuts your finger off, who puts their finger in a trunk anyways?"
So, for me its about returned utility per dollar per life of product. Numerically, this seems a complete no brainer by possibly more than an order of magnitude. That is why I asked if this is just about a fashion statement, because my dollars and time perspective absolutely cannot understand why anybody would purchase a vehicle with possibly less utility for so much more money that costs so much more to maintain. I am trying to understand, but just cannot see it.
The only thing I can imagine why people would defend the more expensive option is due to vanity. I suspect that is important to some people. As somebody more cash strapped it just seems absurd, at least to me.
I'll answer this in good faith if you're willing to listen!
Am a happy CT owner. I paid an amount that is in line with a "fully loaded F150" according to a google search. I consider the two vehicles fairly comparable both on price and on features at a very broad level, but of course different people value different things.
Why I like it: the looks, the performance, FSD, the covered/secured truck bed, convenience (no more gas stations or regular oil changes & tune-ups).
One benefit that I didn't even know when I bought it, is that if you get some hardware installed at your electrical panel, the truck can actually serve as a whole house battery backup. This was huge last week when the PNW had a windstorm that took out power to 500K houses. My family was able to stay at home, comfortable, well-fed, and entertained. Many of my friends and coworkers had to book far away, expensive hotels and throw away everything in their fridge/freezer.
Are these "recalls" just simple over the air software updates? Just because car people are not used to this doesn't make it necessarily bad. Obviously no bugs are better than some bugs. But people here tend to know how software development works.
This always comes up. A “recall” is not a description of the remediation, it is a description of the problem.
A recall is a public dangerous defect notice. The dangerous product version can no longer be deployed, existing systems suffering from the dangerous defect are identified, and then the version with those dangerous defects is removed from the market with all due speed by either refunding, replacing, or remediating at the manufacturer’s expense. The defective version is thus no longer present, i.e “recalled”.
The term has a precise meaning as I laid out. Unfortunately, it has been so thoroughly intentionally poisoned by bad actors in recent years that the term should be retired. We should use the descriptive term: “Public Dangerous Defect Notice” to avoid such bad faith misrepresentation going forward.
To your point, both things can be true. The CyberTruck can have recalls worse than 91% of all 2024 cars, but many of its recalls can be cheap to for Tesla to fix.
I think that is where the two clusters of people that I see commenting here are converging / possibly arguing past each other.
One popular form of headline that comes to my mind from business new channels of which I remember no specific instance basically goes like this: “Car manufacturer recalls X many cars costing over them Y dollars because of some fault”. X is usually in the tens of thousands or more and Y is usually in the millions of dollars (now maybe tens of millions of dollars).
> The term has a precise meaning as I laid out. Unfortunately, it has been so thoroughly intentionally poisoned by bad actors in recent years that the term should be retired.
Nah, that's a sleigh of hand. Recall literally means recall. Whatever the actual technical definition, the common-man understanding has always been "manufacturer asking you to give your car back, because they screwed up badly enough to be legally forced to fix it". The focus is, and always has been, on the physically give your car back to manufacturer part.
The precise meaning you laid out? That's arguably a typical case of using ancillary aspects of a thing as a proxy, because they're much easier to precisely pin down than the thing you actually want. Think every other term explicitly defined in any contract - the definition tends to not be what's intended, but something that mostly overlaps with intent and is easier to spell out concisely.
The overall point being: regardless of what the technical meaning of "recall" is, if you put Tesla's OTA fixes together with everyone's repairs that require shipping the car itself to the manufacturer, and then treat them all as equal, that's just blatant, bald-faced lie, a clear indication of purposeful dishonesty.
> A recall is issued when a manufacturer or NHTSA determines that a vehicle, equipment, car seat, or tire creates an unreasonable safety risk or fails to meet minimum safety standards. Most decisions to conduct a recall and remedy a safety defect are made voluntarily by manufacturers prior to any involvement by NHTSA.
> Manufacturers are required to fix the problem by repairing it, replacing it, offering a refund, or in rare cases repurchasing the vehicle.
So the person you're replying to seems to be correct, or is there another source that shares your claim that "the focus is, and always has been, on the physically give your car back to manufacturer part"?
There's a lot here about technical and legal definitions, but from the customer's perspective what they mostly care about is the inconvenience associated with a physical recall.
Most people are accustomed to our phones and devices (auto-)updating, so software recalls just get mentally bundled in with that.
The reporting seems dishonest because (in the mind of most readers) the headline exaggerates the inconvenience of Tesla ownership. Even though logically people shouldn't necessarily conclude that (because of the technical/legal definition of "recall" already discussed), that's still going to be the general public perception.
> There's a lot here about technical and legal definitions, but from the customer's perspective what they mostly care about is the inconvenience associated with a physical recall.
No, customers care about the safety of their vehicles.
If there wasn't a safety issue, then customers could safely ignore the recall notice and experience no inconvenience.
> No, customers care about the safety of their vehicles.
People can (and do) care about both safety and inconvenience, to varying degrees. The exact degree depends on the level of safety risk and the level of inconvenience.
Your odd claim that people don't care about inconvenience is unsupported by data or just plain common sense.
I see you didn't even try to refute that the article will predictably mislead the average reader (classic "lie without lying") about the level of inconvenience for owners.
> Your odd claim that people don't care about inconvenience is unsupported by data or just plain common sense.
This is a bizarre interpretation of my comment. Of course people care about inconvenience. But obviously the people who bring in their cars to a dealership for a recall care more about safety than about inconvenience, because ignoring the recall notice entirely would be much more convenient.
> I see you didn't even try to refute that the article will predictably mislead the average reader (classic "lie without lying") about the level of inconvenience for owners.
The article didn't even mention inconvenience. That's a red herring. On the contrary, the article said this:
Most Cybertruck buyers pay scant attention to longevity estimates, believes Edmunds’ Drury, and plenty probably aren’t exercised by recalls, OTA or otherwise, he said. “Cybertruck customers are in it for the stares and glares—they don’t care about how many times [this vehicle is] going to be recalled over 30 years,” says Drury. “They’re buying this car for now, with zero thought to the future.”
> The article didn't even mention inconvenience. That's a red herring
It's not a red herring, it's the primary point I was making.
Point is, the impression most people will undeniably take away from "many recalls" is that the vehicle must be in the shop all the time, and it's a terrible customer experience. This impression is of course incorrect.
Remember that most readers don't even read past the headline. You and I and most HN readers are the exception. Obviously the Cybertruck customers themselves know better (we both agree on that), but it's still misleading language that predictably leaves the wrong impression with potential customers.
You can argue that readers "ought to know better," but that's disingenuously ignoring the way the headline will actually be interpreted by real people in the real world.
The only surprise is how many smart people rush to defend the media using a transparently obvious "lie without lying" tactic, but I guess that's why it's so effective! Smart people don't even detect the mislead (Curse of Knowledge). The smart folks who do see it immediately get nerd-sniped into full-blown denial of the "lay misinterpretation" by the seemingly irresistible temptation of a smarter-than-thou semantics argument (see above).
I guess we're fine with media misinformation if we can tell ourselves it's because the reader is dumb, and if "other tribe bad" companies are the ones who got smeared.
> My point is, the impression many people will unavoidably take away from "many recalls" is that the vehicle must me in the shop all the time, and it's a terrible customer experience.
I still think you're missing the point. The biggest problem from many recalls is not time spent in the shop; rather, the biggest problem from many recalls is many vehicle safety defects that are deemed worthy of a recall. In other words, many possible dangers from driving the vehicle. It's an indicator of poor design and quality assurance, which can also reduce the expected lifespan of the vehicle and slash its resale value.
> Remember that most readers don't even read past the headline.
Do we really need to care about these people?
I've been blogging for almost two decades now, and it's very hard to write a fully informative, fully accurate headline. There just aren't enough characters available, unless you write an absurdly long headline. I have no doubt that the news media experience the same problem. There's no good solution for willful ignorance.
I really have zero sympathy for how non-readers of articles ignorantly misinterpret headlines. You can't idiot-proof the news.
> No, customers care about the safety of their vehicles.
Yes. But safety is a spectrum, and is denominated in inconvenience against perceived expected loss - perceived, because people round the loss down to 0 when they feel like it won't happen to them.
See: how many people don't fasten their seat belts, or hold a phone in their hand while driving, despite both being highly dangerous to life, limb and wallet, and against huge social and regulatory pressure.
See also: how many people ignore or tape over error lights on the dashboard; how many people don't repair stuff until absolutely necessary.
See also: how many people try to bribe their way through yearly inspections, and would happily skip them entirely if the law didn't force them.
So it's like GP said: people mostly care about how much time and money they're going to waste on the newly discovered problem. A recall involving the car being physically taken to manufacturer is hugely disturbing, possibly very costly (it's not like most people drive for fun). A recall involving an OTA update? That's "just another auto-update ¯\_(ツ)_/¯". Most people won't even notice it happening.
Putting the two types of "recall" in the same class is, from regular person's POV, deception through equivocation.
Some people do not care about safety so we should change the definition of what a recall is and blame an article for being deceptive?
You gave a bunch of examples of some people not caring about safety then generalized to everyone. You may be in a bubble, or you may not be, but you're presenting zero evidence to call the article deceptive.
The people who won't wear seatbelts, who tape over dashboard lights, who would skip inspections, will also ignore recall notices, so for them, for those who don't care much about safety, dealership recalls are not an inconvenience. And they probably don't care one way or the other about OTA recalls either.
The people who bring their vehicles in for dealership recalls do care about safety, otherwise they would have ignored the recall notice, like the people who don't care.
You can compare the vehicle software updates to non-vehicle software updates. Those who don't care about security will happily ignore security updates and continue to use old versions of the software on their computers forever. And those who do care about security will update, even if the updates tend to cause other problems, such as removing features or otherwise making the UI worse.
Yes that's a much better term. In peoples minds "recall" means MY vehicle has to be transported somewhere to be fixed.
For the individual customer, a recall can be a massive frustrating hassle, which an OTA isn't. That doesn't change the severity of the issue, but a model that has 9 physical recalls to fix some brake issue, and 1 OTA update is going to be seen as a disaster, while a model that has 0 physical recalls and 10 OTA updates will be seen as a pleasure to own.
Recalls in consumers' minds are a frustration measurement more than a safety record. Most recalls are about very small/hypothetical risks, so the risk I want to avoid when I look at manufacturers recall history is the risk of having to fix my vehicle physically. Because that's a real/large risk, while the risk of it catching fire spontaneously could be catastrophic but is usually tiny.
> Recalls in consumers' minds are a frustration measurement more than a safety record. Most recalls are about very small/hypothetical risks, so the risk I want to avoid when I look at manufacturers recall history is the risk of having to fix my vehicle physically.
Recalls are frustrating precisely because they're safety issues. Otherwise, customers could safely ignore recall notices and experience no frustration.
There's no law that says a customer has to respond to a recall. That's entirely voluntary.
True, but tiny risk of catastrophic failure will be addressed by owners almost no matter how trivial. And it won't see as a relief by me that I managed to fix it before it spontaneously caught fire, I'll still see it as a frustrating failure by the manufacturer. Because I can both see it as a near-zero risk, and still do it with near 100% certainty. Especially if I don't know whether the window for fixing it easily/for free could close and it could affect the second hand value of the car.
> And it won't see as a relief by me that I managed to fix it before it spontaneously caught fire, I'll still see it as a frustrating failure by the manufacturer.
In this respect, there's no difference between OTA updates and dealership repairs.
Taking time out of your schedule is indeed frustrating, but manfacturer defects that could kill you, maim you, harm your car, or make it malfunction are also frustrating, regardless of how the defects are fixed.
Think about non-vehicle software bugs, like in your computer operating system. Those are frustrating, even though they can be fixed OTA.
Just because we tolerate it doesn't mean others should too.
Legacy industries view software projects as a 1-and-done deal. The "we'll fix it live" approach in tech is a short-coming of our discipline. We can ignore it when failure means a mild inconvenience. But, hard engineering isn't as forgiving.
Even if the fix is 'just' a software update, the bug can put lives at risk. [1]
Each industry and its regulators come with certain norms. Cars are expected to be delivered as 'complete' products. If Tesla can't abide by that expectation, then that's their problem. Don't drag the entire software industry into this.
> Just because car people are not used to this doesn't make it necessarily bad.
Of course it's bad. If this were a purely software discussion, would anybody be saying "It's OK they have a bazillion zero-days every year because they're quick to fix them when they learn about them"?
Also, remember that the flipside is also true: with aggressive OTA updates, they have the ability to create new issues that weren't there to begin with. I wouldn't trust somebody with that bad a QA track record to not introduce new issues.
Mine has two physical recalls active, but they’re not serious so I haven’t scheduled any maintenance yet. Unlike my Honda civic a couple of decades ago which had an airbag that was killing people. That one I got taken care of quickly.
It is not the only one. While it's true this affects roughly 1/5 to 1/3 of all Cybertrucks sold so far this year (depending on which random sales numbers online you believe), some of the others have affected every Cybertruck sold, such as the wiper motor burning out or the pieces of bed trim falling off while driving.
I cannot find any evidence that previous physical recalls this year only affected a few hundred units. Two are 2000+ units and the others seem to be however many had sold by the date of the recall (10k+ in both instances).
Except that this is car development with clear guidelines and if you don't adhere to them you have to live with your bugs being labeled as recalls. People should be made aware of when players don't adhere to industry standards with safety implications and you don't get that by just sweeping them under the carpet as "bugs".
Recall means safety issue, which is necessarily bad. It's nice that they can fix these things over the air, but there was still some elevated risk before they caught it.
Despite this, seems like at least the regular Teslas are among the safest vehicles on the road all things considered.
I think the tone of the article was really strong and, to me, it seemed biased because they repeated multiple times that “the buyers only care about looks.”
A more in-depth article might point to the CyberLandr, and until I went 4x4 camping, camped out of a truck, I didn’t realize how awesome a CyberLandr might be, or how nice it is that “Mother Nature’s pin striping” is a solved problem for a stainless steel skin. Or how nice it would be to do all that without all the engine noise (I get accused of “not being a car person” simply because I like peace and quiet - but EVs are cars so why can’t we love those too?).
I think the article intentionally mischaracterizes the reasons for wanting a CyberTruck, and prescribes that “you must be a shallow person who doesn’t care about practicality or reliability.”
Well thank you for telling me who I am!
Oh and why would anyone slander Tesla? It’s not like they are a publicly traded company where slander and praise affect the share or option prices. Surely they couldn’t have ulterior motives.
Why there is always so much fuss about labels? Across so many different domains. Cars needed OTA update to be driven safely. Why is it important whether we call it a recall or not?
I am not trying to make a point here. Clearly some people care about that. I'm legitimately curious why.
I'm not worried about the label, but I am worried about the implication - since software made the jump from physical to digital/OTA distribution, there's been a decline in software release quality because "we'll patch it later".
The historical financial punishments to writing buggy software are gone, and now it's infecting cars I'm concerned that safety standards will begin to slip and potentially injure someone.
Side note: I know a common response to buggy software is the market won't pay because it takes longer to develop etc. But writing robust software is a hard skill,and it you haven't seen an industry write robust software for a long time, why should you trust they still can?
> Clearly some people care about that. I'm legitimately curious why.
Because it hurts the feelings of Tesla owners who not only own at least one Tesla vehicle, they also own at least one $TSLA share and they think it's some conspiracy to destroy their share value.
I saw my first Cybertruck the other day. It looked less weird in person than I expected it.
It's a very different and new design. How many of the 91% we're comparing to are completely new designs. What's the correct benchmark?
Let's rewrite the headline. "A radical new EV design from Tesla, the Cybertruck, is already ahead of 9% of all 2024 vehicles in quality as it just ramps up production".
I'll likely never own this - not my style. But I can appreciate doing things differently and being successful at that. Getting those gas guzzling truck owners to go electric would be nice too.
In a vacuum I would agree with you, but it fails in lots of predictable ways, and doesnt really offer any utility as a new design. And where they tried to engineer around these issues they often over engineered instead of removing the problem.
I honestly like the way it looks, but I am happy I never preordered it or anything. The reviews are shocking. Even the positive reviews tend to hyperfocus on situations that can be capably dealt with by a standard hatchback. You can take a honda jazz across more terrain.
Its a failure, one that was likely very familiar to HN members. I am sure that internally engineers made every single one of these issues very apparent to management and they shipped anyway.
The word 'utility' in the comment you're replying to specifically means how the design functions, not how it looks. For example, it's a truck that's design makes it worse for carrying cargo in the tray than a standard truck.
> word 'utility' specifically means how it functions, not how it looks
Yes. Not offering utility in design is common in cars. Most people don’t buy a truck to haul. Most people don’t buy an off-roader to go off road. (Most people don’t buy a sports car to race.)
But if they do need to haul or tow something, they can.
> Most people don’t buy an off-roader to go off road.
But if they do need to go off-road, they can.
> Most people don’t buy a sports car to race.
Sports cars can be enjoyed (relatively) legally on the street. Quick acceleration combined with very good handling and a sense of connection to the road is a feeling you can enjoy at 55mph. Many people won’t drive their sports cars to the limit, but they are still a more enjoyable driving experience than a regular car for people who care about that.
A cybertruck can’t really haul things, it can’t really tow things, and it can’t be that fun to drive. I hope it’s at least comfortable, but based on my experience with their other vehicles, I doubt it.
Let me revise that: I’d be surprised if more than half of the trucks on the road have ever hauled anything.
> cybertruck can’t really haul things, it can’t really tow things, and it can’t be that fun to drive
This reminds me of people who complain about expensive garments being impractical.
That isn’t the point. They’re articles of fashion. Same as most trucks and sports cars. Cybertruck is outselling the F-150 Lightning. Consumers don’t care about hypothetical utility.
> There are legitimate criticisms of Musk and Tesla. "I don't like how someone else's car looks" is not one of them.
Whether or not other people like your look is of course not the be-all and end-all of fashion, but it's certainly relevant. "I don't like how it looks" is a legitimate criticism of an article of fashion.
I think this is an interesting point. What IS a criticism of fashion, and how should it be taken?
"I dont like how this looks" isnt a universal truth, and isn't a prescription for others.
It seems like with the CT, there is a vocal group of people who seem upset that others like them and that they exist at all. I seems to extend from "I dont like how it looks, and you cant either."
I think they look cool and fun. Cost an utility wise, I'll take my contractor truck every time. I understand however that other people have more money and different priorities.
I suspect what people are actually bothered by is the underlying reality that some people simply have an extra $80k to drop on a truck because that is cool and fun for them.
That doesn't explain why the Cybertruck bothers people more than other expensive things. And the rich have always been ready to express horror at the tastes of the poor (and even more so, the tastes of the slightly less rich). It can't all be about feeling hard done by.
I think people tend to be grumpier about things they consider ugly if those things take up a large amount of public space. People get similarly riled by brutalist architecture.
But really, there's nothing new about people having strong feelings about other people's tastes. Fashion is as much about communication as personal pleasure.
I wasn't indending to explain the whole CT phenomenon. I was mostly intending to explore the concept of fashion/taste criticism in general. Namely what people expect it to communicate, and what people expect as a response. With fashion, you often dont want or care about others adopting your taste. It can be about control, but isnt always.
I think the CT hate taps into something more deeper than fashion for most people, relating to politics and culture conflict. It makes people angry in a way at more expensive and even less practical Maserati doesn't.
> but it fails in lots of predictable ways, and doesnt really offer any utility as a new design
In what ways has it failed predictably? There are a number of things that could contribute to various failures/recalls that relate to utility provided by the (novel) design. For example the steer-by-wire system or the mid-voltage (48 V DC) electrical system.
The main example of "this is just dumb design for no reason" is the recall due to the pedal cover sliding up and jamming, but that was only 1 out of 6.
Well cars generally get wet. The stainless steel getting tarnished in the rain is a predictable failure, even if we assume some of the ones showing rust are overblown. Not even the only cosmetic failure, it seems like the panels dont ship well, which should be very foreseeable.
Needing a specialised Car Wash Mode to protect the interior. They very obviously saw the issue coming, did engineer around it. Any other car manufacturer would simply try and make the vehicle as watertight as possible in all scenarios.
Frunk causing injuries. (I would add the word "frunk" is also a fail state but thats subjective)
Theres hundreds of these, all you need to do is find a couple of cybertruck owners complaining without feeling the need to be defensive.
I'd hazard a guess that making it pointy, shiny and prone to rusting is not what many people would call "radical and new". DMC was what, 40 years ago? And that one didn't rust as far as I remember.
The only people I know who were genuinely impressed by cybertruck are 1. My father in law who was visiting USA and does not know how to drive, and 2. My 3yo son.
> Let's rewrite the headline. "A radical new EV design from Tesla, the Cybertruck, is already ahead of 9% of all 2024 vehicles in quality as it just ramps up production".
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess. Personally I think they look hideous. That doesn't bother me. To each their own and all that. What does bother me are all the problems. Consumer Reports went into this. There are numerous videos about it.
For example, it has steel panels but... an aluminium frame. That's an odd choice. If you're towing something heavy then up and down motion makes the frame prone to snapping.
Big trucks (eg F150, F250, F350) exist because of a quirk in regulation where so-called "work vehicles" were exempted from emissions standards. This part is a real shame because the US doesn't have vehicles lik the Toyota Hilux, which actually have an equivalent tray size and would be much more economical to run.
An electric truck may allow a smaller truck because it's not affected by emissions (obviously). Perhaps battery weight makes this impractical. It would be nice. I mean some people import Japanese K trucks now.
Competition-wise the Ford F150 Lightning looks like a much better proposition. It looks like a truck. It's built on a proven frame. Still, sales seem to be weak. For work vehicles in particular (and, yes, a lot of trucks aren't work vehicles; they're essentially ornamental) could be quite limited by EV charging issues vs the convenience of filling up a tank of gas.
> "This part is a real shame because the US doesn't have vehicles like the Toyota Hilux"
Yes! That was the first and only truck (or any car) I've ever owned! It was just called the "Toyota Pickup" in the US but it's the same model that was named "Hilux" in many other countries.
I used it to drive ladder racks and paint around Denver while I was in the house painting business to pay my way through college. It had almost 200k miles on it when I gave it to my dad after I graduated and decided to move abroad. To the best of my knowledge, he's still driving it and when I last asked him about it several years ago, it had well over half a million miles on it.
At least for autos made in the 90s, Toyota's quality was unmatched. My dad is a former plane mechanic and has undoubtedly extended its life, but I had no idea what I was doing and that pickup seemed virtually impervious to normal wear and tear. It's a shame it was discontinued in the US.
> Getting those gas guzzling truck owners to go electric would be nice too.
Congratulations, you solved 1 issue related to car dependency and proliferation of huge vehicles, namely tailpipe emissions. Now the other 99 remain.
The solution to gas guzzling trucks is "boring", it's good trains, it's protected bike lanes in urban environments, it's smaller and safer cars in less dense environments, etc. But these things don't make Mr Musk money :)
Trains will not enter American suburbs, nor will most truck drivers consider biking as a valid alternative.
I'm all for better transit, but it doesn't change that the trucks/SUVs keep selling and getting more polluting, and will do so for decades as part of the fleet
Train stations are in many of the Chicago suburbs already and take on average 280,000[1] commuters to and from downtown Chicago on a daily basis (it's called the Metra system).
Hell, I just found out those same commuter lines extend all the way north to Kenosha, Wisconsin, and east to South Bend, Indiana, so into neighboring states. I did know people who commuted to Chicago from Indiana everyday so that's not too surprising.
Sorry but they are not solutions to gas guzzling trucks. Trucks are utility vehicles which carry things. Materials to building sites, hay bales to fields, sports equpiment to the beach/river etc. These functions are not going to be replaced by bike lanes, trains, and small efficient cars.
The real solutions are hydrogen and synthetic fuel.
No more a death machine than a Cadillac Escalade or a Dodge ram truck. There's lots of criticisms you can make about the cybertruck that are exclusive to the cybertruck but this isn't one. This complaint is about bad drivers. The rise of all the driver assist technology is enabling bad drivers to believe that they are better than they are. This is across vehicle brands.
Aren't all trucks? Wouldn't the sensor suite and auto-braking make it maybe somewhat safer? Is this something that gets tested for by car manufacturers?
Also, the hood + "grill" is significantly lower. A pedestrian would bounce (although uncomfortably) instead of hit by a wall and run over like most other trucks / SUVs.
I'll never buy one but I suspect a lot of the "AHA GOTCHA" attitude coming from more traditional car-oriented media is coming from a place of not liking an upstart.
There's just a lot of easy things to point at with the Cybertruck because of what was promised vs what was delivered. This happens with model cars from other manufacturers too though what changes there is often more looks than promised functionality.
There’s a pretty big difference between traditional auto markers’ “concept cars” and Tesla in 2019 showing off what was supposed to be very close to the final production car. It was also supposed to start at $40k, be bulletproof, have shatterproof glass (at least that one was discredited the minute it was announced), have a boat mode, have over 500mile range, and have a bed ramp. And it was supposed to have a “exoskeleton” design that, spoiler alert, isn’t possible. That was not “here’s this neat concept,” that was “this is the car we’re going to sell you.” Everyone (or at least, everyone in my bubble) knew that every single thing was BS (except maybe the ramp), but still nearly two million people with enough money for a pre-order gobbled it up.
Would you expect anything different from a brand new product? It's like version 1.0 of any software. Wait until at least 1.1 and let someone else shake it down.
It reminds me of the Chevy Bolt. Fabulous car, after all the recalls.
I recently saw one painted primer black and immediately felt like going home so I could watch Johnny Mnemonic.
It appears to be a triumph of aesthetic over function, needing only EL-wire underlighting to look like it escaped from the Tron storyboards and into low-poly life. I could only wonder if the entertainment system comes with a hidden Sirius/XM channel that only plays vaporwave music.
Does anyone know what the deal is with Cybertrucks coming in different colors all of a sudden? I thought they were only sold as bare steel? But now I see matte black cybertrucks regularly.
Tesla offered wraps for a while. They've recently discontinued the option for the Cybertruck, although it is still available as an option for other models.
Of course, anyone can still get a third party wrap.
Had same question so parked next to a black one. It was wrap. Since then I seen green, pink and blue cybertrucks; all wraps with companies advertising. All of sudden majority I see are small business owners wrap-advertising. Rarely see the steel one. This is for Miami FL.
It was on the ordering page, but... that has changed?
Hmm... ordering a cybertruck was different a month or two ago. For example cyberbeast used to come with full self driving and the home power interface. It also talked about wraps (which you had to order through the app?) and which would schedule at the service center.
Now the website has changed, fsd is 8k, and no mention of wraps during cybertruck ordering.
man, the internet is being so weird about this truck it's absurd.
Like its shape is weird and 'dangerous', but the F150, RAM truck etc etc are MORE dangerous shape wise, but because it has a 'conventional' shape and the change happened gradually, some how it's ok?
The strangest was the carrot test, they kept doing this test the Cyber truck frunk... but guess what, same happens if you put carrots across the opening of other EV truck with auto close... I saw a video of it same happening with an F150 EV...what even was the point of this whole hullabaloo
I am not American, I don't even have a car, I just hate that this nonsense is polluting my internet feeds.
It's a big car with a long truck, congrats, it's not the anti christ, shut up about it.
exactly, Pedestrian safety of all american trucks is terrible, yet we don't hear about the big speeding wall that are the 'conventional' american truck... but apparently the cyber truck is a pedestrian predator they 'suddenly' discovered.
Either do something about the terrible truck design... or shut up and tolerate the cyber truck like you tolerate the F150 EV or whatever.
Fluff like this just pollutes the EV news space without providing any new info.
Surely the fact that it's a three ton machine that can accelerate from 0-60 in 3 seconds is relevant too. As far as I'm aware the F150 can't match that.
> Surely the fact that it's a three ton machine that can accelerate from 0-60 in 3 seconds is relevant too. As far as I'm aware the F150 can't match that.
The F150 EV has similar weight and speed[1], not sure how it's relevant?
In fact it proves the point, no one talks about how the F150 EV or the Silverado EV etc etc having similar characteristic flaws as the cyber truck, because that doesn't generate clicks.
If anything should be generating articles, it should be the Hummer EV, that things in absurdly big, heavy and fast, even for american trucks... but that doesn't generate clicks.
Cybertruck gets undue attention, mostly negative because clickbait, and we should stop clicking such obvious baits.
Well, no, not exactly, you literally just wrote another reply, right below, explicitly saying no, you didn't mean weight, you meant people talking about the slicing edges of the cybertruck.
It's not the front shape or slicing people. It's the weight. I have no idea why you think anyone is hand-wringing about slicing people. No one thinks slicing people with hard edges is the problem.
It makes sense if you're A) mad about All Duh People Lying About Slicing Car or B) Actually All Heavy Cars Are Bad. You are stuck on saying A but wanting to make sense, as in B, which is at least internally coherent and reality-based, if purist.
> It's not the front shape or slicing people. It's the weight. I have no idea why you think anyone is hand-wringing about slicing people. No one thinks slicing people with hard edges is the problem.
I literally provided links the reply below you mentioned, please read them! they do talk about the weight, but they are much more worried about the shape and its effect on pedestrian collision.
Please read the links, I'll share them here again.
I talk about the front shape and its effect on pedestrian safety.
The article about the cyber truck always talk about how its wedge shape will slice people off or whatever... but the Standard American truck shape (big flat front nose) is just as dangerous, being hit by a speeding wall is not beneficial either.
If publications want to talk about bad truck shapes in good faith, talk about ALL truck shapes! Singling out the truck made by Tesla when the trucks made by other American automakers is just as dangerous is obvious click bait, and just pollutes the EV news scape.
> The F150, generously, is 2/3 the weight. (median F150 vs. lowest cybertruck)
I was comparing like with like, and acc to google the F150 EV is about the same weight as the Cybertruck. (around ~ 3,000 Kg)
Also I was referring to the line in this article where they talk about how it doesn't meet EU regulations, which leads to another article[1] of their, which talks a LOT about cybertruck's bad front shape... (which I must mention for clarity, IS bad)... but make no mention of the even WORSE shapes by other competing American trucks.
Because the fact is... Tesla sells clicks. They reference a letter [2] by the NGO protesting about the (private) import of this particular turck... but said NGO's website makes no mention of OTHER dangerous american trucks privately imported to europe and parading about. The story is not the shape or pedestrian safety... it's click.
Btw, I am not in Europe. I live in a 3rd world country, not sure where I gave that insinuation.
TL:DR; ALL american trucks are terribly shaped and designed or whatever. ALL american trucks have multiple other issues and recalls... as is routine with the damn things.
Yet this particular stupid truck gets posted because it's click bait, NOT because there is some actual information to be gained. We should downvote such clickbait pollution on our feeds.
I love how people who claim to not care dedicate so much time to telling everyone how much they don’t care. You could have just not posted. But clearly you do care a lot. Get help.
I care about EVs and climate change and emission reduction and all that.
What I don't care about is the Electric vehicle news feed being polluted with irrelevant nonsense when there are far more important news to be shared.
I don't care about the Cybertruck's oddities... because those oddities are common to other american EV trucks and therefore bring nothing new to the table.
That is an industry green wash to make you buy a new car.
There are multiple other technologies which will surpass EVs efficiency, and wont require scrapping 1.5 billion existing cars or disposing of huge battery packs after 10 years.
You are preaching to the choir, I an a public transit advocate.
But I am also a realist, and as much I'd like buses and trains, we are going to have private cars anyways, and if private cars are inevitable, I'd rather they be electric.
> if private cars are inevitable, I'd rather they be electric.
Thats the issue. The car industry has brainwashed everyone into thinking that owning an EV is the best option for the planet. It isnt. EVs are way more pollutant in creation and disposal. Emissions out of the exhaust pipe are one tiny part of the climate impact of a vehicle.
Replacing Petrol/Diesel with Hydrogen/Synthetic fuel is a much greener option overall.
All credible lifecycle ghg emissions analyses have found that EVs have substantial reductions vs ICE. It is true that they have more emissions from manufacture but this is overcome, on average, in a few years. This is true even on carbon intense electric grids. And their emissions drop as the grid gets cleaner.
The Cybertruck is a likely exception. It's manufacturing emissions are likely enormous and it's likely to be driven less than average since it's impractical.
If we all dump our vehicles and buy EVs, the energy required to to scrap/recycle 1.5 billion ICE vehicles far outweighs any savings we would make and will take decades to recover.
On top of that they have massive chemical battery packs which are horrible to mine the resources for, are useless after 10 years, and cannot be recycled.
The report you quoted confirms all of this.
Simply putting synthetic fuel into our existing cars negates all of that and turns our existing cars tailpipe emissions into water.
The ICEs traded in for EVs don't get scrapped, they get sold as used cars. It's unclear if or how much the transition to EVs will shave off their expected lifespan. It will play out over decades.
Also batteries aren't useless after 10 years. They can be used for grid storage for years after being retired from EV service.
Synthetic fuel schemes are very expensive and haven't proven to be scalable.
If this piece of crap is worse than only 91% of all 2024 vehicles, I really wonder what the other 9%, vehicles that are allegedly even worse, are. The article doesn't name them.
Dude, the thing with these things is that the breathlessness has already exhausted belief. Supposedly Tesla Y was a terrible thing, supposedly everyone was going to die in the heat under the Tesla tent, supposedly Twitter would die in 3 days without their staff.
Nothing happened. Everyone I know who owns a Tesla loves it. So I’m going to file this under “internet hates guy; tries to make it sound like he makes bad things” which people do a lot with Musk stuff.
None of the Tesla cars are one I’ll buy (need 3 rows comfortably - might even buy the new VW electric van) but I’m getting the feeling from the online techies like I did at the AirPod release and the iPad release: my instinct is that this is great stuff; then my friends who buy it love it; then everyone online hates it; then it sells billions of dollars worth.
> supposedly Twitter would die in 3 days without their staff.
I agree people tend to overreact and overblow expected consequences, but I mean, twitter's valuation is down 80%[0] and they haven't released anything new in two years, after exhausting the backlog of already developed things.
> they haven't released anything new in two years, after exhausting the backlog of already developed things.
I'm not a Twitter user, so I might miss the lack of some essential features, but it seems to me that the platform is mostly feature-complete. Just further bloating the software for the sake of it is not necessary a good strategy, yet it is one that a lot of startups follow, just because that VC R&D money has to go somewhere.
There referring to the people who claimed that Twitter would break down following the large scale firings. Every time Twitter went done for a little bit after that, lots of comments here would pop up claiming that the Twitter site would get worse and worse and eventually break apart because of the firings (see the whole discussion here[1], for example). People said Musk didn't know what he was doing, and wouldn't be able to keep the site up long term after the layoffs.
Despite the fact that these predictions ended up being completely wrong, there seems to have been very little reflection from the people who were making them.
The way I see it all these supposed "inefficiencies" got twitter a valuation of 44B and a hub for people across the spectrum to congregate. Firing all these people and goining hardcore mode has only slashed the value of the company by 80% and even more of a cesspool of bots and misinformation, not to mention the exodus of advertisers and a large portion of users.
This is a good example of moving the goals posts. There were lot of claims that [A] would happen. In the end, [A] didn't happen. People say, "maybe it's time to admit that the claims that [A] would happen were wrong," and the reply is "no, [B] happened, so it doesn't matter."
It's certainly possible to argue that Musk hasn't done a good job of running Twitter. But the claim - made by many people here - that the site wouldn't remain function after 80% of the staff was laid off certainly proved to be incorrect.
I wouldn't say that everyone who owns a Tesla loves it. As a matter of fact everyone I know who has bought a Tesla and loves it came from a car that was a lower quality and lower priced car than the Tesla that they bought. The people that I know that came from equally priced or higher priced cars are satisfied with their Tesla but they do not love it.
I think that is a lot of the bias with Tesla owners many of them have never owned a car in that price range before and they bought it because of the hype surrounding the Tesla. Prior to that they would have never thought of buying a car in that price range. Often times when you buy a car in that price range you're getting a better quality car because it's from a manufacturer who's been around longer.
> supposedly Twitter would die in 3 days without their staff.
It’s true that the smaller team has succeeded with uptime on the core service. It’s also true, however, that the platform is in serious decline, and that’s partly due to the product becoming more and more shitty over time. It turns out skeleton crews can’t make things that are nice to use. Have you tried the X mac app lately? It’s just horrible. Broken modals, empty loading screens, janky layout with desperate upsell message slapped everywhere.
Keeping the platform online with a smaller team was a win, sure. But don’t pretend there’s been no impact.
I was actually referring to the financial institutions who backed the takeover writing off ~75% of the value of their investment in the platform during Musk’s leadership, which predates the recent Bluesky enthusiasm.
But since you mention it: yes, a vocal minority of leftists moving to a new platform is indeed a decline! Get your politics out of it and think about what it means for a business. Part of twitter’s value was that it was where news broke, people made statements, etc. It was cited on the news. There was no other platform like that (except perhaps Instagram, usually with pop culture figures). There is indeed a small group of people who, if you lose them, cause enormous damage to a platform like Twitter, because for many people using it they are using it because of the other people using it. Network effects cut both ways.
>I was actually referring to the financial institutions who backed the takeover writing off ~75% of the value of their investment in the platform during Musk’s leadership, which predates the recent Bluesky enthusiasm.
Makes sense. Valid argument.
>yes, a vocal minority of leftists moving to a new platform is indeed a decline! Get your politics out of it and think about what it means for a business.
Nothing. They will all come back.
>Part of twitter’s value was that it was where news broke, people made statements, etc. It was cited on the news.
It still is. Nothing has changed.
>There was no other platform like that (except perhaps Instagram, usually with pop culture figures).
There still isn't. Bsky is no competition in that regard. There's nothing of value for 'normal' people there.
>There is indeed a small group of people who, if you lose them, cause enormous damage to a platform like Twitter, because for many people using it they are using it because of the other people using it.
And yet they are not the people leaving. How many of these supposed giant exoduses were we supposed to have by now? First the death of artists on Twitter after the Japanese left to misskey? Out of whom many are back on Twitter regardless? All the Mastodon refugees, who also in great numbers have returned and only the fanatics have stayed? Twitter is not dying anytime soon and you (and others like you) are once again crying wolf over a situation we've been in multiple times.
> There still isn't. Bsky is no competition in that regard. There's nothing of value for 'normal' people there.
I'm finding Bluesky a perfect Twitter replacement so far. Twitter was becoming a cesspool; an increasingly rancid algorithm that promoted one particular person's politics, and a lack of moderation that meant many conversations just degenerated into abuse.
> How many of these supposed giant exoduses were we supposed to have by now?
All platforms eventually get superseded.
Twitter only thrived over competitors because of the network effect. Other platforms were technically superior / had better QoL, but either had flaws or didn't achieve critical mass.
Bluesky is different. It's as easy to use for the average person, gives more control to the user, is far more civil, and is now big enough already be a replacement.
Almost all the people I was following on Twitter are now posting on there. I followed a lot of scientists, and many have moved entirely. That fewer people are on Bluesky is a feature, not a bug; the signal to noise is more distilled.
My point isn’t that Twitter is dead, remember. It’s that it is in decline. Bluesky isn’t a twitter replacement today, sure, but it’s a risk, even if the risk is only that the end result is fragmentation. I’m not sure why you say it’s impossible for anything ever to seriously damage X. That’s fanaticism.
And as for people crying wolf, remember: at the end of the fable, there were indeed wolves. The boy was lying, yes, but the lesson is not that there was never any danger - it’s that people stop listening.
It's not just leftists. My Twitter feed had a large number of military experts in it since the start of the war against Ukraine. Almost all of them are posting on Bluesky now, and they're certainly not a leftwing group.
I think another interesting aspect is that Musk confirmed that tweets with links to external sources are penalized on Twitter. That would particularly hit the kind of people that make these platforms interesting to me because they also post longer content somewhere else.
I have heard from three Tesla owners how uncomfortable they find the seats during very long drives, so not everyone "loves" it. Perhaps if you don't drive long distances in it, your experience will not reveal this.
I owned a Tesla. I sold it. Loved it for three years then hated it. It became a nightmare to own and the service dept was such a hassle. They refused to fix recall issues, things broke all the time. It was trash, and I was so blinded by speedy car that I didn't notice it was trash until years later.
Where do you live? In the bay area, I know a lot of Tesla owners, and 100% of them are absolutely sick of Elon's antics and are not considering another Tesla. (They also all are sick of the poor reliability and terrible service.)
Seriously. This is a virtually universal opinion in my experience, but, I wonder if it's different depending on the political alignment of your area. People may be starting to consider Teslas as political signaling.
Most of my Asian friends (mostly first-generation immigrants) have Teslas. Same with many Asians (East & South) at work. The politics don't even register, so the evaluation is purely based on utility. Based on that, they all seem to be satisfied.
Among the second-generation Asians there is more political awareness and it's more 50:50 whether they go for a Tesla or not.
Small consolation for the pedestrian who gets run over. Massive cars and distracting screens are two of the main reasons traffic deaths are on the rise, and they're both two selling points people like about Teslas.
Gosh I still laugh at all the "I'm and SRE and I can promise you Twitter is going to fail with all the people he cut" and it had what, 3 blips at most?
They're hard to find now, I assume because of how embarrassed the authors were for posting them.
Not an SRE but I admit to saying that I expected Twitter to have some serious outages in the coming months after firing all those people. Honestly, how did the remaining engineers at Twitter pull it off? I can't really imagine losing more than half of my coworkers and not having the wheels fall off pretty quickly.
Twitter was overstaffed, but much of the "extra" staff the elon fired weren't SREs keeping the systems running, they had to do with things like moderation. Elon doesn't believe in moderation, so out they went, and the skeleton crew was able to keep the site running, for the most part, but now the user experience has gone to hell unless you're a right-wing nutcase, so everyone who isn't is fleeing, as well as advertisers who Twitter even threatened to sue because they weren't buying advertising (!).
a lot of what made X worse since Musk is not easily quantifiable. fewer high-quality posts, much higher spam, next to zero moderation, more misinfo - while it's possible to get some data on this, it's subjective enough that the fans will wave it away.
the problem is that Twitter has been such an invaluable part of the daily doomscroll that i suspect even those who have 'left' it for BlueSky or Threads are still opening X a few times a day - keeping those MAU numbers up.
Twitter for what it is had too many engineers. I think part of the problem was the fad of more workers more hiring will generate more revenue but that was not true and just was a way to prop up the stock value.
I have driven a model 3 and it is hands down the worst 45k (CAD) car I’ve ever driven. Horrible ride quality, uncomfortable seats, terrible (in my opinion - beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose) and slightly dangerous interior, not really all that fast compared to other cars in the price bracket. I’ve also ridden in one with 100k km and it was falling apart - even ignoring the interior, the suspension was horrid (you shouldn’t need new shocks and springs all around after less than 100k lm of driving), the paint was faded to crap, panel gaps were notably worse than when the same car was new.
They are a 15k car at best with 20k worth of batteries masquerading as a nice car. They’re not. They’re a reasonably cost-effective EV, compared to the rest of the market, but they’re not even close to gas cars in the same price range when it comes to anything other than cost per mile.
Everyone’s giving their anecdotes of “no not every Tesla owner loves them” so I’ll give my own. I’ve owned a 3, a Y, and now a cybertruck. These cars are awesome.
We had a “bomb cyclone” last week in the PNW that took out power for half a million homes, and my cybertruck was a lifesaver. Powered my house for multiple days, allowing my family to stay at home. Our fridge and freezer stayed powered and I even ran my clothes dryer one day just because I could. I can’t sing its praises enough after this experience.
The Cybertruck’s recalls aren’t entirely surprising given Tesla’s approach to innovation and production. They’re known for pushing boundaries with ambitious designs and features, which often results in early production challenges. Recalls, while not ideal, are fairly common for first-generation vehicles across the auto industry—just look at other manufacturers when they roll out new models.
What stands out is how Tesla handles these issues, especially with their over-the-air software updates. While hardware fixes are more complex, the ability to address many problems through software gives them a unique advantage in mitigating the impact of recalls.
That said, it’ll be interesting to see how Tesla balances innovation with quality control, especially given the Cybertruck’s high-profile nature. Early adopters probably expect some bumps in the road, but mainstream buyers might be less forgiving.
The article notes that the most recent recall was a physical one, not a software update, and implies that that was unusual.
I wonder if you exclude "recalls" resolved by software updates, for all cars, where it would rank then?
>I wonder if you exclude "recalls" resolved by software updates, for all cars, where it would rank then?
Why have you put "recalls" in quotes? It gives the impression you think this makes it somehow lesser. The cybertruck, for example, was subject to a recall because the rearview camera wouldn't come up, but the mirrors are insufficient to back the vehicle up safely without the camera.
That's a safety issue, irrespective of whether or not the fix was in software.
The problem is that those issues shouldn't happen on a public road vehicle to begin with. Tesla's approach is shipping beta software to customers, and using them as testers. This is an insidious practice in modern software development, but is criminal when that software is running a 3-ton vehicle, regardless if it can be fixed with an OTA update or not. There are reasons why strict car safety regulations exist. You can't just sell early access cars and fix issues as customers experience them.
I wonder whether OTA updates being possible encourages manufacturers to be sloppy with software quality.
They know they can fix problems cheaply. If they had to physically update vehicles they would have a lot more incentive to make updates unnecessary.
Absolutely. It's easy to see that with Volvo - they had their own operating system called Sensus that could only be upgraded at the dealership and you know, maybe it wasn't the flashiest thing but it worked fine. I've owned a car with it for nearly 5 years and it has never crashed for me once or really did anything weird - it's as stable as any automotive software should be imho. And then they swapped over to AOSS(android based) and it's a complete mess, people have been complaining about bugs and crashes literally constantly, and forums are just full of people going "are you on 3.452.123? They fixed that bug in 3.465.234, you need that update" and the updates literally come out every week, but now owners are worried whether an update actually fixes anything or of it makes things worse again. And I 100% blame the OTA updates for this, they just come in fast and thick clearly without the engineering rigor that automotive software should have.
Is AOSP running any of the critical systems that would make the car undrivable or unsafe if it crashed? Or just IVI stuff? If the former that is horrifying.
It's running the infotainment display(the one in the centre of the car) , but not the driver display. Fortunately I've never heard about the driver display crashing while driving, so at least Volvo had the good sense of making sure that is solid - but the infotainment display is known to crash frequently requiring a hard restart(you hold the button under the display for at least 10 seconds then the entire thing reboots), which maybe it's critical but means you can't change any of the climate controls(other than windows demist since it has its own button, thankfully) while the screen reboots.
Correct, the car can function without the infotainment system but you lose conveniences like climate control, the backup camera, and sometimes even audio, which is weird because you get no feedback from the turn signals. It’s not great but not an immediately pulling over kinda thing.
As an embedded software developer: 100% yes. Having a cheap OTA option will always lead to more sloppiness in development; the problem is that this makes it possible and easy to delay "features" in general when software projects are behind schedule (instead of delaying everything), these delayed features/releaes alone are then additional surface for bugs/regressions to slip through testing.
For the manufacturer this is still mainly a win I'd say... possibly even for the customer (because he gets features and fixes faster, at least), even though it sounds bad.
I would argue that often the car or other hardware being delayed is not an option and so you get rushed software anyway, that has to be dealer serviced. We’ve seen that a lot in cars now that they’ve started having non-trivial amounts of software that is expected to multi-task. I don’t even know how many networks your typical EV has, it’s usually at least 4 or 5.
Of course it does.
Think about how, even in software, knowing that a physical shipping of a product (CD / Blu-ray) can be updated from "day 1" has led to poor quality releases with last minute patches.
The cost of having to physically recall / resend CDs back in the day meant that what went out had to work. The cost of sloppy software has now been externalised.
Exactly.
Back in the day it was a major milestone for video game projects to "go gold". It meant that the rigorous QA process was passed, and that retail copies were ready to be manufactured. Since that involved significant costs and physical logistics, companies certainly didn't want major bugs shipped at this stage. There were some exceptions, but ultimately this led to much higher customer satisfaction. Removing this "inconvenience" for companies and allowing them to ship updates and fixes at any point is a major reason why most modern game releases are a clusterfuck at day one. They treat it as public betas, and day one customers (or, worse, preorder suckers) are testers and a replacement for a QA process they don't have. It's essentially crowdsourced development. This also allows them to hype the game up to boost initial sales, and then go "oops, sorry" while they finish implementing it. This scam has been pulled numerous times over the past decade+, yet these companies keep doing it because it's profitable and there's no legal accountability for it.
The fact these practices are now seeping into software on which human lives depend is criminal, and should be prosecuted and strictly regulated.
It’s also bad for preservation because the disc doesn’t actually have the playable game anymore.
Physical media is almost entirely dead, and will not exist in a few years anyway. So, yeah, the move to digital releases, pervasive DRM, and live service games make preservation difficult.
I hope industry heads realize that they're actively pushing consumers towards piracy. These days you often get a better experience with a pirated game than a legally bought one: it runs better without DRM and doesn't infect your system, you can play it offline, and no license change will take it away from you. At least GOG seems to be the only store giving you DRM-free and offline installers, but not all games are released on it.
Right but physical media is not dead because of consumer demand. PS4 physical games were huge.
In the US there are still a lot of regions where a 50-100 GB download is just not reasonable.
I know console manufacturers hate retail and the used market, and want that sweet direct income. but it would be a powerful brand move to set higher standards for the physical release. I believe Nintendo has gone this direction.
Indeed; at this point, a disk is just treated as a cache for speeding up the initial installation.
I get it's wrong in cars. But who the hell cares about games? So your game updates after a month with a fix. So what? It's not like you pay for the update.
People who pay for a working game to play probably care. I'm not a gamer but I occassionally will try to pop something in every six months or so. Two hours later after I have to sign in from a controller, update the OS, then update the game I'm over it. I can't say that's all from shitty software development but some of it probably is.
It’s bad business because it gives your most enthusiastic customers the worst experience. It’s good business because it pulls revenue forward and sometimes pulls revenue into higher seasonality.
Those two somewhat offset and you end up with the classic business decision of whether quality is important.
> So your game updates after a month with a fix.
Tell that to your kid this December, when you gift them a new console and a newly released game. Watch the wonderful experience of it taking forever to download a few gigabytes of patches from overloaded servers, and then not starting anyway because auth/billing/DRM/other bullshit server couldn't handle the demand.
Game studios love releasing around Christmas. I'm surprised they're not being held accountable for ruining that holiday for kids year over year.
There are lots of studios who just run away with your money and never deliver the fixes.
I'm still deeply disappointed about Kerbal Space Program 2,for that matter.
Who cares about a $183bn industry, indeed.
People say this a lot but there were in fact examples of software being released back before ubiquitous internet patching that were broken.
For example, no copy of Space Station Silicon Valley for the N64 is completable because of a bug that prevents you from collecting the final plot device.
I'd say it's definitely worse now, with nothing meaningful being on the disc you pay $70 being insane.
Like I said, there were some exceptions. But the current state is reversed: most games ship broken/incomplete at launch, and the exceptions are when a game is actually complete and relatively bug-free.
It's not a matter of not relying on patches or updates altogether. The issue is when companies use this as a crutch to offset their shoddy development practices. Or worse: scamming consumers into buying their broken/incomplete game, and then taking years to deliver a stable experience or what they advertised (No Man's Sky, Fallout 76, Cyberpunk 2077, etc.), shutting down (Redfall, The Day Before, etc.), or straight up taking the money and running. Consumers are lucky if they even get their money back. Thankfully most storefronts have decent refund policies, but that's not an excuse.
The saddest thing is that a lot of people either don't care, or end up forgetting about this if companies appear to work hard to ship updates, which is how they eventually gain their good will back. The reputations of studios like Hello Games, CDPR and even Bethesda are practically untarnished despite of their scams, which gives them the freedom to keep doing this.
IMO... every OTA/mandatory update should make warranty be extended, as a minimum
Great way to eliminate fixes for minor issues.
It sure seems to be that way with pure software products. I'd not be surprised if is the same with embedded software in things like cars if they can be easily updated.
Back in the days before home internet was common I worked at a place that developed software for personal computers. The software was sold in retail stores such as Egghead, CompUSA, etc on floppy or CD.
Management was very insistent on high software quality. If a bug got through that was bad enough that an update to existing customers was needed the only option, aside from the small number of customers who would be able to use a modem to download an update from a dial up BBS, would be for us to mail them a floppy or CD with the update.
Even minor bugs that could be easily worked around by the customer were bad, because we had no means of contacting our customers except by writing or calling those who had filled out and returned in the prepaid registration card that was in the box when they bought the software. Instead what would happen is they would call our toll free support line.
Remember, this was not a subscription service. It's a one time purchase. If someone needs a long support call to solve a problem that could easily wipe out all profit made on that customer and more.
This wasn't just about bugs. If they had trouble using some feature due to poor UI or inadequate documentation that also meant calls to the toll free support line and so management also was very insistent on clear, well written, comprehensive documentation.
Compare to today. Updates are easy, you can have FAQs and searchable support articles on your website, someone will make a Reddit group where your customers can help each other, there will be bloggers and YouTubers posting tricks and solutions that in the old days would have been in the manual, and no one expects everything to work in any given release.
Its not just car manufacturers, ever since SW stopped shipping in CDs the pressure to just ship and fix it with a patch has permeated everywhere. If there was no further opportunity to fix later I wonder would the Boeing issues have been as prevalent.
Because car industry regulations haven't caught up with cars being software on wheels yet. Most regulations in general haven't caught up with software eating the world and the "move fast and break things" mentality. This is not just an arguably bad mentality, but when human lives are at stake, it's a very dangerous one as well.
Besides, companies the size and influence of Tesla can lobby their way out of regulations. With Musk now becoming more politically involved, it's doubtful we'll see any of this change in the next 4 years at least.
I completely agree, but saying it's a 'recall' when your car sits in your driveway still feels entirely wrong.
I'm not sure I agree. From the perspective of a customer, not being able to drive the car due to it being unsafe is the part that matters, not where and how the manufacturer has to fix it.
If you're opposed to it based on the assumption that it wouldn't take as long, I agree that might be true, but by that logic we should be categorizing _all_ recalls based on length (regardless of whether it's a software update or otherwise), since I'm not convinced that the average length of time until a problem is fixed will always be perfectly split with the software ones being super quick and the ones that would need to happen in person being super slow. What if the mechanics are already aware of how to fix the issue and can do it the same day, or if the software issue turns out to take a long time due to the developers needing a lot of time to fix the bug?
If you're opposed to it purely from the perspective of linguistics and "recall" sounds like "return to the manufacturer", I think I'd disagree due to the word "recall" not being super commonly used for that in other circumstances. If anything, the other usage of the word that springs to mind most readily to me is recalling someone or something "from service", which I think fits perfectly here.
It still doesn't sound right to me. Sure we can get adapted to the new meaning of the term as time goes on, but to me the term has strong implications to physically bring it back, and it is weird that people are claiming that it doesn't.
Surely this causes a lot of confusion at the very least people thinking those vehicles actually have to be brought back.
But it isn’t a new meaning. Rather, those arguing that recall should now exclude OTA want to change a long established definition.
Google "definition of product recall"
First 2 answers in asq.org and wikipedia
Recall is the act of officially summoning someone or something back to its place of origin. A product recall is defined as a request to return, exchange, or replace a product after a manufacturer or consumer watch group discovers defects that could hinder performance, harm consumers, or produce legal issues for the producers.
and
A product recall is a request from a manufacturer to return a product after the discovery of safety issues or product defects that might endanger the consumer or put the maker or seller at risk of legal action. Product recalls are one of a number of corrective actions that can be taken for products that are deemed to be unsafe.
It specifically says "request to return."
It's very important because the word "recall" to me is rather about the cost to the business and consumer rather than severity of an issue or it being specifically safety issue.
Recall could be something that is done as a response to a safety issue, but recall could be done for some other reasons as well. E.g. the product could not just be performing as well, but not be a safety issue. There's a defect that means product lifetime will be limited, etc.
> Google "definition of product recall"
I did, just to be safe, once again look up the legal definition of recall (both in regard to cars and other products) and continue to find that it was never written in a way that would make OTA not fit the term. It isn't limited to vehicles, but extends even to perishables for which a physical return directly to the manufacturer is not expected even using a more liberal interpretation of the word.
Here, this is what recall, in this context means:
> A recall is issued when a manufacturer or NHTSA determines that a vehicle, equipment, car seat, or tire creates an unreasonable safety risk or fails to meet minimum safety standards. Most decisions to conduct a recall and remedy a safety defect are made voluntarily by manufacturers prior to any involvement by NHTSA.
> Manufacturers are required to fix the problem by repairing it, replacing it, offering a refund, or in rare cases repurchasing the vehicle.
Source: https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls#recalls-7746
OTA falls under that. Can you perhaps find some source saying the contrary somewhere on the internet (just like one can find numerous sources proclaiming the earth to be flat)? Yes.
Does that change the legal definition as it has been in place for decades? No.
And if you want to fully ho by whatever some random person may believe recall to mean, then does that mean that product recalls for produce, milk, etc. do not exist according to you, because the item isn’t necessarily interfacing with the manufacturer again, but may just get disposed?
That was my point. If people feel this definition should be changed, more power to them, but arguing that OTA have as of yet not been covered by the definition is just dishonest.
I'd be partial to calling these recalls something akin to "Mitigating unreasonable safety issue", but I feel that for some reason, some people may feel compeled to argue that this wouldn't be fair to Tesla either, no matter how dangerous or forseeable a fault might be.
It’s not dishonest to not want to call something that is not a recall a recall.
You might note that while the definition presented doesn’t explicitly exclude over the air updates, it also didn’t explicitly include them. Very likely because it was written before they were a thing.
In my opinion this definition of the recall uses the original definition, and people are now saying that since an OTA update is not specifically precluded from being a recall under this definition, surely that must be part of the original meaning of the word (which the parent comments have already established is incorrect).
Yeah, the argument is about the legal definition being misleading and confusing and what should be changed, because of the bias and meaning of the word "recall". The fact that most google results will imply physical return of the product is evidence of popular definition and legal definition diverging. In addition the word inherently implies bring it back because of the "re". It doesn't imply "there's a safety issue that needs to be addressed".
> some people may feel compeled to argue that this wouldn't be fair to Tesla either, no matter how dangerous or forseeable a fault might be.
Also the point isn't about whether it's fair to Tesla or not. I don't care about Tesla here. It could be any manufacturer, point is that it makes it seem like it's a financial and logistical nightmare to come, but clicking on headline, it's just a software update.
Of course by now, I've personally seen this in headlines many times and grown indifferent, but it occurs to me still every time.
In my native language the term "recall" has even stronger implications of physical return, it means "call to bring it back". It sounds even more bizarre than in English for a software update.
> [...] point is that it makes it seem like it's a financial and logistical nightmare to come, but clicking on headline, it's just a software update.
If we go by what "it seem[s] like" (to a layperson), we could reasonably argue that the word (scientific) "theory" should be changed because a significant part of the populus confuses that with the definition of hypothesis.
This also, again, ignores that, long before OTA was a thing for cars, the logistics behind recalls for items ranging from meat, over mattresses, to medical equipment, etc. differed widely in execution and financial impact, yet again, have all been covered under the same term.
This started because you stated that by considering severe safety issues as recalls we'd have to adapt to a "new meaning", simply because you felt it is weird that OTA addressable safety issues are covered by that, when this has historically been the accepted, commonly used and well worn definition. If you want to change it, than more power to you, but don't claim that yours is the original definition, when it isn't. Especially since terms like these are regulated to ensure companies cannot weasel around them.
> In my native language the term "recall" has even stronger implications of physical return, it means "call to bring it back".
German? If we go purely by the literal definition of words, then I'd question why no one ever saw fit to complain that a recall/Rückruf rarely contains an actual call (or shout in the case of German) to the customers affected.
Add to that, is it really reasonable to just point at the most literal definition a, both well established and for good reasons regulated, word has? One that, again, has been in use for decades across many product types where the remedy was not having to bring the item to a garage for a fix to get wrenched on?
Idiomatic expressions exist, I hope deadlines aren't taken literally at any modern workplace.
Nilpferd also sounds bizarre considering they are closer to whales than horses, evolutinary speaking, yet we somehow manage, so I feel Rückruf isn't even close to the worst offender in that regard.
Not German. Okay, from other side of the view. Why not change it? It's clearly confusing a lot of people, and with such an important topic, where people would have to pay attention.
> but don't claim that yours is the original definition, when it isn't. Especially since terms like these are regulated to ensure companies cannot weasel around them.
I'm not claiming it's an original definition. It's just a very confusing and misleading term, that gets used in odd ways.
Someone in here suggested "Public Dangerous Defect Notice". Doesn't have to be this, but what about something similar?
In general, I think trying to replace a word gets increasingly hard the longer the replacement is than the original (in terms of letters for writing and syllables for speaking). I have a hard time imagining people being bothered enough by the current term to be willing to say something four times as long (or using five times as many characters-worth of space on the page in an era where online news is already struggling to keep people's attention).
And the word "Email" has strong implications to actually putting a piece of paper in an envelope with stamp, and physically delivering it to their mailbox. But the world adapted and survived the change in the strong implications of the word "mail", somehow, and continues to turn on its axis.
How does e-mail have that implication when it specifically has e in front of it?
> not being able to drive the car
I had plenty of recalls and it never happened even once that I could not drive the car before the recall.
Maybe better, shouldn’t drive the car because of safety issues
This is hyperbole. Most of the Tesla recalls that I can remember did not impact the safety of the vehicle.
Is there no difference between a software "recall" and a software update?
I'm imagining (uneducated guess) that the software is updated more often than it is recalled, and so a "recall" is an update that addresses a safety issue.
Specifically speaking on software and tesla most/all recalls are for items that no longer comply with a government rule. No argument, the rules should be followed but I do believe there is a shade of gray as a number of them are imo tail events. They should be fixed but I would not classify them as the car cannot be used because safety is an issue.
"The Boombox function allows sounds to be played through an external speaker while the vehicle is in motion, which may obscure the Pedestrian Warning System (PWS) sounds. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 141, "Minimum Sound Requirements for Hybrid and Electric Vehicles"
"A software error may cause a valve in the heat pump to open unintentionally and trap the refrigerant inside the evaporator, resulting in decreased defrosting performance. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 103, "Windshield Defrosting and Defogging Systems."
" A factory reset muted the Pedestrian Warning System (PWS) sounds. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 141, "Minimum Sound Requirements for Hybrid and Electric Vehicles."
"An incorrect font size is displayed on the instrument panel for the Brake, Park, and Antilock Brake System (ABS) warning lights. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 105, "Hydraulic and Electric Brake Systems" and 135, "Light Vehicle Brake Systems."
Outside of these there are a handful of FSD recalls and a couple that are more critical, like rear-view cameras not working due to software. Stating again for the eventual naysayers, all of these absolutely should be fixed but I believe they are shades of gray in terms of how critical they are to safety.
Honestly, some of these read like “Three ton car can be driven into people if the steering wheel is applied in the wrong direction. Constitutes danger to public safety and cannot be used.”
That was my only point too. Tesla has lots of issues and the cyber truck is no stranger to it but most of the recalls people cite are not true safety issues.
Yeah, I think there's a significant difference between "Tesla decided to push a software update to their cars on their own" and "the government said the cars are unsafe, so Tesla was required to push a software update", and that's worth capturing in the language we use to describe those events.
You are aware that in this very thread are examples of Tesla recalls that impacted the safety of the vehicle?
You are aware I said most right? I am responding to the typical Tesla hyperbole. All issues that warrant a recall classification absolutely should be fixed but I would not go as far to say the vehicle should not be used due to safety. I think I can manage even though the font size in the instrument cluster is incorrect.
That's not to say there are not more serious issues like the rear-view camera that did not work for specific models/software version combos.
My model y has had a number of recalls and I never knew about it. From things to the UI not meeting government requirements to other software issues. It was never unsafe to drive.
Just because you didn’t crash doesn’t mean it was safe to drive.
Have you even looked at the recall list or are you just spewing the usual Tesla hyperbole? Recalls should be fixed regardless but the vast majority of Tesla recalls are not base case safety fixes. Sure they comply with a government rule for some tail case but hardly the earth shattering situation where the car sits unable to drive because it’s unsafe. Font sizes, boom box drowning out the pedestrian noise…all kinds of things. Hence why I said every recall that I have gotten was not a true safety item. Unless you have experience or facts stop with the hyperbole.
Recall is the industry-standard (and populace-understood) term for “this vehicle has a safety or reliability issue that must be resolved by the manufacturer.” It is all encompassing; anything from possibly loose lugnuts to faulty airbags to engine failures to yes, the reverse camera failing to appear. It doesn’t matter if the manufacturer ships an OTA update, shows up at your house with a loaner and a flatbed to take your car, or requires you to go into the dealership for service, it’s a recall.
It might be industry-standard term, but it’s certainly not understood that way by layman, including car customers. To the public, “recall” will always carry the implication that the vehicle needs to go back to the manufacturer for a fix.
I don't think that's true. Most people are accustomed to there being many "recalls" for trifling matters which can be simply ignored until maybe the next time they bring the car into the shop. A typical conversation about recalls:
> "I changed your oil, and I also replaced one of your door seals because there was a recall for the rubber cracking in cold weather"
> "Oh, okay."
It doesn't colloquially imply that the manufacturer is going to come take your car due to some major issue.
Maybe for you? All the recall notices I’ve ever seen are of the “Device may electrocute you if used improperly” variety. Those were definitely very strong suggestions to immediately discontinue use and get a replacement.
Maybe this is one of those situations where the US uses this term differently from the rest of the world? In a way that waters the term down so much that it might as well be meaningless?
This was the argument that convinced me.
>Recall is the industry-standard (and populace-understood) term for “this vehicle has a safety or reliability issue that must be resolved by the manufacturer.”
Exactly. But not just for vehicles or other durable goods. We see recalls of all sorts of food products[0] pretty regularly, and no one has to bring their carrots or ground beef back to the store/manufacturer to "remediate" the issue. Rather, you just throw it away.
And such activities are unfailingly called recalls.
[0] https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety...
> and populace-understood
Nah, doesn't really seem like it.
"recall" is a legal term, it means the vehicle is not road-legal and requires immediate action.
Doesn't really matter if it hw, sw or maybe even the owners manual that needs to be changed ASAP.
> "recall" is a legal term, it means the vehicle is not road-legal and requires immediate action
No it doesn't. Sometimes it does, but certainly not always.
I drive a Ford Everest (SUV version of the Ranger). It has an open recall at the moment for a software issue where if you obstruct the power windows while they're closing, they may not detect the obstruction and stop automatically.
I can continue to drive the vehicle, I just need to get the issue rectified when I next get it serviced.
https://www.vehiclerecalls.gov.au/recalls/rec-006100
If I have a flat tyre it's not a recall. Not everything about not being road-legal and requiring immediate action is a recall. That's a bad definition.
GP said "recall → not street legal"; you've replied to disagree with "recall ↔ not street legal".
Nothing about the definition implies the existence of the former construction.
HN discourages this type of bad faith misinterpretation in the name of pedantry.
That is itself a misinterpretation, but I'll assume good faith.
I'm not misinterpreting; I'm saying the definition is too broad. A useful reply seems simple enough:
- yes it is too broad, and here's the additional criterion to narrow it correctly
- no it is not too broad, and here's why a flat tyre is a recall
It wasn't a definition. The person you replied to used "means" in the sense of "necessarily implies", not in the sense of "is precisely equivalent to". That's what the symbols in my earlier comment meant.
E.g.
> "Murder" is a legal term, it means the act was premeditated.
Somebody who says that is not claiming that all premeditated acts are murder.
The proper definition will clearly mean the model, not the model instance.
There’s been recalls over paint, watertight seals, etc issues that impact a vehicle’s lifespan. Generally the kind of thing a company fixes not to be sued, or just cheaply maintain a solid reputation.
There’s also a “safety recall” system run by NHTSA, which is what most people think of by recall. Which then has a bunch of reporting requirements so people who aren’t taking their cars to the dealership still get notified.
Note that many recalls have nothing to do with legality to drive or immediate action.
Last time I took my car in they handled two recalls: the bracket for the spare tire could crack (mine wasn’t) and a floor drain plug was the wrong size.
Very few recalls are urgent or prohibit the car from being g driven.
It might be the correct technical term, but general interest publications like Wired should avoid jargon that confuses laypeople, especially in headlines.
Sure it's wrong, but it's actually to Tesla's benefit IMO
Which of these would you, a Tesla stakeholder, prefer the news to report:
- Tesla Cybertruck has recall
- Tesla Cybertruck receives software update that resolves issue that put public safety at risk
That's really not clear?
And for equivalence, the first would need to be:
- Tesla Cybertruck has recall that resolves issue that put public safety at risk
No, I agree it's not really clear.
> And for equivalence
But that's the whole point of my post.
Because the term "recall" often technically means "issue that put public safety at risk". But would you want that spelled out every time if you were a marketer?
The recall doesn’t know how the fix is applied it’s just the fix is mandatory for manufacturer and he to inform the customers
This is a point which comes up regularly when discussing right to privacy laws (hello EU). Startup culture wants to move fast and break things - including my bones in this case - while evil regulations only come in the way of progress.
> Startup culture wants to move fast and break things - including my bones in this case - while evil regulations only come in the way of progress.
All car companies comply with thousands of regulations, and it's fine. If you have a simple view of the world, I don't think inverting it and claiming the people you think are the baddies hold that inverted view is going to get anyone closer to understanding anything.
I agree, and this is why I do not own a Tesla. Unfortunately my kids can still get killed by one.
> You can't just sell early access cars and fix issues as customers experience them.
But then how will you know what you HAVE to fix. /s
To be frank I find the whole Tesla cult to be mind blowing. Seems to be the realization of believing in something that seems so good to be true alwith a company who promises to do so many great things, delivers non road worthy vehicles and people still dedicate their time and money defending them.
Is it sunk cost fallocy? Or just people who just wish Tesla was what they promised they would be?
If you remember how some kids in school argued over which gaming consoles were best or whichever Transformer would win over another. I think it is the same concept 'fanboyism' among those Tesla apologists.
Of which sunk cost were a huge thing. Your parents bought you only one...
All of my Tesla updates have been production updates. All software has bugs, and Tesla is one of the most innovative and responsible software companies. Compare that to Microsoft, for example. Or Oracle. Lots of their software runs medical systems that are mission critical.
How about the latest Palo Alto networks vulnerability? Lots of critical infrastructure behind their firewalls.
All in all, I'd say Tesla is among the top on software and hardware engineering, and I'd hire any of their engineers in a heartbeat.
It's not just Tesla. All the online services you depend on are run this way, and none of it's regulated. Governments don't know how to regulate software companies like Tesla. They know how to regulate people constructing homes, cooking food, and building bridges but most attempts at regulating software development have petered out. This is a good thing. Thanks to Tesla's modern approach to car manufacturing it is now possible for anyone in the middle class to purchase a self-driving bulletproof truck that's faster than a Lamborghini. You can't make this stuff up. I swear.
Why do Tesla people see servitization and paying for something in perpetuity forever as being such an enabling thing for people? We need to own the things we pay for, not rent them. In a decentralized way. A car is a machine that needs to be capable of functioning completely independent of everything else. There is no reason it should be a PaaS other than to extract as much value out of the market as possible.
Companies need to leave some value for regular people to live.
Most of the online services I use can't kill me if they have a bug.
If Tesla is a software company rather than a car company, then did you also consider Wework one rather than office rentals? Honestly interested why their, as of now, main product shouldn’t define the type of company they are.
People who have 100k to burn on a car are middle-class? What's the median yearly income in the US? 90k?
Even less, the median household income is 80k: https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p60-28...
You can apparently lease a Cybertruck starting at $1000/month. That is definitely within range for someone on a 90k income, even if it is isn't the most financially smart thing you can do.
What? More like 190k income needed to even get a quote
Was it MKBHD who made some weird claim that he spoke to a bunch of people, "most of whom thought the cyber truck was closer to $1M and were amazed to hear it was more like $100K"?
I have NEVER heard that. It makes zero sense and sounds more like the fever dream of a Teslarati: "Wow, I know the median home price in my area is $500K, and the median household income $80K, but all of a sudden there is this explosion of million dollar Teslas on the road!"
I need to ask - is this a joke? No, Tesla is not particularly bulletproof compared to other cars. Its doors may stop a 9mm sure enough, but the windows won't manage even that, and anything above 9mm will go through the doors as well. And 9mm is not even that common among criminal shooters, they usually go for bigger calibers / higher penetration naturally already.
And which Lamborghini specifically?
> And which Lamborghini specifically?
It's faster than a Lamboghini Spire.
But not as robust off-road.
It's a pretty simple fix.
In the old days, governments had departments which would inspect cars, verify they complied with legislation, and even examine build quality.
Quite easy, when everything was basically physical.
Now the ECU and modules are a black box, unknowable to such entities. Things can be caught (see VW scamming fuel/emissions tests), but it's by luck.
So solution? We pass laws that all code, every bit of it, all chip schematics too, all firmwares are open source.
Note I said open source, which in the old days just meant "readable". We're not talking GPL, all copyright would remain.
On top of that, all build scripts and methods to flash modules / etc would be provided to governement test environments.
Now we can test. Now, we can look for crappy code, hacky junk, fake emission cheats, bugs and more.
Don't like it? You don't sell cars. Tough.
The entire supply chain would be required to fall inline.
It's really not that hard.
In terms of security, that's what signing updates is for.
And (for example) you can already take hobby tools, such as forscan (for fords) amd flash updates to modules.
As long as it is signed.
I think recall in quotes because the original meaning of recall was that you had to return (recall) the thing to the shop so that it could be fixed. Like when the brakes might fail and I have to schedule an appointment to bring my car into the shop for a week seems different from pushing out a software fix to adjust the AC temperature or whatever. It seems more like an "update" like when Apple pushes out a fix to the iPhone. They call that an update, not an iPhone recall. (However, your camera example does sound like a major issue.)
There are tons of non-mission-critical recalls that you can have fixed (or not) at your leisure.
Well, the OED definition of 'recall' is "official order to return to a place" and a software update or fix requires no return to the place of purchase. I wonder how may legally defined 'recalls' Microsoft Windows has experienced with each new version.
I think the gist is "recall" is the same saying "safety issue that needs to be fixed in the software or hardware" since we don't have a word for software issues, which carry a bit more weight on a fly-by-wire vehicle like the Cybertruck.
Interesting to note that this thread seems to be full of a lot of people choosing to be pedantic over the word "recall" rather than taking a critical look at the Cybertruck and it's issues. While I agree that language is important (and dynamic), I suspect that discussion around this vehicle is also charged by politics and sycophantic thinking.
If I remove my personal opinions about Musk, I find that I actually do not hate the Cybertruck. Sure, I think it looks absolutely stupid and it bothers me that the flat paneling does not line up perfectly, but I am also cheering on it's attempts to break some rules, try something different and possibly spark some future innovation. With that in mind, it's easy for me to expect that it will have problems since anything new that breaks the mold tends to, so with that reframing, a lot of recalls make sense and could even be looked at as good since solutions are being developed.
People are pedantic over this because they have a strong association from their past with this term and now it is being used unexpectedly. No matter how bad Tesla's issue might be, then maybe a different wording has to be used to highlight the issue. As right now it seems as if when the term is used it is almost intentionally made to seem as if the vehicle has to be physically transported back which would be a logistical and financial disaster. Sure, safety issues can be bad, but it is entirely different level of feasibility of physically recalling back all those vehicles. Why are people pretending it is not?
The whole issue is a spectrum of consequences. Right now it seems that the term used confusingly is always justified because the issue is binarily bad in the first place.
> Interesting to note that this thread seems to be full of a lot of people choosing to be pedantic over the word "recall" rather than taking a critical look at the Cybertruck and it's issues.
Being pedantic over a single word out of 100 is HN's bread and butter. How many times have you read a comment here that boiled down to "The author's entire article is invalid because in paragraph 3, word 65 he used the wrong word!"
Bonus points when the poster is himself also wrong about the meaning of the word, as is the case in this thread where people don't know what a "recall" is in the automotive world.
I suppose that is probably true, but I hate to generalize...then again, I am guilty of generalizing and being pedantic, myself.
We do kind of exist in a strange space where the meaning and intention of words matter for the sake of clarity, but to ignore the dynamic nature of language results in less clarity. If that makes any sense?
I think the 'pedantry' is actually trying to push back against the politics and whatnot, in a way.
As others have noted, 'recall' brings to mind physically returning an item. I have, repeatedly, had to clarify to people that it was actually an OTA software update, which - to most people - is a lot less significant than the idea of having to return your car several times a year.
> Why have you put "recalls" in quotes?
Maybe because an over-the-air update is hard to seriously consider a "recall"?
They are called recalls because that’s what the term for legalisation mandates. They are issued when a vehicle is unsafe to drive and they are mandated because a manufacturer is required to take a lot of steps to remedy their failure. If they fail to repair the issue they are forced to issue full refunds as an example.
So no, the word recall is used because is the official terminology used for these issues regardless of the solution required to fix them.
The word does have its origin in a world where solutions were rarely software updates. That they are software issues make them no less serious though. I suspect that in some cases the software issues might indeed be far more dangerous than errors which mandate physical recalls.
Isn't this just restating part of the previous point?
"We use a silly word for OTA software updates: 'recalls'"
"Recalls is the word we use"
"Yes..."
The important part is the legal obligation to produce a safe product.
If that doesn't happen there are legal consequences.
The fact that software is involved changes exactly nothing. And honestly - the entire industry needs to get over the bizarre belief that software has a magical right to be less performant, less competent, less reliable, less robust, and more consumer hostile than hardware, just because it can be updated.
None of this seems relevant to the single point that "recall is a misleading term to use for an OTA software update".
At the very least, it puts the quality control of Tesla in question, as those are failures which should have been caught PRIOR to a commercial launch.
Tesla is treating its product-launches like it's just some browser-game in the cloud, instead of treating it as what it is: The handover of a 6000 pound bullet into the hand of a customer who will fire it into a crowd in expectation to not hit anyone...
Why? Are safety issues not "serious"?
The word recall sort of implies that the vehicle is recalled to the manufacturer. Calling a software update that happens in your garage at night and takes 20 minutes a “recall” definitely is worthy of quotes.
The word bug sort of implies that the device was struck by a terrestrial arthropod animal. Calling a software defect that happens due to a programming error a "bug" definitely is worthy of quotes.
(The etymology of a word can be quite different from its current meaning today.)
Unless of course that patch can't be delivered because the truck was totalled in an accident that the patch was too late to prevent
Did this happen? Or?
Focusing on the dictionary definition of the word "recall" seems pedantic.
Not all recalls are for big mechanical problems. I've received several recall notices for issues that just required the dealership to flash the ECU or some other controller with new firmware. Whether that update is flashed OTA or with a special dongle at the dealership doesn't really make a difference if you're looking at it from the perspective of vehicle safety/reliability/stability. The point is that a recall is a significant enough issue that the manufacturer _must_ notify their customers about it.
I agree that if you count _every_ OTA update as a recall, you can't really do an apples-to-apples comparison. The cost of pushing an OTA update is much lower than the cost of a recall, so Tesla probably pushes a bunch of minor OTA updates that other manufacturers wouldn't bother with. But it's a fair comparison if only some subset of OTA updates are counted as recalls (i.e. updates addressing a safety issue).
> The word recall sort of implies that the vehicle is recalled to the manufacturer.
It does not, no more than gaslighting implies lighting a gas lamp or the phrase crossing the Rubicon implies actually crossing a river in Italy, in any case. It hasn't meant anything of that sort since the mid-sixties.
Recall is what legislation requires you to call it if something is unsafe for public use and it has to be withdrawn for the market until it's remedied. It doesn't matter how that's done. The NHTSA guidelines don't include physically getting the product to a manufacturer or a distributor as a requirement to issue, or as a criteria for fulfillment, of a recall. (I don't think recall guidelines in any industry do, it's just the NHTSA's that apply in this case).
Yes, this also applies for firmware upgrades. No, it doesn't matter where they're performed. The FDA has issued firmware-related recalls for devices with programmable logic since programmable logic in medical devices was a thing so like... fourty years. If anyone in some company's safety staff just learned about that's let's all please give them a warm welcome to the 20th century.
The main reason why recalls typically involve returning the product to the manufacturer (or, more often, as the vast majority of recalls are for food, medicine or cosmetics, to the distributor) is traceability. Manufacturers need to maintain documentation that shows they took reasonable action to notify all customers, that depending on how they chose to handle it they made repairs for free, replaced them for free, or that the refund they issued made reasonable allowances for depreciation, and so on. Some foodstuffs or medicine also have disposal safety rules that require you to maintain adequate documentation as well. It's just the easiest way to deal with it, both in terms of remedying the actual issue, and in terms of legal risk.
But it's got nothing to do with returning something to the factory, it hasn't meant anything of that sort in like half a century.
Once again, an intelligent post such as yours has been lazily downvoted simply because somebody doesn't agree with it, and they can't be arsed composing a coherent rebuttable. This leads to unpopular ideas being buried, groupthink and a lack of intelligent discourse.....
....And yes, this IS leading to this place becoming more and more Reddit like (no, that isn't a tired cliché, no matter what the FAQs claim).
Downvoting needs to be reserved for comments that detract from the conversation. At this rate, we will need some form of meta moderation to ensure this happens.
> Downvoting needs to be reserved for comments that detract from the conversation.
I understand where you're coming from but truth is a post like that one does detract from the usual excusemaking conversation that some companies enjoy here, so I'm not surprised it was downvoted :-). It's one of the many ways in which karma points killed online discourse. I just happen to be old enough to have racked up a lot of pre-karma posting (including, of course, flamewars, what would life be without spice?) so downvotes don't really register on my radar.
If you think about the financial implications then probably yes. Software issues, safety related or not, can probably easily be fixed OTA and thus don’t even cause a fraction of the costs a (let’s call it "real") recall costs.
Also, in the head of most people, I think, a recall is something where the car needs to be returned physically. But still, obviously, the issues can be as serious as physical issues. It’s just that we’re used to physical recalls.
Getting an OTA software update to your vehicle is far less disruptive to your life than having to take it in to the dealer. Obviously safety issues shouldn't happen, but how easy they are to fix also matters.
"Recall" is wording that means (to me) the vehicle needs to be physically returned to a dealer workshop for something to be done.
That it's used for OTA updates just (to me) means they should use some more suitable wording for it. And yeah, as other people have pointed out it's the word used for the legislation. I still think they should use some kind of different wording though.
Maybe, to eliminate ambiguity (and make it sound cooler), they should call it a "roadworthiness directive", similar to "airworthiness directive" for aircraft. Of course airworthiness directives are issued by the authorities (the FAA in the US), while "recalls" are from the manufacturers, but still...
Maybe Tesla doesn't deserve to have the world redefined around them to make their products look less shit?
This conversation happens every single time Tesla produces a product that is legally unsafe. We keep having this conversation because Tesla keeps making an unsafe product.
A recall is about the issue, not how it's resolved. A recall means there are some serious security flaws that needs fixing. Even if they can be fixed OTA, they're still a flaw, and Tesla has had many of those.
Couldn't agree more. Recall means "sufficiently dangerous to need to recall the vehicle to the manufacturer" - yes, in the modern world it can be fixed OTA, but it's still dangerous enough to require a mass fix to a fast-moving death machine.
>The cybertruck, for example, was subject to a recall because the rearview camera wouldn't come up, but the mirrors are insufficient to back the vehicle up safely without the camera.
Every vehicle since 2018 has been required to have one for safety. No car or truck is sufficiently safe without one.
> but the mirrors are insufficient to back the vehicle up safely without the camera.
I'm quite surprised that that is allowed at all. Seems like an unnecessary risk.
I suspect that’s a bit of an exaggeration by the author. If the mirrors were not required by law and therefore comply with the law they wouldn’t exist. “The best part is no part”
All new cars are required to have backup cameras, so manufacturers have used that "freedom" to change car shapes. Not only Tesla.
I can’t understand why a regulatory group would feel the need to make that a requirement. That vastly increases the cost to develop a vehicle.
Why can’t I choose that feature as a consumer? Did their brother in law have the patent for backing cameras?
I get it, but the reasoning behind it was that little kids kept getting run over by their parents / family members because they couldn't see them.
The cost at this point is pretty negligible.
Mandate went into effect (in the US) in 2018: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup_camera#Mandates
Thanks for the info.
Yeah the cost is negligible if you are already planning to have a screen running chrome on Ubuntu server, but I hope it was still an option not to have that.
Uh no. Pretty much every single backup camera on every single vehicle is the exact same little module that produces analog video and literally just runs a component cable to the head unit which has a standardized analog video input.
Zero software required.
If that’s true I feel much more at peace.
Well, "recall" implies both a safety issue and a convenience issue. Pre-Tesla OTA updates a "recall" was a logistical nightmare, meaning you had to take the day off work, wait at the dealership all day, sometimes deal with a loaner car, etc.
To a lot of folks, maybe older than the average HN user at this point, the reason recalls were such a hated thing was not primarily that it implied a safety defect, but because they were super inconvenient.
For example, I had a recall on my Tesla having to do with the automatic window closing being dangerous. That is a safety issue, and I do have kids, so I realize that there's a very small chance they could damage or lose a finger with it, so I do want it fixed. But because it was fixed OTA, I don't really mind it or hold it against them. In contrast, if fixing it meant taking it into a dealership and losing a day, it would be a hugely negative thing! I ascribe a negative sentiment to the fact that there was a safety issue in proportion to the chance of damage and how severe it was, so: minor.
In other words, I know why it's called a "recall" and it makes sense. But on the other hand, you have to realize why people put it in scare quotes, too. The plain denotation of the word hasn't changed, but the connotation is really disproportionate to the experience of someone with a Tesla.
Yeah, software recalls are recalls. The car has steer by wire, so even steering wheel issues could be ”just” a software recall.
Usually your steer by wire isn't fixable over the air
Very few others have recalls that can be done OTA. Even if it is just software, expect an hour to days at a service center to do the update, if the techs can figure it out.
For Tesla, the software recalls are nearly automatic (one click install, just like other update), such that few owners even know that their car ever had a recall.
My Model 3 has had:
- charge port needing replaced shortly after I bought: mobile service
- front and rear suspension forks replaced: 2 trips to service center (common according to them)
- rear light needed replacing (mobile service)
4 years old.
Still not as bad as our last car (diesel VW Sharan), but Teslas have plenty of defects that can’t be fixed OTA.
Sure, but "recall" in the automotive market has a very precise meaning, and refers to safety issues (at production line level, so impacting many VINs)that needs to be fixed. In Tesla's case, unlike most of other vendors, generally these recalls can be fixed with an OTA update.
The CT OTOH had many "classical" physical recalls due to hardware issues.
This is kind of true. Say what you want about Tesla, but they have the best software experience out of the other car manufacturers. I love my BMW i4, but had to take into the shop just to fix a botched softwares update. Well, at least the cabin is silent.
I'd say my 2006MY car has the best software experience. The less, the better.
I've bought several new cars in the past few years and zero of them have had a recall I'm aware of, software or otherwise. My old car went almost 20 years with just two recalls that I can remember.
Even ignoring software recalls, then, the Cybertruck has a significantly higher recall rate (per unit time) than anything I've owned, so the fact that it has had even more recalls that could be serviced OTA is really neither here nor there. The user-facing software systems in these modern luxury cars really do seem to cause a lot of issues.
> Even if it is just software, expect an hour to days at a service center to do the update, if the techs can figure it out.
Ahh, yes, the dinosaurs and their bumbling cavemen 'techs'.
Meanwhile in the real world, while my Audi gets a lot of OTA updates, updates done at the dealership are done by plugging a USB drive into the car.
Hopefully the techs can figure that out, if we give them a few days...
If that's indeed it, I would rank the article as worse than 91 percent of ordinary boring Elon and Tesla bashing in 2024.
I guess on a positive note they stopped posting that Tesla is almost bankrupt for the 1000th time because Elon.
It isn't, this time.
I've seen plenty of articles, contemptuous tweets, etc. that conflated OTA updates that were classified as 'recalls' by the safety authorities with physical issue recalls.
And I'm annoyed that the article didn't provide the answer itself.
But per https://www.cars.com/research/tesla-cybertruck/recalls/ 5/6 of the recalls for the cybertruck to date have been physical, only the immediately previous one was resolveable by an OTA update.
(I'm in the "I think Elon is a dick but Tesla is pretty cool and SpaceX is awesome" camp personally, so bad criticism of Tesla annoys me not just on a basis of hating bad criticism of things in general but also because I get doubly annoyed when somebody criticises somebody I believe *is* worth of criticism and then manages to do it inaccurately ... you're in a target rich environment! Stop shooting at squirrels instead!)
Elon continues to baffle by avoiding bankruptcy.
Elon is out for Elon always ..a slimey used car salesman I.e. bring out the AI Optimus robots all controlled by AI. Not!
Elon is Trump's next Omarosa...
> I wonder if you exclude "recalls" resolved by software updates, for all cars, where it would rank then?
Why would you? A recall is part of *safety* process, where company internal safety lifecycle failed to a level that adults had to step in and say "this is actually unsafe, fix your shit or it gets pulled out of market".
The fact that issue can be remedied with software update is irrelevant, because in the end the core issue is that an unsafe product was distributed to the market.
The fact that you put recall into quotes is telltale sign how Tesla managed to undermine public safety concerns drawing a divide between software-only and hardware fixes.
If you’re a victim of one of these errors does it matter it was later fixed by a software update?
Recall mean an error the manufacturer to fix, the how doesn’t matter at that point.
> where it would rank then?
I would rank it as "still isn't legal to import or drive in most of the Europe".
Recalls come in two types, soft recalls that can be fixed by a software update, and hard recalls that cannot. Many people are still not used to regarding the former as recalls, as they associate the word not with the safety issue itself but the way it gets resolved. It would be nice for articles discussing recalls to point out what type it entails, both for being more immediately informative, and to get people used to software updates being able to qualify as recalls.
If the article were more honest it would be less clickbaity, selling less on Mr Musk hate.
As we can see raging HN discussion, being pedantic or not.
That would make a significant difference for other Teslas but apparently not for the cybertruck: https://www.cars.com/research/tesla-cybertruck/recalls/
Not sure where it would rank at '5 recalls' instead of '6 recalls' but suboptimal nevertheless.
(I think the article noted that because the immediately previous one *was* a software update ... but it appears that's the only one that was)
> I wonder if you exclude "recalls" resolved by software updates, for all cars, where it would rank then?
While I agree that the term "recall" is overloaded, the Cybertruck has had some pretty spicy safety related "recalls". Issues that, frankly, it should not have been allowed onto public roads with.
> I wonder if you exclude "recalls" resolved by software updates, for all cars, where it would rank then?
That depends, are you also going to exclude recalls for other cars, like one I got last year, "Please insert this piece of paper between page 129 and 130 of your owner's manual. It contains supplemental information about the operation of a vehicle system"?
Or will only CyberTruck get this special treatment?
Completely unrelated to safety, these vehicles don't look like they are aging well. They are all completely new but the ones I am seeing on the road already look a bit beat up. That finish on them and their general styling emphasize every minor blemish.
Car panels are convex on nearly all other cars for very good reason. Flat panels are structurally susceptible to damages which wouldn’t mark a standard panel. Adding a highly reflective surface was another great move.
There is a whole section in James May's review where he is confirming with a steel ruler that the surfaces are slightly convex :-)
https://youtu.be/CQzYhMDNLPA?t=216
This has been normal/understood since pre-demo phases. The "car youtuber" culture around shitting on this car is almost as laughable as the car itself.
Not only that, but the finish looks like trash, too. I'm seeing 10-20 Cybertrucks a day and almost all of them are weirdly splotchy and dull.
Curious what city that's in... I rarely see them.
There are TONS of them in Los Angeles.
I wonder what tests car companies generally do to predict how durable a style choice is (how scratches, corrosion, etc will impact the look). Protecting your brand is also about what people will see in the future, not just what is on the showroom now. If 5 years from now all of these vehicles look terrible that won't help sales for any of their models.
I know in the past they've looked at data from used cars, and they also have HALT/HASS (highly accelerated life/stress) testing which does things like e.g. spray the car with concentrated salt solution in a wind tunnel, things like that.
I believe many manufacturers also look at data from people like Munro & Associates who tear down cars, figure out what they're made from, and how they were made.
You ever notice how all cars look like all the other cars? There's rarely an exception, they mostly just copy each other. They seem to stick to a design, then someone makes an enormously brave move of slightly changing some small thing, and next year they all copy it.
Not sure if it's age, but whenever I see one now, it looks dirty. Maybe it picks up dirt a lot, or owners are afraid to wash them, I dunno.
Almost all of the cybertrucks I see are wrapped
I thought their having a 'patina' from use was part of the original schtick, before they even came out? I know that was one aspect that made me go "huh" and think they might be onto something interesting.
Every one I’ve seen has a wrap for this reason
Seems weird to buy an $80k car and then spend $6k on a paint job just to make it look decent...
The DeLorean was this way too. People were paying to get it painted because the bare stainless steel finish didn't weather well.
Seems even stranger when you see a $25k car with a professional wrap.
People spend money to modify $200k cars too.
The panels will not rust, which is the reason to avoiding scratches on other vehicles. You can beat the hell out of it and not have to care.
Stainless steel can definitely rust. Leave your favorite knife in the sink for a few weeks and watch what happens, especially if it has any scratches on it.
And then put some salt in that water.
Oh did they fix the rusting issue from the beginning of the year?
I think that story turned out to be media sensationalism. I’ve owned one for over half a year, in the distinctly not dry PNW. No rust at all.
Have they started salting roads there yet though?
[flagged]
It has been terrible! I’ve been asked to transport large items for friends, and had to deal with excited children wanting to take pictures with it. When there was an extended power outage recently I didn’t get the chance to have the “real” outage experience because my truck powered my house. If only I had listened to HN and Reddit.
This is not contributing the discussion and sounds like sour grapes (never owned a Tesla product btw).
Just poking fun :P You can't drop one hundred thousand dollars on one of the ugliest gimmick vehicles ever made and not expect at least a little bit of stick.
CT owners have to have thick skins when interacting online so I chose to take it as good-natured ribbing :)
It has been a legitimately awesome purchase for me so it’s pretty easy to be positive.
The PNW is distinctly dry during the summer, which would compose at least half of the months you have owned it.
Also, in my experience, it’s road salt/ice melt chemicals that really exacerbate rust rather than just rain. I assume that is why I see a lot more old cars everyday in PNW compared to the northeast.
Salt was bad for cars. (Having had a 80s car that was rusting badly). There was a hole in one of my rear wheel wells. Salt/ sand got into the hollow steel and rusted from the inside out at the base of the passenger door. It was was bad all over however.
Cars are galvanized now so they don’t rust. Is that truck running bare stainless with no finish?
Are you going to stick to it during the winter?
Yeah my truck has been running bare this whole time and I don’t plan to change that. I’ve parked it near a house by the ocean for days on end so it probably got some salty condensation on it.
What a statement to make. Tons of photo evidence of bare stainless steel panels rusting, cyber truck or not.
I live in New England, neighbor has a cybertruck that lives in the (outside) driveway. Every panel has a like....brown tinge to it.
2 years from now it will be manhole covered.
most people care about scratches because they look like shit.
paint is a bit more than just corrosion protection at this point, otherwise mfgs would just slap on the thickest toughest machine-tool grade enamel and call it a day.
why don't they? because it looks terrible.
And most cars end up scratched anyway, and most owners do not take their car in for detailing every time this happens (if at all).
My car is 5 years old, 0 scratches. Other than a ding and some rock chips.
Most cars don't end up scratched. They definitely don't end up scratched after 1 year.
We are not seeing the same cars or not have the same definition of what a scratch is, lol.
Could not disagree more. They are the freshest looking vehicles on the road.
To each their own on this matter because styling is a matter of taste. I remember the shift from the '70s style boxy cars to the mid to late '80s rounded style cars. I wasn't a fan of that new style when it came out but it did eventually grow on me.
For me the cybertruck looks like something out of a low budget'70s Sci-Fi movie. Who knows in 10 years maybe it will start to appeal to me but for right now it doesn't.
Nah, it's objectively not good-looking, and in a few years it'll be more obvious. There are probably more than 0 people who still genuinely think the Pontiac Aztek looks good, and they're wrong.
I’ll agree that there are cars that just look bad.
I love my Honda Element, but even I admit it’s not a great looking vehicle.. it’s old enough that it’s no longer sticks out, though easy to find in a parking lot as few cars are shaped that boxy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Element
62 page pdf about how the design of vehicle came together which is kind of interesting. (Function driving design)
http://www.ramblerdan.com/e/files/schumaker.pdf
That is not an ugly car, a bit cute looking in my opinion. Truly ugly cars are Aztec and Fiat Multipla. Also Chrysler PT Cruiser.
'Good looking' is a subjective term by definition.
Stop trying to tell people what they should think.
I just appreciate your post because you start objectively incorrectly and just lean further into it (intentionally, I believe).
I laughed, it was worth it.
Looks like a "Death Race 2000" El Camino...
Looks like the DeLorean from the latest Back to the Future video game... with a buggy level-of-detail algorithm.
It looks like 3D on 16 bit / 4th gen consoles. Straight out of StarFox.
I like that I laugh every time I see someone driving one. No other car makes me do that.
It never gets old how ridiculous they look.
I think it looks ok from a distance. But up close it looks like a prop from the set of a Back to the Future remake.
The article has about equal time about what Cybertruck owners dont care about, safety, reliability, etc.
> Similar to other critics (earlier this year, a CNN reviewer called the pickup a “disturbing level of individual arrogance in hard, unforgiving steel”)—Drury believes Cybertruck buyers are people “who think ‘I don’t care if I kill people when I drive this thing down the street,’” he says. “There aren’t many of those people out there, so there’s a relatively small market for the Cybertruck.”
The Josh Johnson on this one is gonna be good.
What's the term right wing folks use? Virtue Signaling? The cyber truck is that.
People buy them because they are politically charged, and you can be seen as a tribe member.
But I kinda think it's sad, because I think most tribes make fun of the cyber truck buyer, so they've bought a very expensive, very shoddy ticket into an in group, only to mark themselves as an outsider who bought their way in.
Like nearly all gigantic trucks driven in cities (and almost never off road), though the cybertruck is a new low in likelyhood to kill innocent pedestrians. The most accurate term for this phenomenon is either Emotional Support Vehicle or Gender Affirming Vehicle.
CT owner here. Maybe I’m just more boring than the usual person who gets this truck, but my reasoning for getting one was a lot more simple than this. “My Teslas have been great, this one looks cool, my family can benefit from having a truck, I’ll put down a deposit!”
Not sure which group I was supposed to be buying a ticket into. Around where I live the group seems to be Asian men with families, but I was already a member of that group before the truck :)
There *are* a bunch of people who've bought them because they genuinely think they look cool.
I ... do not agree with that opinion ... but people are allowed to have different taste than I do, even if I think theirs is terribad.
I'm a leftist and would definitely buy a cyber truck if I could park it easily
The article is a smear piece. As it was expected coming from Wired.
5/6 recalls so far have been for physical problems, not software ones.
It's not a particularly positive article but (unusually for articles about Tesla, admittedly) calling it a smear piece is counterfactual.
The numbers do somewhat speak for themselves. It is an unpopular car.
I hate the idea that just being a hater is a bad thing and horrible and you're smearing the good, honest, hardworking Tesleratti.
Sorry, these are expensive, multiple-ton machines being sold at incredible profit, and we all deserve to get to take pot shots at it. We collectively pay for the privilege
Why are people spending so much money for something so hideous and so defective? Is this a weird fashion thing? My old 2017 Kia Soul costs about 5x less and has had 0 defects.
To you it may be hideous but to many, it’s one of the most attractive cars on the road
Even if it were the most beautiful thing ever built would you still spend 5x more for something that doesn’t work?
Doesn't work? You definitely can drive it.
Why people buying it? To show off. Why people are buying Mercedes G-wagon? Or several expensive watches?
Depends on a definition of “many”. Trump is regarded as a great leader by “many”. I guess the sets have a big intersection?
You might even say a majority.
>You might even say a majority.
One might, but that would be incorrect. Trump received ~77,000,000 votes[0], which was 49.9% of the votes cast. As such, plurality is the appropriate term in this case.
What's more, there were ~240,000,000 eligible voters and ~161,000,000 registered voters at the time of the 2024 election.[1]
So the winner received less than a majority of votes cast by a small margin, and less so among registered voters (~48%) and even less so among eligible voters (32%).
[0] https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-ELECTION/RESULTS/zjpqne...
[1] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/election-explained-ho...
Fair point, A plurality indeed.
Not a fan of the cybertruck’s looks, but I’d take it over a Kia soul.
If you drive a Kia soul I’m not sure your opinion on if a car is hideous is valid.
I think it looks pretty cool, or at least different.
Tribalism. They are political statements now, before the were saving the environment vehicles.
Being anti cyber truck is also a political statement. It’s just a truck but for some reason it tends to trigger so many people because it’s “ugly” even though there are plenty of ugly cars (G wagons, Kia Souls, new Broncos, etc) that don’t elicit such a strong response.
Maybe Musk saturated the eco crowd with his cars and now going after the alt right to keep expanding into the market.
I'm honestly ignorant - what political statement is it making?
It seems that liberals dislike Teslas because they dislike Elon Musk.
And conservatives dislike Teslas because they dislike new and different things.
Not only do they pay, they come here and rabidly defend all its flaws in the face of so much evidence to the contrary!
"Oh the recalls are just software updates, so it's fine there were so many safety issues with my car, they fix them quickly and I don't even buy half the regulations are important anyways"
"Oh it's fine if the trunk cuts your finger off, who puts their finger in a trunk anyways?"
And on and on
And the other side comes in and rabidly tries to bring down the cyber truck. You’re somewhat blind if you can’t see how ironic your statement is.
So, for me its about returned utility per dollar per life of product. Numerically, this seems a complete no brainer by possibly more than an order of magnitude. That is why I asked if this is just about a fashion statement, because my dollars and time perspective absolutely cannot understand why anybody would purchase a vehicle with possibly less utility for so much more money that costs so much more to maintain. I am trying to understand, but just cannot see it.
The only thing I can imagine why people would defend the more expensive option is due to vanity. I suspect that is important to some people. As somebody more cash strapped it just seems absurd, at least to me.
I'll answer this in good faith if you're willing to listen!
Am a happy CT owner. I paid an amount that is in line with a "fully loaded F150" according to a google search. I consider the two vehicles fairly comparable both on price and on features at a very broad level, but of course different people value different things.
Why I like it: the looks, the performance, FSD, the covered/secured truck bed, convenience (no more gas stations or regular oil changes & tune-ups).
One benefit that I didn't even know when I bought it, is that if you get some hardware installed at your electrical panel, the truck can actually serve as a whole house battery backup. This was huge last week when the PNW had a windstorm that took out power to 500K houses. My family was able to stay at home, comfortable, well-fed, and entertained. Many of my friends and coworkers had to book far away, expensive hotels and throw away everything in their fridge/freezer.
Are these "recalls" just simple over the air software updates? Just because car people are not used to this doesn't make it necessarily bad. Obviously no bugs are better than some bugs. But people here tend to know how software development works.
This always comes up. A “recall” is not a description of the remediation, it is a description of the problem.
A recall is a public dangerous defect notice. The dangerous product version can no longer be deployed, existing systems suffering from the dangerous defect are identified, and then the version with those dangerous defects is removed from the market with all due speed by either refunding, replacing, or remediating at the manufacturer’s expense. The defective version is thus no longer present, i.e “recalled”.
The term has a precise meaning as I laid out. Unfortunately, it has been so thoroughly intentionally poisoned by bad actors in recent years that the term should be retired. We should use the descriptive term: “Public Dangerous Defect Notice” to avoid such bad faith misrepresentation going forward.
To your point, both things can be true. The CyberTruck can have recalls worse than 91% of all 2024 cars, but many of its recalls can be cheap to for Tesla to fix.
I think that is where the two clusters of people that I see commenting here are converging / possibly arguing past each other.
One popular form of headline that comes to my mind from business new channels of which I remember no specific instance basically goes like this: “Car manufacturer recalls X many cars costing over them Y dollars because of some fault”. X is usually in the tens of thousands or more and Y is usually in the millions of dollars (now maybe tens of millions of dollars).
> The term has a precise meaning as I laid out. Unfortunately, it has been so thoroughly intentionally poisoned by bad actors in recent years that the term should be retired.
Nah, that's a sleigh of hand. Recall literally means recall. Whatever the actual technical definition, the common-man understanding has always been "manufacturer asking you to give your car back, because they screwed up badly enough to be legally forced to fix it". The focus is, and always has been, on the physically give your car back to manufacturer part.
The precise meaning you laid out? That's arguably a typical case of using ancillary aspects of a thing as a proxy, because they're much easier to precisely pin down than the thing you actually want. Think every other term explicitly defined in any contract - the definition tends to not be what's intended, but something that mostly overlaps with intent and is easier to spell out concisely.
The overall point being: regardless of what the technical meaning of "recall" is, if you put Tesla's OTA fixes together with everyone's repairs that require shipping the car itself to the manufacturer, and then treat them all as equal, that's just blatant, bald-faced lie, a clear indication of purposeful dishonesty.
On https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls#recalls-7746 it says:
> A recall is issued when a manufacturer or NHTSA determines that a vehicle, equipment, car seat, or tire creates an unreasonable safety risk or fails to meet minimum safety standards. Most decisions to conduct a recall and remedy a safety defect are made voluntarily by manufacturers prior to any involvement by NHTSA.
> Manufacturers are required to fix the problem by repairing it, replacing it, offering a refund, or in rare cases repurchasing the vehicle.
So the person you're replying to seems to be correct, or is there another source that shares your claim that "the focus is, and always has been, on the physically give your car back to manufacturer part"?
There's a lot here about technical and legal definitions, but from the customer's perspective what they mostly care about is the inconvenience associated with a physical recall.
Most people are accustomed to our phones and devices (auto-)updating, so software recalls just get mentally bundled in with that.
The reporting seems dishonest because (in the mind of most readers) the headline exaggerates the inconvenience of Tesla ownership. Even though logically people shouldn't necessarily conclude that (because of the technical/legal definition of "recall" already discussed), that's still going to be the general public perception.
> There's a lot here about technical and legal definitions, but from the customer's perspective what they mostly care about is the inconvenience associated with a physical recall.
No, customers care about the safety of their vehicles.
If there wasn't a safety issue, then customers could safely ignore the recall notice and experience no inconvenience.
> No, customers care about the safety of their vehicles.
People can (and do) care about both safety and inconvenience, to varying degrees. The exact degree depends on the level of safety risk and the level of inconvenience.
Your odd claim that people don't care about inconvenience is unsupported by data or just plain common sense.
I see you didn't even try to refute that the article will predictably mislead the average reader (classic "lie without lying") about the level of inconvenience for owners.
> Your odd claim that people don't care about inconvenience is unsupported by data or just plain common sense.
This is a bizarre interpretation of my comment. Of course people care about inconvenience. But obviously the people who bring in their cars to a dealership for a recall care more about safety than about inconvenience, because ignoring the recall notice entirely would be much more convenient.
> I see you didn't even try to refute that the article will predictably mislead the average reader (classic "lie without lying") about the level of inconvenience for owners.
The article didn't even mention inconvenience. That's a red herring. On the contrary, the article said this:
Most Cybertruck buyers pay scant attention to longevity estimates, believes Edmunds’ Drury, and plenty probably aren’t exercised by recalls, OTA or otherwise, he said. “Cybertruck customers are in it for the stares and glares—they don’t care about how many times [this vehicle is] going to be recalled over 30 years,” says Drury. “They’re buying this car for now, with zero thought to the future.”
Point is, the impression most people will undeniably take away from "many recalls" is that the vehicle must be in the shop all the time, and it's a terrible customer experience. This impression is of course incorrect.
Remember that most readers don't even read past the headline. You and I and most HN readers are the exception. Obviously the Cybertruck customers themselves know better (we both agree on that), but it's still misleading language that predictably leaves the wrong impression with potential customers.
You can argue that readers "ought to know better," but that's disingenuously ignoring the way the headline will actually be interpreted by real people in the real world.
The only surprise is how many smart people rush to defend the media using a transparently obvious "lie without lying" tactic, but I guess that's why it's so effective! Smart people don't even detect the mislead (Curse of Knowledge). The smart folks who do see it immediately get nerd-sniped into full-blown denial of the "lay misinterpretation" by the seemingly irresistible temptation of a smarter-than-thou semantics argument (see above).
I guess we're fine with media misinformation if we can tell ourselves it's because the reader is dumb, and if "other tribe bad" companies are the ones who got smeared.
> My point is, the impression many people will unavoidably take away from "many recalls" is that the vehicle must me in the shop all the time, and it's a terrible customer experience.
I still think you're missing the point. The biggest problem from many recalls is not time spent in the shop; rather, the biggest problem from many recalls is many vehicle safety defects that are deemed worthy of a recall. In other words, many possible dangers from driving the vehicle. It's an indicator of poor design and quality assurance, which can also reduce the expected lifespan of the vehicle and slash its resale value.
> Remember that most readers don't even read past the headline.
Do we really need to care about these people?
I've been blogging for almost two decades now, and it's very hard to write a fully informative, fully accurate headline. There just aren't enough characters available, unless you write an absurdly long headline. I have no doubt that the news media experience the same problem. There's no good solution for willful ignorance.
I really have zero sympathy for how non-readers of articles ignorantly misinterpret headlines. You can't idiot-proof the news.
> No, customers care about the safety of their vehicles.
Yes. But safety is a spectrum, and is denominated in inconvenience against perceived expected loss - perceived, because people round the loss down to 0 when they feel like it won't happen to them.
See: how many people don't fasten their seat belts, or hold a phone in their hand while driving, despite both being highly dangerous to life, limb and wallet, and against huge social and regulatory pressure.
See also: how many people ignore or tape over error lights on the dashboard; how many people don't repair stuff until absolutely necessary.
See also: how many people try to bribe their way through yearly inspections, and would happily skip them entirely if the law didn't force them.
So it's like GP said: people mostly care about how much time and money they're going to waste on the newly discovered problem. A recall involving the car being physically taken to manufacturer is hugely disturbing, possibly very costly (it's not like most people drive for fun). A recall involving an OTA update? That's "just another auto-update ¯\_(ツ)_/¯". Most people won't even notice it happening.
Putting the two types of "recall" in the same class is, from regular person's POV, deception through equivocation.
Some people do not care about safety so we should change the definition of what a recall is and blame an article for being deceptive?
You gave a bunch of examples of some people not caring about safety then generalized to everyone. You may be in a bubble, or you may not be, but you're presenting zero evidence to call the article deceptive.
The people who won't wear seatbelts, who tape over dashboard lights, who would skip inspections, will also ignore recall notices, so for them, for those who don't care much about safety, dealership recalls are not an inconvenience. And they probably don't care one way or the other about OTA recalls either.
The people who bring their vehicles in for dealership recalls do care about safety, otherwise they would have ignored the recall notice, like the people who don't care.
You can compare the vehicle software updates to non-vehicle software updates. Those who don't care about security will happily ignore security updates and continue to use old versions of the software on their computers forever. And those who do care about security will update, even if the updates tend to cause other problems, such as removing features or otherwise making the UI worse.
> A recall is a public dangerous defect notice.
Yes that's a much better term. In peoples minds "recall" means MY vehicle has to be transported somewhere to be fixed.
For the individual customer, a recall can be a massive frustrating hassle, which an OTA isn't. That doesn't change the severity of the issue, but a model that has 9 physical recalls to fix some brake issue, and 1 OTA update is going to be seen as a disaster, while a model that has 0 physical recalls and 10 OTA updates will be seen as a pleasure to own.
Recalls in consumers' minds are a frustration measurement more than a safety record. Most recalls are about very small/hypothetical risks, so the risk I want to avoid when I look at manufacturers recall history is the risk of having to fix my vehicle physically. Because that's a real/large risk, while the risk of it catching fire spontaneously could be catastrophic but is usually tiny.
> Recalls in consumers' minds are a frustration measurement more than a safety record. Most recalls are about very small/hypothetical risks, so the risk I want to avoid when I look at manufacturers recall history is the risk of having to fix my vehicle physically.
Recalls are frustrating precisely because they're safety issues. Otherwise, customers could safely ignore recall notices and experience no frustration.
There's no law that says a customer has to respond to a recall. That's entirely voluntary.
True, but tiny risk of catastrophic failure will be addressed by owners almost no matter how trivial. And it won't see as a relief by me that I managed to fix it before it spontaneously caught fire, I'll still see it as a frustrating failure by the manufacturer. Because I can both see it as a near-zero risk, and still do it with near 100% certainty. Especially if I don't know whether the window for fixing it easily/for free could close and it could affect the second hand value of the car.
> And it won't see as a relief by me that I managed to fix it before it spontaneously caught fire, I'll still see it as a frustrating failure by the manufacturer.
In this respect, there's no difference between OTA updates and dealership repairs.
No, the frustration comes from taking time in my schedule. OTA are a stain on the safety record. Physicall recalls are a chore.
Taking time out of your schedule is indeed frustrating, but manfacturer defects that could kill you, maim you, harm your car, or make it malfunction are also frustrating, regardless of how the defects are fixed.
Think about non-vehicle software bugs, like in your computer operating system. Those are frustrating, even though they can be fixed OTA.
It's not the only one.
There's been been a number of physical recalls for the Cybertruck, including:
- Accelerator pedal sticking[1]
- Trunk bed trim detaching[2]
- Front windshield wiper failures[3]
- This latest drive problem[4]
From what I could find via the NHTSA there's only been six this year for Cybertrucks, so it seems like the majority are physical problems.
Edit: Forgot HN's formatting for lists.
[1]: https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls?nhtsaId=24V276000
[2]: https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls?nhtsaId=24V457000
[3]: https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls?nhtsaId=24V456000
[4]: https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls?nhtsaId=24V832000
Just because we tolerate it doesn't mean others should too.
Legacy industries view software projects as a 1-and-done deal. The "we'll fix it live" approach in tech is a short-coming of our discipline. We can ignore it when failure means a mild inconvenience. But, hard engineering isn't as forgiving.
Even if the fix is 'just' a software update, the bug can put lives at risk. [1]
Each industry and its regulators come with certain norms. Cars are expected to be delivered as 'complete' products. If Tesla can't abide by that expectation, then that's their problem. Don't drag the entire software industry into this.
[1] https://www.cars.com/research/tesla-cybertruck/recalls/
>But people here tend to know how software development works.
Yes and the way software development tends to work is absolutely unacceptable in safety-critical systems in a 7000 lb vehicle.
> Just because car people are not used to this doesn't make it necessarily bad.
Of course it's bad. If this were a purely software discussion, would anybody be saying "It's OK they have a bazillion zero-days every year because they're quick to fix them when they learn about them"?
Also, remember that the flipside is also true: with aggressive OTA updates, they have the ability to create new issues that weren't there to begin with. I wouldn't trust somebody with that bad a QA track record to not introduce new issues.
Mine has two physical recalls active, but they’re not serious so I haven’t scheduled any maintenance yet. Unlike my Honda civic a couple of decades ago which had an airbag that was killing people. That one I got taken care of quickly.
From the first paragraph of TFA:
> The latest recall—the wedge wagon’s sixth this year—requires shop time, not an over-the-air (OTA) update.
That's the point... It is the only one and affects less than 3000 vehicles. A prior physical recall affected a few hundred.
For most automakers, a recall involves hundreds of thousands to millions and is almost never an OTA software update.
It is not the only one. While it's true this affects roughly 1/5 to 1/3 of all Cybertrucks sold so far this year (depending on which random sales numbers online you believe), some of the others have affected every Cybertruck sold, such as the wiper motor burning out or the pieces of bed trim falling off while driving.
I cannot find any evidence that previous physical recalls this year only affected a few hundred units. Two are 2000+ units and the others seem to be however many had sold by the date of the recall (10k+ in both instances).
That doesn’t answer which one they are considering to determine this ranking,
This implies some of the recalls were just OTAs
So...one?
This article is a hack job. I didn't see any positive commentary. Wired is cooked.
Is it their job to write positive commentary about Tesla? Because I'm not sure it is. I'd argue the opposite, since that'd just be an advertisement.
Except that this is car development with clear guidelines and if you don't adhere to them you have to live with your bugs being labeled as recalls. People should be made aware of when players don't adhere to industry standards with safety implications and you don't get that by just sweeping them under the carpet as "bugs".
Recall means safety issue, which is necessarily bad. It's nice that they can fix these things over the air, but there was still some elevated risk before they caught it.
Despite this, seems like at least the regular Teslas are among the safest vehicles on the road all things considered.
I think the tone of the article was really strong and, to me, it seemed biased because they repeated multiple times that “the buyers only care about looks.”
A more in-depth article might point to the CyberLandr, and until I went 4x4 camping, camped out of a truck, I didn’t realize how awesome a CyberLandr might be, or how nice it is that “Mother Nature’s pin striping” is a solved problem for a stainless steel skin. Or how nice it would be to do all that without all the engine noise (I get accused of “not being a car person” simply because I like peace and quiet - but EVs are cars so why can’t we love those too?).
I think the article intentionally mischaracterizes the reasons for wanting a CyberTruck, and prescribes that “you must be a shallow person who doesn’t care about practicality or reliability.”
Well thank you for telling me who I am!
Oh and why would anyone slander Tesla? It’s not like they are a publicly traded company where slander and praise affect the share or option prices. Surely they couldn’t have ulterior motives.
https://archive.is/SNGSo
Why there is always so much fuss about labels? Across so many different domains. Cars needed OTA update to be driven safely. Why is it important whether we call it a recall or not?
I am not trying to make a point here. Clearly some people care about that. I'm legitimately curious why.
I'm not worried about the label, but I am worried about the implication - since software made the jump from physical to digital/OTA distribution, there's been a decline in software release quality because "we'll patch it later".
The historical financial punishments to writing buggy software are gone, and now it's infecting cars I'm concerned that safety standards will begin to slip and potentially injure someone.
Side note: I know a common response to buggy software is the market won't pay because it takes longer to develop etc. But writing robust software is a hard skill,and it you haven't seen an industry write robust software for a long time, why should you trust they still can?
> Clearly some people care about that. I'm legitimately curious why.
Because it hurts the feelings of Tesla owners who not only own at least one Tesla vehicle, they also own at least one $TSLA share and they think it's some conspiracy to destroy their share value.
I saw my first Cybertruck the other day. It looked less weird in person than I expected it.
It's a very different and new design. How many of the 91% we're comparing to are completely new designs. What's the correct benchmark?
Let's rewrite the headline. "A radical new EV design from Tesla, the Cybertruck, is already ahead of 9% of all 2024 vehicles in quality as it just ramps up production".
I'll likely never own this - not my style. But I can appreciate doing things differently and being successful at that. Getting those gas guzzling truck owners to go electric would be nice too.
In a vacuum I would agree with you, but it fails in lots of predictable ways, and doesnt really offer any utility as a new design. And where they tried to engineer around these issues they often over engineered instead of removing the problem.
I honestly like the way it looks, but I am happy I never preordered it or anything. The reviews are shocking. Even the positive reviews tend to hyperfocus on situations that can be capably dealt with by a standard hatchback. You can take a honda jazz across more terrain.
Its a failure, one that was likely very familiar to HN members. I am sure that internally engineers made every single one of these issues very apparent to management and they shipped anyway.
> doesnt really offer any utility as a new design
This is true of most automobile design.
There are legitimate criticisms of Musk and Tesla. "I don't like how someone else's car looks" is not one of them.
The word 'utility' in the comment you're replying to specifically means how the design functions, not how it looks. For example, it's a truck that's design makes it worse for carrying cargo in the tray than a standard truck.
> word 'utility' specifically means how it functions, not how it looks
Yes. Not offering utility in design is common in cars. Most people don’t buy a truck to haul. Most people don’t buy an off-roader to go off road. (Most people don’t buy a sports car to race.)
Even taken at face value:
> Most people don’t buy a truck to haul.
But if they do need to haul or tow something, they can.
> Most people don’t buy an off-roader to go off road.
But if they do need to go off-road, they can.
> Most people don’t buy a sports car to race.
Sports cars can be enjoyed (relatively) legally on the street. Quick acceleration combined with very good handling and a sense of connection to the road is a feeling you can enjoy at 55mph. Many people won’t drive their sports cars to the limit, but they are still a more enjoyable driving experience than a regular car for people who care about that.
A cybertruck can’t really haul things, it can’t really tow things, and it can’t be that fun to drive. I hope it’s at least comfortable, but based on my experience with their other vehicles, I doubt it.
Let me revise that: I’d be surprised if more than half of the trucks on the road have ever hauled anything.
> cybertruck can’t really haul things, it can’t really tow things, and it can’t be that fun to drive
This reminds me of people who complain about expensive garments being impractical.
That isn’t the point. They’re articles of fashion. Same as most trucks and sports cars. Cybertruck is outselling the F-150 Lightning. Consumers don’t care about hypothetical utility.
> They’re articles of fashion.
Hard to square this with:
> There are legitimate criticisms of Musk and Tesla. "I don't like how someone else's car looks" is not one of them.
Whether or not other people like your look is of course not the be-all and end-all of fashion, but it's certainly relevant. "I don't like how it looks" is a legitimate criticism of an article of fashion.
I think this is an interesting point. What IS a criticism of fashion, and how should it be taken?
"I dont like how this looks" isnt a universal truth, and isn't a prescription for others.
It seems like with the CT, there is a vocal group of people who seem upset that others like them and that they exist at all. I seems to extend from "I dont like how it looks, and you cant either."
I think they look cool and fun. Cost an utility wise, I'll take my contractor truck every time. I understand however that other people have more money and different priorities.
I suspect what people are actually bothered by is the underlying reality that some people simply have an extra $80k to drop on a truck because that is cool and fun for them.
That doesn't explain why the Cybertruck bothers people more than other expensive things. And the rich have always been ready to express horror at the tastes of the poor (and even more so, the tastes of the slightly less rich). It can't all be about feeling hard done by.
I think people tend to be grumpier about things they consider ugly if those things take up a large amount of public space. People get similarly riled by brutalist architecture.
But really, there's nothing new about people having strong feelings about other people's tastes. Fashion is as much about communication as personal pleasure.
I wasn't indending to explain the whole CT phenomenon. I was mostly intending to explore the concept of fashion/taste criticism in general. Namely what people expect it to communicate, and what people expect as a response. With fashion, you often dont want or care about others adopting your taste. It can be about control, but isnt always.
I think the CT hate taps into something more deeper than fashion for most people, relating to politics and culture conflict. It makes people angry in a way at more expensive and even less practical Maserati doesn't.
>There are legitimate criticisms of Musk and Tesla. "I don't like how someone else's car looks" is not one of them.
I like how it looks. Its the everything else thats an issue.
It is tho. Car are symbols for most people, not just a tool that has 4 wheel.
Cybertruck are the equivalent of a pair of thick nerdy glasses.
> but it fails in lots of predictable ways, and doesnt really offer any utility as a new design
In what ways has it failed predictably? There are a number of things that could contribute to various failures/recalls that relate to utility provided by the (novel) design. For example the steer-by-wire system or the mid-voltage (48 V DC) electrical system.
The main example of "this is just dumb design for no reason" is the recall due to the pedal cover sliding up and jamming, but that was only 1 out of 6.
Well cars generally get wet. The stainless steel getting tarnished in the rain is a predictable failure, even if we assume some of the ones showing rust are overblown. Not even the only cosmetic failure, it seems like the panels dont ship well, which should be very foreseeable.
Needing a specialised Car Wash Mode to protect the interior. They very obviously saw the issue coming, did engineer around it. Any other car manufacturer would simply try and make the vehicle as watertight as possible in all scenarios.
Frunk causing injuries. (I would add the word "frunk" is also a fail state but thats subjective)
Theres hundreds of these, all you need to do is find a couple of cybertruck owners complaining without feeling the need to be defensive.
I'd hazard a guess that making it pointy, shiny and prone to rusting is not what many people would call "radical and new". DMC was what, 40 years ago? And that one didn't rust as far as I remember.
The only people I know who were genuinely impressed by cybertruck are 1. My father in law who was visiting USA and does not know how to drive, and 2. My 3yo son.
> is already ahead of 9% of all 2024 vehicles in quality
but 90% of those 2024 vehicles are much cheaper, so you would expect a lower quality. Also remember the cybertruck was presented five years ago.
> Let's rewrite the headline. "A radical new EV design from Tesla, the Cybertruck, is already ahead of 9% of all 2024 vehicles in quality as it just ramps up production".
Today in damning with comically faint praise...
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess. Personally I think they look hideous. That doesn't bother me. To each their own and all that. What does bother me are all the problems. Consumer Reports went into this. There are numerous videos about it.
For example, it has steel panels but... an aluminium frame. That's an odd choice. If you're towing something heavy then up and down motion makes the frame prone to snapping.
Big trucks (eg F150, F250, F350) exist because of a quirk in regulation where so-called "work vehicles" were exempted from emissions standards. This part is a real shame because the US doesn't have vehicles lik the Toyota Hilux, which actually have an equivalent tray size and would be much more economical to run.
An electric truck may allow a smaller truck because it's not affected by emissions (obviously). Perhaps battery weight makes this impractical. It would be nice. I mean some people import Japanese K trucks now.
Competition-wise the Ford F150 Lightning looks like a much better proposition. It looks like a truck. It's built on a proven frame. Still, sales seem to be weak. For work vehicles in particular (and, yes, a lot of trucks aren't work vehicles; they're essentially ornamental) could be quite limited by EV charging issues vs the convenience of filling up a tank of gas.
> "This part is a real shame because the US doesn't have vehicles like the Toyota Hilux"
Yes! That was the first and only truck (or any car) I've ever owned! It was just called the "Toyota Pickup" in the US but it's the same model that was named "Hilux" in many other countries.
I used it to drive ladder racks and paint around Denver while I was in the house painting business to pay my way through college. It had almost 200k miles on it when I gave it to my dad after I graduated and decided to move abroad. To the best of my knowledge, he's still driving it and when I last asked him about it several years ago, it had well over half a million miles on it.
At least for autos made in the 90s, Toyota's quality was unmatched. My dad is a former plane mechanic and has undoubtedly extended its life, but I had no idea what I was doing and that pickup seemed virtually impervious to normal wear and tear. It's a shame it was discontinued in the US.
> Getting those gas guzzling truck owners to go electric would be nice too.
Congratulations, you solved 1 issue related to car dependency and proliferation of huge vehicles, namely tailpipe emissions. Now the other 99 remain.
The solution to gas guzzling trucks is "boring", it's good trains, it's protected bike lanes in urban environments, it's smaller and safer cars in less dense environments, etc. But these things don't make Mr Musk money :)
Trains will not enter American suburbs, nor will most truck drivers consider biking as a valid alternative.
I'm all for better transit, but it doesn't change that the trucks/SUVs keep selling and getting more polluting, and will do so for decades as part of the fleet
Train stations are in many of the Chicago suburbs already and take on average 280,000[1] commuters to and from downtown Chicago on a daily basis (it's called the Metra system).
Hell, I just found out those same commuter lines extend all the way north to Kenosha, Wisconsin, and east to South Bend, Indiana, so into neighboring states. I did know people who commuted to Chicago from Indiana everyday so that's not too surprising.
[1]: https://metra.com/ridership-data
They exist, but new ones aren't being regularly added...
> it's protected bike lanes in urban environments
Sorry but they are not solutions to gas guzzling trucks. Trucks are utility vehicles which carry things. Materials to building sites, hay bales to fields, sports equpiment to the beach/river etc. These functions are not going to be replaced by bike lanes, trains, and small efficient cars.
The real solutions are hydrogen and synthetic fuel.
Radically new and stupid and should be illegal design. It’s a death machine for pedestrians.
No more a death machine than a Cadillac Escalade or a Dodge ram truck. There's lots of criticisms you can make about the cybertruck that are exclusive to the cybertruck but this isn't one. This complaint is about bad drivers. The rise of all the driver assist technology is enabling bad drivers to believe that they are better than they are. This is across vehicle brands.
The existence of other death machines that should not be legal does not undermine the parent's point that this death machine should be illegal.
I don't think they said only the cyber truck should be illegal.
You're trying to say the machine itself is the problem, when it's not the machine it's the operator. You're trying to shift blame here.
The machine itself and the operator are a problem. It is an unnecessarily dangerous machine and the operators do not operate them safely.
Aren't all trucks? Wouldn't the sensor suite and auto-braking make it maybe somewhat safer? Is this something that gets tested for by car manufacturers?
Also, the hood + "grill" is significantly lower. A pedestrian would bounce (although uncomfortably) instead of hit by a wall and run over like most other trucks / SUVs.
As long as you aren’t sliced in half by the sharp corners.
In Europe for one that are regulations that make sure that cars are as safe for pedestrians as possible.
I'll never buy one but I suspect a lot of the "AHA GOTCHA" attitude coming from more traditional car-oriented media is coming from a place of not liking an upstart.
There's just a lot of easy things to point at with the Cybertruck because of what was promised vs what was delivered. This happens with model cars from other manufacturers too though what changes there is often more looks than promised functionality.
There’s a pretty big difference between traditional auto markers’ “concept cars” and Tesla in 2019 showing off what was supposed to be very close to the final production car. It was also supposed to start at $40k, be bulletproof, have shatterproof glass (at least that one was discredited the minute it was announced), have a boat mode, have over 500mile range, and have a bed ramp. And it was supposed to have a “exoskeleton” design that, spoiler alert, isn’t possible. That was not “here’s this neat concept,” that was “this is the car we’re going to sell you.” Everyone (or at least, everyone in my bubble) knew that every single thing was BS (except maybe the ramp), but still nearly two million people with enough money for a pre-order gobbled it up.
Recalls don’t seem to be a reliable way to tell much of anything since there is no severity score on them.
They are defined as creating a safety risk. I believe the severity usually comes in the title of each specific recall, such as "urgent", etc.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls
Or with the "do not drive" or "park outside" labels.
https://www.carfax.com/blog/urgent-recalls
…And it’s horribly ugly to boot.
I wonder which car is the 99% one
I imagine they know V1 is for the die hard early adopters. V2 will be the mass market push.
Would you expect anything different from a brand new product? It's like version 1.0 of any software. Wait until at least 1.1 and let someone else shake it down.
It reminds me of the Chevy Bolt. Fabulous car, after all the recalls.
it's not their first car
Is that directed at Chevy or Tesla?
Either way, it's true for both.
So? The bZ4x wasn't Toyota's first car, nobody has a better reputation than Toyota and yet they screwed that up.
Yeah, we're talking about a car here, not a new release of iOS.
I recently saw one painted primer black and immediately felt like going home so I could watch Johnny Mnemonic.
It appears to be a triumph of aesthetic over function, needing only EL-wire underlighting to look like it escaped from the Tron storyboards and into low-poly life. I could only wonder if the entertainment system comes with a hidden Sirius/XM channel that only plays vaporwave music.
I set the ambient light in mine to neon purple and play a synthwave playlist. Definitely a fun mood to drive with on dark city streets.
Man. Johnny Mnemonic. I get the urge to rewatch that movie once every three of for years, and I'm reminded of it's awful greatness. Like Hackers.
Need more William Gibson movies. I'm incredibly disappointed that The Peripheral was cancelled.
That honestly sounds amazing. If I win the lottery, my first purchase will be a flat black CT with EL-wire to bump the Tron soundtrack.
I dont think the CT will ever sell large amounts like their other models. Especially with the $7500 tax credit going bye bye.
Does anyone know what the deal is with Cybertrucks coming in different colors all of a sudden? I thought they were only sold as bare steel? But now I see matte black cybertrucks regularly.
You're seeing vinyl wraps, most likely.
Tesla offered wraps for a while. They've recently discontinued the option for the Cybertruck, although it is still available as an option for other models.
Of course, anyone can still get a third party wrap.
Had same question so parked next to a black one. It was wrap. Since then I seen green, pink and blue cybertrucks; all wraps with companies advertising. All of sudden majority I see are small business owners wrap-advertising. Rarely see the steel one. This is for Miami FL.
Tesla now offers wraps.
Are those from Tesla itself or a third party? Can you get any color?
It was on the ordering page, but... that has changed?
Hmm... ordering a cybertruck was different a month or two ago. For example cyberbeast used to come with full self driving and the home power interface. It also talked about wraps (which you had to order through the app?) and which would schedule at the service center.
Now the website has changed, fsd is 8k, and no mention of wraps during cybertruck ordering.
I see mentions:
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-six-cybertruck-wrap-colors/
https://electrek.co/2023/11/30/tesla-cybertruck-comes-in-two...
but no longer on the tesla website?
No-paywall version
https://archive.ph/SNGSo
Cybertruck may be the best example of over-promising and under-delivering of all time.
It truly reminds me of "The Homer"
https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer
man, the internet is being so weird about this truck it's absurd.
Like its shape is weird and 'dangerous', but the F150, RAM truck etc etc are MORE dangerous shape wise, but because it has a 'conventional' shape and the change happened gradually, some how it's ok?
The strangest was the carrot test, they kept doing this test the Cyber truck frunk... but guess what, same happens if you put carrots across the opening of other EV truck with auto close... I saw a video of it same happening with an F150 EV...what even was the point of this whole hullabaloo
I am not American, I don't even have a car, I just hate that this nonsense is polluting my internet feeds.
It's a big car with a long truck, congrats, it's not the anti christ, shut up about it.
I have a fatal attraction to a good overwrought get off my lawn, but I can't get over that there's a jump in paragraph 2 I can't follow.
What do you mean by shape?
Generally, safety is proportional to the relative weight of your car in the collision.
The F150, generously, is 2/3 the weight. (median F150 vs. lowest cybertruck)
Generally, when people discuss car safety in the context of SUVs, they're discussing this weight.
Rest of the stuff seems irrelevant or strawmen I've never seen (truck is antichrist!?; you're in Europe)
I think the parent comment classifies the F150 as dangerous not to the driver but to everyone around it.
exactly, Pedestrian safety of all american trucks is terrible, yet we don't hear about the big speeding wall that are the 'conventional' american truck... but apparently the cyber truck is a pedestrian predator they 'suddenly' discovered.
Either do something about the terrible truck design... or shut up and tolerate the cyber truck like you tolerate the F150 EV or whatever.
Fluff like this just pollutes the EV news space without providing any new info.
Surely the fact that it's a three ton machine that can accelerate from 0-60 in 3 seconds is relevant too. As far as I'm aware the F150 can't match that.
> Surely the fact that it's a three ton machine that can accelerate from 0-60 in 3 seconds is relevant too. As far as I'm aware the F150 can't match that.
The F150 EV has similar weight and speed[1], not sure how it's relevant?
In fact it proves the point, no one talks about how the F150 EV or the Silverado EV etc etc having similar characteristic flaws as the cyber truck, because that doesn't generate clicks.
If anything should be generating articles, it should be the Hummer EV, that things in absurdly big, heavy and fast, even for american trucks... but that doesn't generate clicks.
Cybertruck gets undue attention, mostly negative because clickbait, and we should stop clicking such obvious baits.
[1]: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a40120063/2022-ford-f-150-...
People do, all the time, you just did too. You just linked to an article that did.
I'm talking about hyperbolic negative coverage, that provide no new information or insight, but bait to attract clicks.
Well, no, not exactly, you literally just wrote another reply, right below, explicitly saying no, you didn't mean weight, you meant people talking about the slicing edges of the cybertruck.
It's not the front shape or slicing people. It's the weight. I have no idea why you think anyone is hand-wringing about slicing people. No one thinks slicing people with hard edges is the problem.
It makes sense if you're A) mad about All Duh People Lying About Slicing Car or B) Actually All Heavy Cars Are Bad. You are stuck on saying A but wanting to make sense, as in B, which is at least internally coherent and reality-based, if purist.
Please read the links, I'll share them here again.
https://www.wired.com/story/a-rubberized-cybertruck-is-ploug...
https://www.transportenvironment.org/uploads/files/2024-10-0...
If publications want to talk about bad truck shapes in good faith, talk about ALL truck shapes! Singling out the truck made by Tesla when the trucks made by other American automakers is just as dangerous is obvious click bait, and just pollutes the EV news scape.
I was comparing like with like, and acc to google the F150 EV is about the same weight as the Cybertruck. (around ~ 3,000 Kg)Also I was referring to the line in this article where they talk about how it doesn't meet EU regulations, which leads to another article[1] of their, which talks a LOT about cybertruck's bad front shape... (which I must mention for clarity, IS bad)... but make no mention of the even WORSE shapes by other competing American trucks.
Because the fact is... Tesla sells clicks. They reference a letter [2] by the NGO protesting about the (private) import of this particular turck... but said NGO's website makes no mention of OTHER dangerous american trucks privately imported to europe and parading about. The story is not the shape or pedestrian safety... it's click.
[1]: https://www.wired.com/story/a-rubberized-cybertruck-is-ploug...
[2]: https://www.transportenvironment.org/uploads/files/2024-10-0...
____
Btw, I am not in Europe. I live in a 3rd world country, not sure where I gave that insinuation.
TL:DR; ALL american trucks are terribly shaped and designed or whatever. ALL american trucks have multiple other issues and recalls... as is routine with the damn things.
Yet this particular stupid truck gets posted because it's click bait, NOT because there is some actual information to be gained. We should downvote such clickbait pollution on our feeds.
I love how people who claim to not care dedicate so much time to telling everyone how much they don’t care. You could have just not posted. But clearly you do care a lot. Get help.
But I do care!
I care about EVs and climate change and emission reduction and all that.
What I don't care about is the Electric vehicle news feed being polluted with irrelevant nonsense when there are far more important news to be shared.
I don't care about the Cybertruck's oddities... because those oddities are common to other american EV trucks and therefore bring nothing new to the table.
EVs are not a solution to climate change.
That is an industry green wash to make you buy a new car.
There are multiple other technologies which will surpass EVs efficiency, and wont require scrapping 1.5 billion existing cars or disposing of huge battery packs after 10 years.
You are preaching to the choir, I an a public transit advocate.
But I am also a realist, and as much I'd like buses and trains, we are going to have private cars anyways, and if private cars are inevitable, I'd rather they be electric.
> if private cars are inevitable, I'd rather they be electric.
Thats the issue. The car industry has brainwashed everyone into thinking that owning an EV is the best option for the planet. It isnt. EVs are way more pollutant in creation and disposal. Emissions out of the exhaust pipe are one tiny part of the climate impact of a vehicle.
Replacing Petrol/Diesel with Hydrogen/Synthetic fuel is a much greener option overall.
All credible lifecycle ghg emissions analyses have found that EVs have substantial reductions vs ICE. It is true that they have more emissions from manufacture but this is overcome, on average, in a few years. This is true even on carbon intense electric grids. And their emissions drop as the grid gets cleaner.
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/driving-cleaner
The Cybertruck is a likely exception. It's manufacturing emissions are likely enormous and it's likely to be driven less than average since it's impractical.
If we all dump our vehicles and buy EVs, the energy required to to scrap/recycle 1.5 billion ICE vehicles far outweighs any savings we would make and will take decades to recover.
On top of that they have massive chemical battery packs which are horrible to mine the resources for, are useless after 10 years, and cannot be recycled.
The report you quoted confirms all of this.
Simply putting synthetic fuel into our existing cars negates all of that and turns our existing cars tailpipe emissions into water.
The ICEs traded in for EVs don't get scrapped, they get sold as used cars. It's unclear if or how much the transition to EVs will shave off their expected lifespan. It will play out over decades.
Also batteries aren't useless after 10 years. They can be used for grid storage for years after being retired from EV service.
Synthetic fuel schemes are very expensive and haven't proven to be scalable.
If this piece of crap is worse than only 91% of all 2024 vehicles, I really wonder what the other 9%, vehicles that are allegedly even worse, are. The article doesn't name them.
Vinfast, just a guess
Dude, the thing with these things is that the breathlessness has already exhausted belief. Supposedly Tesla Y was a terrible thing, supposedly everyone was going to die in the heat under the Tesla tent, supposedly Twitter would die in 3 days without their staff.
Nothing happened. Everyone I know who owns a Tesla loves it. So I’m going to file this under “internet hates guy; tries to make it sound like he makes bad things” which people do a lot with Musk stuff.
None of the Tesla cars are one I’ll buy (need 3 rows comfortably - might even buy the new VW electric van) but I’m getting the feeling from the online techies like I did at the AirPod release and the iPad release: my instinct is that this is great stuff; then my friends who buy it love it; then everyone online hates it; then it sells billions of dollars worth.
> supposedly Twitter would die in 3 days without their staff.
I agree people tend to overreact and overblow expected consequences, but I mean, twitter's valuation is down 80%[0] and they haven't released anything new in two years, after exhausting the backlog of already developed things.
It's not going great.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2024/09/30/elon-musk...
> they haven't released anything new in two years, after exhausting the backlog of already developed things.
I'm not a Twitter user, so I might miss the lack of some essential features, but it seems to me that the platform is mostly feature-complete. Just further bloating the software for the sake of it is not necessary a good strategy, yet it is one that a lot of startups follow, just because that VC R&D money has to go somewhere.
Valuation has no relevance to the layoffs. The valuation is down because brands left due to Elon's politics.
Por que no los dos?
There referring to the people who claimed that Twitter would break down following the large scale firings. Every time Twitter went done for a little bit after that, lots of comments here would pop up claiming that the Twitter site would get worse and worse and eventually break apart because of the firings (see the whole discussion here[1], for example). People said Musk didn't know what he was doing, and wouldn't be able to keep the site up long term after the layoffs.
Despite the fact that these predictions ended up being completely wrong, there seems to have been very little reflection from the people who were making them.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35043433
The way I see it all these supposed "inefficiencies" got twitter a valuation of 44B and a hub for people across the spectrum to congregate. Firing all these people and goining hardcore mode has only slashed the value of the company by 80% and even more of a cesspool of bots and misinformation, not to mention the exodus of advertisers and a large portion of users.
So yeah. Good job.
This is a good example of moving the goals posts. There were lot of claims that [A] would happen. In the end, [A] didn't happen. People say, "maybe it's time to admit that the claims that [A] would happen were wrong," and the reply is "no, [B] happened, so it doesn't matter."
It's certainly possible to argue that Musk hasn't done a good job of running Twitter. But the claim - made by many people here - that the site wouldn't remain function after 80% of the staff was laid off certainly proved to be incorrect.
I wouldn't say that everyone who owns a Tesla loves it. As a matter of fact everyone I know who has bought a Tesla and loves it came from a car that was a lower quality and lower priced car than the Tesla that they bought. The people that I know that came from equally priced or higher priced cars are satisfied with their Tesla but they do not love it.
I think that is a lot of the bias with Tesla owners many of them have never owned a car in that price range before and they bought it because of the hype surrounding the Tesla. Prior to that they would have never thought of buying a car in that price range. Often times when you buy a car in that price range you're getting a better quality car because it's from a manufacturer who's been around longer.
> supposedly Twitter would die in 3 days without their staff.
It’s true that the smaller team has succeeded with uptime on the core service. It’s also true, however, that the platform is in serious decline, and that’s partly due to the product becoming more and more shitty over time. It turns out skeleton crews can’t make things that are nice to use. Have you tried the X mac app lately? It’s just horrible. Broken modals, empty loading screens, janky layout with desperate upsell message slapped everywhere.
Keeping the platform online with a smaller team was a win, sure. But don’t pretend there’s been no impact.
>It’s also true, however, that the platform is in serious decline, and that’s partly due to the product becoming more and more shitty over time.
A vocal minority of leftists moving to Bluesky isn't a decline.
I was actually referring to the financial institutions who backed the takeover writing off ~75% of the value of their investment in the platform during Musk’s leadership, which predates the recent Bluesky enthusiasm.
But since you mention it: yes, a vocal minority of leftists moving to a new platform is indeed a decline! Get your politics out of it and think about what it means for a business. Part of twitter’s value was that it was where news broke, people made statements, etc. It was cited on the news. There was no other platform like that (except perhaps Instagram, usually with pop culture figures). There is indeed a small group of people who, if you lose them, cause enormous damage to a platform like Twitter, because for many people using it they are using it because of the other people using it. Network effects cut both ways.
>I was actually referring to the financial institutions who backed the takeover writing off ~75% of the value of their investment in the platform during Musk’s leadership, which predates the recent Bluesky enthusiasm.
Makes sense. Valid argument.
>yes, a vocal minority of leftists moving to a new platform is indeed a decline! Get your politics out of it and think about what it means for a business.
Nothing. They will all come back.
>Part of twitter’s value was that it was where news broke, people made statements, etc. It was cited on the news.
It still is. Nothing has changed.
>There was no other platform like that (except perhaps Instagram, usually with pop culture figures).
There still isn't. Bsky is no competition in that regard. There's nothing of value for 'normal' people there.
>There is indeed a small group of people who, if you lose them, cause enormous damage to a platform like Twitter, because for many people using it they are using it because of the other people using it.
And yet they are not the people leaving. How many of these supposed giant exoduses were we supposed to have by now? First the death of artists on Twitter after the Japanese left to misskey? Out of whom many are back on Twitter regardless? All the Mastodon refugees, who also in great numbers have returned and only the fanatics have stayed? Twitter is not dying anytime soon and you (and others like you) are once again crying wolf over a situation we've been in multiple times.
> There still isn't. Bsky is no competition in that regard. There's nothing of value for 'normal' people there.
I'm finding Bluesky a perfect Twitter replacement so far. Twitter was becoming a cesspool; an increasingly rancid algorithm that promoted one particular person's politics, and a lack of moderation that meant many conversations just degenerated into abuse.
> How many of these supposed giant exoduses were we supposed to have by now?
All platforms eventually get superseded.
Twitter only thrived over competitors because of the network effect. Other platforms were technically superior / had better QoL, but either had flaws or didn't achieve critical mass.
Bluesky is different. It's as easy to use for the average person, gives more control to the user, is far more civil, and is now big enough already be a replacement.
Almost all the people I was following on Twitter are now posting on there. I followed a lot of scientists, and many have moved entirely. That fewer people are on Bluesky is a feature, not a bug; the signal to noise is more distilled.
My point isn’t that Twitter is dead, remember. It’s that it is in decline. Bluesky isn’t a twitter replacement today, sure, but it’s a risk, even if the risk is only that the end result is fragmentation. I’m not sure why you say it’s impossible for anything ever to seriously damage X. That’s fanaticism.
And as for people crying wolf, remember: at the end of the fable, there were indeed wolves. The boy was lying, yes, but the lesson is not that there was never any danger - it’s that people stop listening.
It's not just leftists. My Twitter feed had a large number of military experts in it since the start of the war against Ukraine. Almost all of them are posting on Bluesky now, and they're certainly not a leftwing group.
I think another interesting aspect is that Musk confirmed that tweets with links to external sources are penalized on Twitter. That would particularly hit the kind of people that make these platforms interesting to me because they also post longer content somewhere else.
> which people do a lot with Musk stuff.
Rightfully so? I mean you can't build up a personality cult and then separate the guy from the product.
But regardless of musk, you have to agree that the cybertruck has issues and underdelivered.
I have heard from three Tesla owners how uncomfortable they find the seats during very long drives, so not everyone "loves" it. Perhaps if you don't drive long distances in it, your experience will not reveal this.
Seats are extremely uncomfortable for people of certain heights. The main issue seems to be the headrests aren't adjustable without tools.
I owned a Tesla. I sold it. Loved it for three years then hated it. It became a nightmare to own and the service dept was such a hassle. They refused to fix recall issues, things broke all the time. It was trash, and I was so blinded by speedy car that I didn't notice it was trash until years later.
> Everyone I know who owns a Tesla loves it
Where do you live? In the bay area, I know a lot of Tesla owners, and 100% of them are absolutely sick of Elon's antics and are not considering another Tesla. (They also all are sick of the poor reliability and terrible service.)
Seriously. This is a virtually universal opinion in my experience, but, I wonder if it's different depending on the political alignment of your area. People may be starting to consider Teslas as political signaling.
(Anecdote alert)
Most of my Asian friends (mostly first-generation immigrants) have Teslas. Same with many Asians (East & South) at work. The politics don't even register, so the evaluation is purely based on utility. Based on that, they all seem to be satisfied.
Among the second-generation Asians there is more political awareness and it's more 50:50 whether they go for a Tesla or not.
I live in San Francisco.
We need a special #RocketManBad for these stories.
>Everyone I know who owns a Tesla loves it.
Small consolation for the pedestrian who gets run over. Massive cars and distracting screens are two of the main reasons traffic deaths are on the rise, and they're both two selling points people like about Teslas.
Gosh I still laugh at all the "I'm and SRE and I can promise you Twitter is going to fail with all the people he cut" and it had what, 3 blips at most?
They're hard to find now, I assume because of how embarrassed the authors were for posting them.
Hilarious.
Not an SRE but I admit to saying that I expected Twitter to have some serious outages in the coming months after firing all those people. Honestly, how did the remaining engineers at Twitter pull it off? I can't really imagine losing more than half of my coworkers and not having the wheels fall off pretty quickly.
Twitter was overstaffed, but much of the "extra" staff the elon fired weren't SREs keeping the systems running, they had to do with things like moderation. Elon doesn't believe in moderation, so out they went, and the skeleton crew was able to keep the site running, for the most part, but now the user experience has gone to hell unless you're a right-wing nutcase, so everyone who isn't is fleeing, as well as advertisers who Twitter even threatened to sue because they weren't buying advertising (!).
a lot of what made X worse since Musk is not easily quantifiable. fewer high-quality posts, much higher spam, next to zero moderation, more misinfo - while it's possible to get some data on this, it's subjective enough that the fans will wave it away.
the problem is that Twitter has been such an invaluable part of the daily doomscroll that i suspect even those who have 'left' it for BlueSky or Threads are still opening X a few times a day - keeping those MAU numbers up.
Twitter for what it is had too many engineers. I think part of the problem was the fad of more workers more hiring will generate more revenue but that was not true and just was a way to prop up the stock value.
All the hate comes from deranged people who have never driven a Tesla, let alone had one. They take any negative story and spin it forever.
I have driven a model 3 and it is hands down the worst 45k (CAD) car I’ve ever driven. Horrible ride quality, uncomfortable seats, terrible (in my opinion - beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose) and slightly dangerous interior, not really all that fast compared to other cars in the price bracket. I’ve also ridden in one with 100k km and it was falling apart - even ignoring the interior, the suspension was horrid (you shouldn’t need new shocks and springs all around after less than 100k lm of driving), the paint was faded to crap, panel gaps were notably worse than when the same car was new.
They are a 15k car at best with 20k worth of batteries masquerading as a nice car. They’re not. They’re a reasonably cost-effective EV, compared to the rest of the market, but they’re not even close to gas cars in the same price range when it comes to anything other than cost per mile.
Everyone’s giving their anecdotes of “no not every Tesla owner loves them” so I’ll give my own. I’ve owned a 3, a Y, and now a cybertruck. These cars are awesome.
We had a “bomb cyclone” last week in the PNW that took out power for half a million homes, and my cybertruck was a lifesaver. Powered my house for multiple days, allowing my family to stay at home. Our fridge and freezer stayed powered and I even ran my clothes dryer one day just because I could. I can’t sing its praises enough after this experience.
In other news, my phone has a recall every month
Has your phone tried to kill you yet?
By a thousand cuts.
No, I don’t have a Samsung.
How long til the us army announces its new contract with Tesla to outfit the whole service with cybertrucks?
That's easy to find out with a formula:
= (Date("Jan-20-2025")-Now()).convertToWholeDays;
At least then, us Europeans won't care anymore if they pull out of NATO.
Surely all the peanut farms are sold before people take official government positions?
Don‘t give him ideas
The Cybertruck’s recalls aren’t entirely surprising given Tesla’s approach to innovation and production. They’re known for pushing boundaries with ambitious designs and features, which often results in early production challenges. Recalls, while not ideal, are fairly common for first-generation vehicles across the auto industry—just look at other manufacturers when they roll out new models.
What stands out is how Tesla handles these issues, especially with their over-the-air software updates. While hardware fixes are more complex, the ability to address many problems through software gives them a unique advantage in mitigating the impact of recalls.
That said, it’ll be interesting to see how Tesla balances innovation with quality control, especially given the Cybertruck’s high-profile nature. Early adopters probably expect some bumps in the road, but mainstream buyers might be less forgiving.