Tesla recall or not? Elon Musk Wants a Washington Agency to Embrace the Digital Age
A few weeks from now, Tesla will notify owners of almost 1.1 million vehicles about a safety issue the electric-car maker already started addressing last month.
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration didn't force the manufacturer to make the fix — Tesla discovered the window glitch through internal testing and determined it warranted a voluntary recall. But the company is required by law to send out letters to each owner's mailboxes, and deem this a recall, even if it remedied the issue with an over-the-air (OTA) software update.
Elon Musk isn't the only one who thinks this is anachronistic. Justin Demaree, who owns a Model 3 and a Model Y, has at least twice received a letter from Tesla about a problem Tesla had addressed with an OTA update a week or two before.
“It's confusing for customers,” says Demaree, whose YouTube account Bearded Tesla Guy has more than 60,000 followers. “Getting that letter does seem wasteful.”
Musk no doubt has more pressing issues with NHTSA. The agency has been scrutinizing Tesla's driver-assistance system Autopilot through two defect investigations, one of which was opened after its vehicles repeatedly collided with police cars and fire trucks at crash scenes. Shortly after that probe was opened, the company may have undercut its chief executive officer's bellyaching by neglecting to issue a recall when it deployed an OTA update intended to improve how Teslas detect emergency vehicles.
Nevertheless, as more automakers follow Tesla's lead and build OTA update capability into their vehicles, at least one former NHTSA administrator agrees the agency could afford to update its notification protocols.
“It is time to bring the recall process into line with the technology now
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