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0 pointsoutworlder3y ago0 comments

> Recalling the hardware is a drastically more difficult request to impose on customers and financially/logistically for the car maker.

And the distinction matters to consumers because...?

A component is faulty. It needs to be fixed. Whether or not you have to drive to a dealership, if it's OTA, if someone at a dealership needs to plug a specialized device to your car's OBD port, or the car is unfixable and needs to be melted to slag and you get a new one doesn't really matter. There's an issue, it is a safety issue, and it needs to be fixed.

How efficient the process can be it's another matter entirely. That's up to the manufacturers.

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chc3y ago

> Whether or not you have to drive to a dealership, if it's OTA, if someone at a dealership needs to plug a specialized device to your car's OBD port, or the car is unfixable and needs to be melted to slag and you get a new one doesn't really matter.

As a car owner, those scenarios are drastically different to me. I have a hard time imagining anyone saying "It doesn't really matter to me if my car receives an OTA update or if I need to drive 2 hours to a dealership or if my car is melted to slag."

hex4def63y ago

If you had to send in your cellphone each time there was an android update vs all IOS updates being OTA, I think you would see the distinction as a consumer.

kalleboo3y ago

> And the distinction matters to consumers because...?

Because in one I have to book a time with a dealer and take half a day off of work and in the other I have to do... nothing and it will just fix itself.

shkkmo3y ago

I would say that whether a "recall" requires some action on the part of the owner is a very important distinguishing factor.

A recall should unambiguously mean that some action from the owner is required to resolve the issue (e.g. taking it to a dealer to get a software update installed.)

If no action is required (other than caution / not using the product feature), we should use some other term such as "safety advisory" to avoid ambiguity around critical safety information.

jjav3y ago

> A recall should unambiguously mean that some action from the owner is required to resolve the issue (e.g. taking it to a dealer to get a software update installed.)

Should, perhaps. But recall has a meaning with legal implications, so it matters. A recall requires the fix status to be tracked and reported for example, whereas a random OTA updated does not.

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