While TSLA does seem to have a history of these issues I wonder how bad the problems are relative to other car makers who have had to make a large number of recalls over the years. I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla still has a higher defect rate, but I think it would be much closer than these articles will have you believe.
In general, anything Tesla related gets more coverage than an equivalent issue for any other car maker. I remember a few years back when Autopilot accidents would make national news while any other generic car wreck doesn't cause anyone to think twice.
I think there's a tangible difference between something like this and a recall. A recall is a single thing going wrong at a large scale. Audi having water pumps that can short-circuit in common scenarios [0]. Samsung using underspecified capacitors on their TVs [1]. Generally, this was a single mistake that had large consequences.
However, if different things keep going wrong at a smaller scale... That's a problem with management and process, not a single mistake echoed at scale.
Single mistakes are just not reported. My Ford had wires swapped in production and the first time the passenger's windows was lowered, the door locks got fried. Then the transmission fell apart. Different small things. If it was a Tesla you'd probably read about it.
In general, anything Tesla related gets more coverage than an equivalent issue for any other car maker. I remember a few years back when Autopilot accidents would make national news while any other generic car wreck doesn't cause anyone to think twice.
Oh yeah this part is for sure true. I remember years ago a Model S got in an accident and had a small battery fire, and it was all over the news. Meanwhile Ford had a major recall going on for cars literally spontaneously catching on fire while driving, and nobody paid any attention.
Meanwhile Ford had a major recall going on for cars literally spontaneously catching on fire while driving, and nobody paid any attention.
...If water and contaminants got into the cables of certain model trucks as a result of snow or ice seepage, and those water/contaminants caused corrosion, and the block heater cable was plugged into an electrical outlet and active. This happened for 3 trucks out of 847,000.
Corrosion-related recalls are fairly common for automakers, because it's hard to anticipate which interior components will face corrosive elements, or how frequently, or in what amounts, due to the wide variety of geographies, climates, and uses that vehicles get subjected to.
Tesla has issued corrosion-related recalls itself, multiple times, including in 2018 and 2019, and these similarly did not make national news.
There is some truth to Tesla issues getting covered more often, but when was the last time Ford or Toyota recalled a vehicle because a major part of the body could blow off? A component being faulty isn’t really on the same order of magnitude as the entire roof of the car detaching. I’m also reminded of a story a few months ago where the steering wheel of a Tesla simply detached in the driver’s hands. This is just an deeply flawed manufacturing and QA process that frankly deserves more critical coverage than other car companies because the problems are more fundamental, like potentially ending up like the police car at the end of The Blues Brothers.
I think the fact that you didn't hear about this recall, to the point of not even believing such a thing could happen, while you did hear about this one case of one Tesla roof blowing off, illustrates the point nicely.
Safety issues are recalled, so you would see them regardless.
Since Tesla has less than 1 million cars built IIRC, it's actually much worse of a problem. Other automakers have hundreds of millions of cars on the road with different designs, each with potential problems.
Yet something safety critical like a roof falling off happens rarely, but get recalled.
I’m not seeing this VW recall. Are you referring to Takata airbags? That’s an old recall but a really bad one, caused by Takata not the car manufacturers. The ECM getting updated for emissions reasons? I just took my car in for that one during my regular service, it’s a service bulletin not a recall.
The car makers knew the liabilities of using ammonium nitrate as an airbag propellant. It was just cheaper. It's not like Takata swapped from a stable propellant to one which could be stable if everything was done just right on their own without telling anyone.
That doesn’t answer my question first off and moves the goal posts elsewhere secondly. The issue here is there isn’t a VW recall I can find that he’s talking about, the airbag issue was an industry wide thing and not tied to a specific manufacturer, whereas this issue is tied directly to Tesla moving fast and breaking things still.
In general, anything Tesla related gets more coverage than an equivalent issue for any other car maker. I remember a few years back when Autopilot accidents would make national news while any other generic car wreck doesn't cause anyone to think twice.