“Every Single Tesla On The Road Has Been Recalled“
uhm, no, no every single tesla on the road has not been recalled. leave it to carbuzz to create the
most clickbait headline they could possibly think of to put Tesla in the worst light possible while
simultaneously not being true. And just about everyone who actually read the article is pissed
at carbuzz for putting out this garbage, they get absolutely wrecked in their comments section:
“Clickbait” “Articles like this are not only purposely misleading and irresponsible but
have damaged the carbuzz reputation. This article is false and only published out of
some misplaced malice and hate, so therefore how do I know if the next article contains
truth?” “Articles like this are not only purposely misleading and irresponsible but have damaged the
carbuzz reputation. This article is false and only published out of some misplaced malice and hate,
so therefore how do I know if the next article contains truth?” “Do not ever use a blatantly
false headline again. Thanks.” “You know what's extraordinary? The level of Tesla hating bile on
this site. Constant disengenious articles. It is clear who pays CarBuzz bills: Legacy Auto.” And
you gotta hand it to the comments section, nearly every comment was calling out carbuzz for their
clear agenda pushing and it makes me really happy when people can see right through the bullshit.
Carbuzz is referring to an event that has a grain of truth, but they’re making it
sound as sensational as possible to get your attention and to rain on tesla’s parade. So
what is it exactly that they’re talking about when they say every single tesla on the road has been
recalled? Its this, back in December of 2020, tesla came out with what they called boom box
mode where tesla owners could customize sounds or music to play from the outside facing speaker
of their cars. You might be asking yourself why tesla’s would even have an outward firing speaker,
which is a good question, its a requirement by law because electric vehicles are basically silent,
they play a noise when at low speeds to alert people nearby that there’s a car coming.
Anyways Tesla thought they’d have some fun with the hardware and they chose to give their users
the freedom to play whatever they wanted out that speaker system, and the NHTSA did not like that.
They said that playing random sounds out of that external speakers would drown out the federally
mandated pedestrian safety sounds, so they made tesla remove the boombox feature, which tesla did,
except when you’re in park you can still use it. When Elon musk was asked why they removed the
boombox feature becuase a lot of people were enjoying it, he tweeted “the fun police made
us do it” anyways, the update that removed the boombox feature was sent to nearly 600,000 cars,
which Carbuzz is saying is “every single tesla on the road” and that is clearly not even close. They
say later on in the article that “595,717 Tesla models ranging from the Tesla Model S to the Model
Y will be fixed with an OTA update...As such, pretty much every Tesla on the road needs the
update to bring the cars back into compliance.” and look I’m not trying to be rude here,
but how did the author think that 600,000 cars was “pretty much every tesla on the road?”
Its not even close to all their vehicles. Tesla produced over 900,000 cars in 2021 alone,
so suffice to say 600,000 cars isn’t every single tesla on the road, but as carbuzz is well aware,
its not as catchy of a headline if they don’t exaggerate beyond the truth. The next thing is
calling this update a recall. Now here’s where we really need to have some nuance.
The strict recall definition from the NHTSA, which is the governing body on recalls 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.
Manufacturers are required to fix the problem by repairing it, replacing it, offering a refund,
or in rare cases repurchasing the vehicle.” So here’s where we need that nuance, a recall
is to address an unreasonable safety risk, via repairing, replacing, refunding, or repurchasing,
where exactly does a software update fall on those lines? Its tricky. But one thing is for sure,
when the general public hears that there’s been a recall, they aren’t goign to be thinking that
recall just means a software update, thats just not the language we use on a regular basis. A
recall immediately invokes an idea of having to go into a dealership or repair shop to get
some part fixed or inspected, but in this case, the “recall” was issued entirely over the air,
and would be installed most of the time without the owner even really being aware.
It seems at the very least it be disingenuous to call a software update a recall,
for example when apple or google is forced to issue a security update to our smartphones,
nobody calls those software updates recalls. So while it may be true that you could call
this incident a recall, its without a doubt true that you’re going to be giving a lot of people
the wrong impression of whats actually going on. But it doesn’t stop there, the author gets
even more stuff wrong, and its painfully clear that they aren’t trying to inform their readers
with the best information possible, they’re trying to push an agenda. The real recall in
terms that we usually talk about them, is for about 7,000 model X’s that have a problem with
the front window possibly interfering with the side curtain airbag deployment. Owners of those
vehicles do have to take their cars into a service center and the physical changes will be made,
but again, thats only for 7,000 vehicles, and recalls just like this one are incredibly common
in the automotive space. Every car manufacturer has recalls issued all the time, its the norm,
not an exception. While this recall is serious and should be treated as such, its hardly a
news story to have a few thousand vehicles be recalled for a side curtain airbag issue.
Its only becuase its tesla that they’re writing these stories, and i can prove it. If you look up
side curtain airbag recalls in the recent past, you’ll quickly see that its incredibly common.
In 2021 alone GM had to recall 34,000 Cadillacs for side curtain airbag issues, in that same year
Ram had to recall over 200,000 trucks becuase side curtain airbag issues, Stella this had to issue
over 200,000 recalls for side curtain airbag issues, Mercedes issued a recall for side curtain
airbag issues. Toyota issued a recall for side curtain airbag issues. In fact when i googled
around for a while, i couldn’t find a single large scale automotive manufacturer that DIDN’T have a
recall for side curtain airbag issues in 2021. Now I’ll admit I’m in a sort of EV and Tesla
bubble as far as the news, thats for sure true, but I’m still goign to float the idea out there,
did anybody hear about the side curtain airbag issue recalls for all these other manufacturers?
Did it make news stories from a bunch of different news outlets? Were there articles written about
every single recall issued for all these other manufacturers? What it seems like to me,
and again this is just my opinion, but tesla is in the limelight, everything they
do is analyzed under a microscope, and thats totally fine, I’ve got nothing against that,
i like scrutiny. But it is beyond irresponsible for places like carbuzz to write articles about
recalls for Tesla and title them things like “every single tesla on the road has been recalled”
when what they’re referring to is a software update, and they’re doing all of that without
acknowledging that the entire rest of the industry is also issuing recalls for the exact same things.
The difference is that nobody cares about these other manufacturers, so their recalls float by
totally unreported on, which is giving people an incredibly skewed view of reality. The truth is
that every manufacturer issues loads of recalls every single year, tesla is not unique in that
regard. One aspect that tesla is unique in however is their ability to update their firmware over
the air, which few if any other manufacturers are capable of. To me, when i see articles like this,
its blatantly clear that carbuzz is being paid to write anti-tesla content. Partially they’re
paid by clicks, tesla is a hot button topic, and people are interested, but another aspect is that
carbuzz has major ties to legacy auto, and they have a financial interest in covering tesla in a
negative light. I wont go into the details in this video, but the gyst of it is this, media outlets
like carbuzz make most of their revenue from running advertisements, nothing wrong with that,
but legacy automotive companies make up some of the largest advertisers in the world, so now
we’ve got a situation on our hands. It would be in carbuzz’s best financial interests to cover the
companies that are paying them in the best light possible. Nobody wants to bite the hand that feeds
them. Tesla on the other hand doesn’t pay for advertising, so now carbuzz is creating content,
where some of the companies are paying them, and one of the competitors of those companies
isn’t paying them, and its painfully obvious why that could sway their direction. And that
begins the cycle of abuse between media outlets and their corporate bill payers,
its obviously a lot more complicated than that, but that gets us started in seeing why they want
to cover tesla in a negative light. If you’d be interested in a whole video on why Tesla seems to
get a bad rap in the media most of the time, let me know and I can make that happen. Aight peace.
“Every single Tesla on the road has been recalled” carbuzz clickbait