Recalls are common: every year millions of cars have to solve problems or factory defects that compromise the safety of their occupants or the rest of the vehicles on the road. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has just made public the complete figures for 2024.
Teslaat the request of the US DGT, He recalled more cars than anyone else: more than 5 million. That puts Elon Musk’s brand ahead of Stellantis or Ford, which are in second and third place in the number of units affected by recalls. But unlike both firms, it did not cause a major inconvenience to Tesla owners: The vast majority did not have to leave home.
Only 39,600 Tesla cars had to go to an official center
Tesla had to solve defects in 5.13 million of its cars throughout 2024 in the US. No brand had to assume such a number of units in its recalls. But that does not mean that the cars had to go through the workshop: only 39,605 of the firm’s cars had to be taken by their owners to the Tesla Service. Only 0.8%.
Thus, the Californian firm solved the problems of 5,098,363 cars through wireless updates, via OTA (Over-The-Air). Which means that the owners of these Tesla cars did not even have to make an appointment with the workshop, nor take it and pick it up, nor wait excessively to see the error corrected.
In the end, it is much easier to solve errors with software updates than to have to receive hundreds of thousands of cars at each recall. For Tesla it is cheaper and for the customer, much more convenient.
Of the 16 recalls that Tesla had to make in 2024 in the US, eight were solved with remote updates and another eight with physical repairs in the workshop. But the units affected by the latter were much fewer. Among them we find, for example, the Tesla Cybertruck, which had a problem with the accelerator: it got stuck and had to be fixed on site. Fortunately for Tesla, there are many fewer units of the electric pick-up than there are of the Model 3 or Model Y.
An example is found with the latest recall that Tesla has just announced, just starting in 2025: the rear camera may not work correctly. Tesla will perform an OTA update and, after monitoring, will determine if it has been resolved or if elements of the hardware need to be changed.
More technology, more software updates. This is largely due to the fact that most Tesla problems are due to software failures, since they are true computers on wheels. What is giving the brand the most headaches is the Autopilot FSD and, in general, its semi-autonomous driving systems
In fact, the Autopilot FSD is once again under investigation by the NHTSA. The organization wants to determine if the update already carried out in Autopilot at the end of 2023 was sufficient, since incidents have continued to be reported. In addition, another investigation has just been opened for the final version of the Smart Summon, months after it arrived in cars precisely via OTA.
Ford cars were the ones that had to go through the workshop the most
Although Tesla has recorded the highest number of cars affected by recalls, in 2024, Ford It established itself as a brand with more cars that needed to go to official centers to solve problems.
Of the 4.77 million cars of the oval that had defects that could compromise its safety, only 391 of them were able to solve it wirelessly. The rest had to go to a Ford workshop. That is, 99.99%: just the opposite of Tesla.
The second firm with the most cars going through the workshop in 2024 due to recalls was Honda (including Acura) with 3,790,106 cars having to physically go to apply the pertinent repairs. In their case, only one recall could be resolved via OTA, with 4,174 models.
And the third was Stellar. Of the 4.80 million cars that had to be repaired, their brands’ workshops went through 3.77 million vehicles. Stellantis managed to fix the problems of 1.03 million cars with a remote update. This group includes a good bulk of brands: Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, Alfa Romeo, Maserati and Fiat.
BMW, with more than 1.8 million cars affected by recalls, or Toyota with more than 1.2 cars recalled, could not correct any of the failures through wireless updates.
Source: www.motorpasion.com
