Tesla “recalls” 285,000 Model 3 and Model Y, but will update over air

Tesla has issued a recall of 285,000 Model 3 and Model Y cars in China, but it will not require the owners to bring them to service centres for the fix.

Chinese media reports that according to China’s State Administration for Market Regulation, Tesla China has recalled both imported and Shanghai-made Model 3s and Model Ys.

This includes around 36,000 Fremont-made Model 3s that were made between January 12, 2019 and November 27, 2019.

In addition, around 211,000 Shanghai-made Model 3 electric vehicles produced from December 19, 2019 to June 7, 2021 and around 38,000 Shanghai-made Model Y electric vehicles made between January 1, 2021 to June 7, 2021 are included in the recall.

Multiple media reports say that the recall pertains to a problem with cruise control wherein drivers might accidentally activate cruise control, which “in extreme cases” could cause a crash if the cruise control accelerated the car considerably under certain conditions.

Tesla was not available for comment regarding the recall, but it is understood that Tesla China took the initiative to contact the administrator to request a recall.

The EV maker says it will not require drives to bring their vehicles into service centres for a fix however.

Instead, drivers can complete the recall through a remote “over-the-air” (OTA) software upgrade. If the vehicle cannot be upgraded through OTA, a Tesla service centre will contact the relevant driver to upgrade the vehicle’s active cruise control software.

The recall comes some months after a crash involving a Tesla vehicle in Texas resulted in the death of two occupants.

Police who attended the crash said at the time they believed that there was no driver in the car at the time of the crash, and there was widespread speculation that Tesla’s advanced driver assist system Autopilot of which adaptive cruise control is a feature was at fault.

A preliminary report from the US-based National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said that while auto-steering, another feature of Autopilot, could not be engaged on the stretch of road where the crash happened in its tests, cruise control could be. Investigations are ongoing.

Meanwhile, the latest software version of Tesla’s premium (and currently semi-autonomous) self-driving package, Full Self Driving (FSD), is being held back another week.

The fully-autonomous version of FSD has been in beta testing with some staff and a small number of Tesla owners since October 2020. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said the next update, which will coincide with a subscription release for the FSD, will be “gigantic”.

A release timeline for version 9 of Tesla’s FSD software has been touted several times by the eccentric entreprenuer, but on Friday (US time) Musk said on Twitter that there it will be at least one more week.

“I’m driving “alpha” 9, but we need to fix some obvious issues before releasing beta 9, hopefully next week. FSD subscription capability should be turning on via the Tesla app,” he said.