News
Tesla’s software fixes, the NHTSA’s status quo, and an impending need for updated recall terminologies
It is no secret that Tesla is a popular topic, so much so that the coverage around the company is immense. Couple this with CEO Elon Musk’s rockstar persona and you get a company whose vehicles are looked at under a microscope constantly. It might feel unfair for some, but it’s just the way it is. Tesla — by simply being Tesla — is newsworthy.
Tesla’s newsworthiness is a double-edged sword. A look at the coverage for the company’s vehicle recalls from the NHTSA would prove this point. So notable is Tesla’s news coverage that a mainstream newsreader would likely get the impression that Teslas get recalls frequently. The opposite is true. As evidenced by Reuters in the graphic below, data from January 1, 2020, through February 17, 2022, shows that Tesla actually recalls its vehicles less frequently than some of the market’s leading automakers. Tesla is also the only carmaker performing a large share of its vehicle recalls through over-the-air software updates.
Tesla currently handles the majority of the industry’s remote software recalls, but it would soon not be the only one. New electric vehicle makers have used the idea of software updates as a means to promote their EVs’ capabilities. Rivian has performed OTA updates to its R1 vehicles, and those cars are only starting customer deliveries. Lucid is the same with its Air sedan, with the company rolling out features like Automatic Emergency Braking, Cross-Traffic Protection, Lane Departure Protection, Traffic Drive-Off Alert, and other features earlier this month through a software update. Ford has been rolling out updates called “Power-Ups” to the Mustang Mach-E as well.
Considering that software-based fixes are only bound to get more widespread over the coming years, one must then ask the question: Should software-based over-the-air fixes be dubbed and classified with the same terminologies as physical recalls, which typically involve the replacement of vehicle hardware?
A Vastly Different “Recall” Experience
Any car owner has likely experienced a recall for their vehicle at some point in their driving life. And more likely than not, one’s experience is probably not that pleasant. I certainly count myself among drivers who look at vehicle recalls with trepidation. My current vehicle, a Japanese-made van, was part of a minor fuel pump recall a couple of years ago, and even addressing that took a whole day out of my weekend. The dealer was overwhelmed with the number of cars it was fixing that day, and tempers among owners were flaring by the hour — all for a simple fuel pump replacement. I’ve been told that my experiences with vehicle recalls are not that unique.
In comparison, a software-based fix, such as the disabling of FSD Beta’s “rolling stops” feature, only required affected vehicles to be connected to the internet. There was no dealer visit, no forms to fill out, and no staff to argue with. The car was connected to the internet, a software fix was implemented, and the issue was resolved. One can argue that Tesla’s software fix to disable FSD Beta’s “rolling stops” feature was safety-related, and that’s true. But one could also argue that at least from a driver’s point of view, the experience related to software and hardware-based recalls is vastly different.
The Status Quo
Despite the different experiences involved when software and hardware-based vehicle recalls are addressed, it appears that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will, at least for now, keep the status quo. Teslarati reached out to the NHTSA to inquire if it was considering the adoption of updated terminologies for cars whose fixes are completed through OTA software updates, but the agency suggested that this would likely not be the case, at least for now. According to the NHTSA, vehicle manufacturers must initiate a recall for any repair that remedies a safety risk, regardless of whether the issue is fixed by software update or by hardware replacement.
“The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is committed to ensuring the highest safety standards on the nation’s roadways. NHTSA is empowered with robust tools and authorities to protect the public, to investigate potential safety issues, and to compel recalls when it finds evidence of noncompliance or an unreasonable risk to safety. Manufacturers are required to initiate a recall for any repair, including a software update, that remedies an unreasonable risk to safety. NHTSA recalls can include any required repair, which includes a software update, to remedy a potential safety risk. Manufacturers are also required to submit any communications to owners, dealers, and others about any software updates that address a defect, whether it is safety-related or not,” the NHTSA stated.
Product recall specialist and associate professor at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business Professor George Ball told Teslarati that while the NHTSA’s use of similar terminologies for software and hardware-based recalls is “definitely an example of regulators and industry moving at a different pace on technology,” the agency’s hesitation in adopting new terminologies for OTA fixes is understandable. Professor Ball further explained that using terms such as “soft recall” to refer to software-based vehicle fixes might imply a reduced level of risk, and this is something that the NHTSA would likely be unwilling to do.
“I believe NHTSA would resist ‘soft recall’ terminology because it implies a reduced level of customer hazard and allows the firm to be under less scrutiny by the press and public for quality corrections. While some updates are minor, some of the Tesla software upgrades are actually quite serious, and if not done, can allow a harmful defect to persist,” the recall specialist said.
But while the NHTSA’s stance on recall terminologies is completely understandable, one cannot deny the fact that the issues covered by vehicle recalls have a very wide range of risks. Take Tesla’s recall for 817,143 vehicles, which was announced earlier this month, for example. The recall was initiated since a software error may prevent a warning chime from activating even if drivers do not have their seat belts on. From a layman’s perspective, this recall seems grave as it affects over 800,000 Teslas on the road today. However, the issue was simply addressed through firmware release 2021.43.101.1 and later, which included a remedy for the seat belt chime error.
Compare this with General Motors’ recall last year of 400,000 pickup trucks in the US. Granted, it only affected about half as many vehicles as Tesla’s seat belt chime recall, but its hardware-based nature suggested that the risk presented by the issue was great. The recall covered certain 2015 and 2016 Chevrolet and GMC Sierra 1500, 2500, and 3500 trucks, and it involved a faulty airbag inflator that may rupture without warning. To fix the issue, owners of the affected trucks were required to head to a dealer so that they could get their airbag modules replaced. Since parts were in short supply last year, however, owners were notified with a letter to inform them when their trucks’ replacement parts were available.
What Can Be Done
While the NHTSA will likely continue to maintain the status quo with its recall terminologies for the foreseeable future, Professor Ball told Teslarati that the agency can actually implement some adjustments now that can make distinguishing safety fixes and issues clearer. This would likely be extremely important in the near future as more connected cars are rolled out and software updates become the norm.
“If I were to provide advice to the NHTSA, I would recommend that they get out ahead of this issue before every car maker starts updating cars like Tesla. One way to do it is to require the automaker to send all auto updates to NHTSA when pushed out, and to classify updates as ‘minor’ or ‘major.’ Any major update that impacts customer safety would be classified as a recall. Automakers won’t like this, but it will help keep the safety fixes transparent for all, especially consumers. By sending all updates to NHSTA, the agency could assign qualified people to audit the classifications assigned by the manufacturer, to ensure they are making good decisions there.
“I think any language that de-emphasizes the importance of a safety recall is not likely to be supported by NHTSA, and it doesn’t likely help customer safety. A clear distinction needs to be made between minor updates and major updates that influence safety. Those major updates should be classified as a recall, and NHTSA needs to get their arms around these updates and keep on top of them soon, or they will fall way behind the industry,” the recall specialist said.
Recalls can affect the perception of a company to the public. Software fixes should be one of the factors that are considered an edge for automakers like Tesla, not the other way around. Gary Black, Managing Partner of The Future Fund LLC, explained this from the point of view of a Tesla investor. “Since every NHTSA recall so far has been quickly solvable via Tesla OTA updates, ‘recalls’ are noise to most investors. Tesla’s huge software edge highlights one of the key advantages of owning Tesla over every other EV manufacturer,” the Wall Street veteran told Teslarati.
OTA updates, including those related to vehicle safety, are coming. With automakers like Ford joining the group of carmakers embracing OTA updates, software-based fixes are inevitable. Ultimately, I am inclined to agree with the recall specialist. By refusing to adapt to the advent of software-based vehicle fixes, the NHTSA may risk being left behind by the automotive industry. And that’s a scenario that I believe no automaker — or government agency for that matter — would prefer.
Don’t hesitate to contact us with news tips. Just send a message to simon@teslarati.com to give us a heads up.
Elon Musk said weeks ago during SpaceX’s third-quarter earnings call that the company’s Grok Bot, its autonomous AI Agent platform, was showing “the fastest growth of a product” that he’d ever seen in his life.
Now, SpaceXSI is scaling back Grok Bot users’ weekly limits, much to the surprise of those who have relied on it to take away monotonous tasks in their lives.
Elon Musk’s terse November 1 reply on X captured a sharp tension in the early days of agentic AI. Responding to a user who asked for a Grok Bot usage reset after hitting 100 percent with four days still left on the weekly cycle, Musk wrote: “The cost of serving Grok Bot was unsustainably high relative to revenue.”
@DogecoinNorway The cost of serving Grok Bot was unsustainably high relative to revenue
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2026
The post arrived amid a wave of similar complaints from paying subscribers whose meters had jumped unexpectedly toward or to the limit, sometimes overnight and with little corresponding activity. It also stood in clear contrast to statements Musk had made only days and weeks earlier.
On the SpaceX third-quarter earnings call in mid-to-late October, Musk had described Grok Bot in almost the opposite terms. He called it “the fastest growth of a product that I’ve ever seen in my life” and said he had “never seen anything grow this fast.”
Company figures put paid weekly users at roughly 800,000 earlier in the month, more than doubling over the prior period. Daily active users had climbed from under 100,000 in early September to over 600,000 by late October.
Musk emphasized that the product has no free tier and that users appear to be getting real value beyond what they pay. In other remarks, he noted that usage per user was rising rather than declining, the opposite of the usual decay pattern for new software.
Grok Bot, launched around August, functions as an always-available agent with its own persistent cloud computer; it can schedule, research, shop, browse, and execute multi-step workflows even after the user steps away. Access is bundled into X subscription tiers (roughly $30, $100, and $200 per month) and certain Cursor plans, drawing from shared weekly usage pools whose exact sizes have not been publicly detailed.
The economics of that model are what Musk’s November 1 post put in the spotlight. Agentic systems burn far more compute than ordinary chatbot exchanges. Each task can trigger repeated model calls, tool use, web actions, and sustained background work.
When growth is as rapid as Musk celebrated, the absolute compute bill scales quickly even if average revenue per user stays fixed under flat monthly subscriptions. Industry observers noted the opportunity cost as well: the same GPUs can be rented to other AI labs at higher rates.
A simple back-of-the-envelope comparison circulating after the post illustrated the gap: if every reported daily user paid the top tier, annualized subscription revenue would still be modest relative to the scale of compute infrastructure SpaceX is building and leasing to companies like Anthropic.
Some users also reported possible dashboard anomalies around the same period, though Musk’s framing treated the underlying cost-revenue imbalance as the core issue rather than a pure metering glitch.
The juxtaposition is the core of this exchange. Within roughly two weeks of publicly framing Grok Bot as an unprecedented success with strong unit economics and no free tier, Musk acknowledged that serving the same product had become unsustainable relative to the revenue it generates.
For the broader industry, the episode underscores a structural challenge of the agent era: demand is real and growing faster than many expected, yet the cost of fulfilling that demand through always-on, multi-step agents can outrun subscription pricing before companies can adjust limits, introduce metered billing, or raise prices.
Musk’s reply did not promise an immediate reset or higher allowances; it simply stated the constraint. In doing so, it supplied a rare, explicit public data point on the unit economics of a high-profile AI agent just as adoption numbers were still being celebrated as the fastest in Musk’s experience.
The tension between rapid, paid growth and the compute required to deliver it is now on the record.
News
Tesla owners who tap Emergency Drive Away for fun are in for a surprise
Tapping Activate on Tesla’s Emergency Drive Away reportedly triggers a $539 service bill without moving.
Tesla owners who press Activate on Emergency Drive Away may be on the hook for a service bill even if their car never leaves the Supercharger stall.
Yaro, who posts about Tesla service cases on X as @Tutrifour, said a customer called after tapping Activate while still plugged into a Supercharger. The owner was about to pull away, remembered the cable was still connected and stopped. The car never moved, but the touchscreen showed a red alert reading “Emergency Drive Away has been activated” with “Service is required” underneath. A Service Mode screenshot showed the active alert BMS_a228_EmergencyDriveAwayServiceRequired, which Yaro said only Tesla Service can clear.
Here is a lesson to Tesla owners. Don’t press Activate on the new Emergency Drive Away feature on your Tesla because service charges $539 to inspect the charge port and to clear the alert. Yes, even if you didn’t move the car an inch. https://t.co/NZJENw4SQv
— Yaro (@Tutrifour) October 30, 2026
The cost of clearing it was the bigger surprise. “Don’t press Activate on the new Emergency Drive Away feature on your Tesla because service charges $539 to inspect the charge port and to clear the alert. Yes, even if you didn’t move the car an inch,” Yaro wrote. The $539 figure comes from that single case, and Tesla has not published a set price for the inspection or commented on the post. Yaro also noted that the car would still charge with the alert on screen.
Tesla launched Emergency Drive Away on October 1 with software update 2026.38.3, letting drivers pull away from a U.S. Supercharger with the cable still attached, as Teslarati reported. To use it, a driver shifts into Drive while connected, holds the brake and taps Activate. The prompt warns that driving with the cable connected will damage the vehicle and the Supercharger, and that short camera recordings will be shared with Tesla.
Tesla Charging has been clear about what follows a real activation. Repairs to a Supercharger stall can run up to $25,000 depending on the site, a service visit for the car’s charge port is mandatory, and deliberate misuse “will invoke additional penalties.” What the company had not spelled out is that the service requirement is triggered the moment Activate is pressed, not the moment the cable breaks away.
From an engineering standpoint, that is the cautious choice. Once Activate is pressed, the car cannot be sure the charge port latch was not stressed, so flagging it for inspection removes the guesswork. It also means the button carries a price on its own, which is a stronger deterrent against casual use than any warning screen.
Customer called because they have an active alert after tapping ACTIVATE on the new Emergency Drive Away feature. They didn’t actually drive away but were about to until they “remembered” they had the charge cable connected.
This alert can only be cleared by Tesla Service. https://t.co/SkHyJJPFwU
— Yaro (@Tutrifour) October 28, 2026
The report follows the feature’s first known real world use, when a driver in Austin during F1 weekend appeared to trigger it by accident and dragged the Supercharger cable along with the car. The Reddit user who filmed it said the driver seemed to have only half read the prompts.
For owners, the takeaway is to treat the red prompt as a stop sign. If it appears after shifting out of Park by mistake, shift back and unplug the normal way from the touchscreen, the Tesla app or the button on the charge handle. Activate is meant for moments when staying at the stall is the bigger risk, and Tesla is now pricing it that way.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk calls Earth’s data centers “peanuts” next to what SpaceX is planning in orbit
Elon Musk says SpaceX capex efficiency is underestimated as orbital data centers loom by 2028.
Elon Musk is pushing back on one of the biggest worries hanging over SpaceX stock. In a reply on X on Sunday, Musk said the company’s capital expenditure efficiency is severely underestimated. He was responding to a Milk Road Stocks post citing analyst Kyle Reidhead, who estimates SpaceX will need to spend roughly $470 billion over the next five quarters.
Reidhead built that figure around the target SpaceX set on its third quarter earnings call: 13 gigawatts or more of compute by the end of 2027. In his breakdown, Nvidia captures 83 to 89 percent of the spending. SpaceX ended the quarter with 1.7 GW of nameplate compute and guided to $35 billion to $40 billion in fourth quarter capex, as Teslarati reported.
Musk did not attach a number to his claim, but the earnings call shows the argument. CFO Bret Johnsen said new compute currently pays for itself in under a year at today’s pricing, and Musk said that window could shrink to six months next year. Using that pace, Reidhead argues about $230 billion of the $470 billion could come from operating cash flow and about $60 billion from SpaceX’s roughly $90 billion cash pile, leaving around $180 billion to borrow. Musk confirmed last week that SpaceX had already closed a new $40 billion debt raise to buy GPUs.
The ground buildout is not the end goal. It is what is meant to pay for the move to orbit. Replying on Friday to charts built from Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire’s SpaceX model, Musk wrote that “Terrestrial compute will be peanuts compared to orbital compute,” adding that orbital compute deployed per month “probably exceeds terrestrial around the end of 2028 and then far exceeds it in 2029.”
Maguire’s model shows how steep that path is. It has capex climbing from $88 billion this year to $290 billion in 2027 and $369 billion in 2028, with SpaceX burning $77.8 billion in cash this year and $122.6 billion next year before turning $114.9 billion cash positive in 2028. Musk’s response to the model was, “I think we can do better.”
The orbital half runs through Starmind. SpaceX plans to operate up to 1 million AI satellites flying in clusters of about 10, linked by roughly 10 terabits of bandwidth, with deployment of thousands of units starting as soon as late 2027 out of its Gigasat factory in Bastrop, Texas, according to SpaceX’s space safety page. Musk has said each Starmind spacecraft will carry more than 250 kW of solar power.
Getting there depends on launch volume. Maguire’s model assumes 250 Starship flights in 2028, up from two this year and 38 next year. The nearer test is financial: SpaceX guided to $33 billion to $37 billion in first quarter 2027 revenue, more than double the $14.58 billion it booked in Q3, and Musk reposted that guidance again on Sunday morning.
Grok Bot users hit with weekly limits early, Elon Musk explains what happened
Tesla owners who tap Emergency Drive Away for fun are in for a surprise
