A recall for essential maintenance is just that. I would focus on the need for an urgent update due to the flaws rather than the issuing agency's lack of more accurate terminology for a relatively new element to cars. Rolling around in semantic mud on the term recall is not sensible, as the definition in regards to cars is fairly specific [0]. Basically a recall just means there is a safety defect that must be addressed by the manufacturer. In Tesla's case, yes, they can push out an update, but the delivery mechanism of the means of addressing the defect should not be the focus.

0 - https://www.progressive.com/lifelanes/on-the-road/understand...

It would be much more expensive and a bigger mistake to have the vehicles physically returned. The distinction is very important. There's also a difference whether a safety defect last for 1 hour/1 day/1 week or a year.

I don’t think anyone cares about what is the recall’s cost to Tesla owners. They care about the fact there are two million unsafe vehicles driving around at high speed near their loved ones. Especially ones driven by people who respond to such complaints with, “ehrm actually it just updated overnight so it wasn’t even a hassle for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”

Amusingly the infotainment system in our Model Y actually crashed on the way home tonight, and when it rebooted it decided to install the update then, while driving. Sent me a notification on my phone immediately afterwards. To be fair, the updates don't usually go that way.

Wow, that never happened to me and is unacceptable. Was that for the infotainment only or the drive train? Just for others, they are separate systems, you can even safely reboot the infotainment (main display with maps, music etc) if you need to while driving, as it doesn't affect the drive train. I'm guessing it was not the drive train which would be incredibly dangerous.

Yeah, it didn't affect the drive train, and it was also quite quick - less than a minute between when the screen went dark and when it had finished rebooting and sent notifications that an update had been installed. So presumably just an infotainment update as you said; I didn't try to dig into exactly what the update included though.

It will also reboot the infotainment sometimes (but not always) when it crashes.

How can it detect the driver is asleep?

A neural implant that only kills 10% of monkeys.

Monkeys at the wheel is probably the solution for self driving cars.

Seems like we already have those amongst the Tesla FSD proselytizers.