Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you? So recently I came across a headline
Speaker 1: in the Register that read, and that's three recalls for
Speaker 1: Tesla cybertruck in as many months. And from that headline
Speaker 1: I infer the intent behind the wording is to say
Speaker 1: the Tesla Cybertruck, even with all its numerous delays, was
Speaker 1: still rushed off to consumers without going through a thorough
Speaker 1: quality control process. Worse that, these issues are ones that
Speaker 1: are bad enough to necessitate a recall, in which a
Speaker 1: company requests that customers return purchase products due to some
Speaker 1: flaw in the product itself, a flaw that could potentially
Speaker 1: lead to harm. Are the very least legal liability for
Speaker 1: the company. And we'll talk about the specific recalls for
Speaker 1: the cyber truck toward the end of this episode, but
Speaker 1: in the meantime, I thought it might be interesting to
Speaker 1: talk about some major recalls in tech history. Now. A
Speaker 1: lot of them have to do with the automotive industry,
Speaker 1: and that makes a lot of sense vehicles are potentially
Speaker 1: extremely dangerous, right. I mean both to the people who
Speaker 1: are inside the vehicles and especially to the people who
Speaker 1: are outside of them. Flaws and such in a vehicle
Speaker 1: can contribute to catastrophic scenarios, and this has made far
Speaker 1: more complicated because it's not like every car is made
Speaker 1: from the wheels up by a single manufacturer, right. A
Speaker 1: lot of components are coming from different suppliers. So it
Speaker 1: could be that the automaker is doing absolutely everything right,
Speaker 1: but a component that they're getting from a supplier has
Speaker 1: a flaw in it, and that's enough to create a
Speaker 1: dangerous situation. Of course, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Speaker 1: studied car accidents and found that the overwhelming majority of
Speaker 1: them result from driver error. Only a tiny percentage of
Speaker 1: accidents that the NHTSA reported on were actually caused by
Speaker 1: vehicular problems. But if the problem could possibly lead to harm,
Speaker 1: it only makes sense to fix the problem. Right. We
Speaker 1: can't fix drivers necessarily, we can't make them all much
Speaker 1: more responsible and careful, but what we can do is
Speaker 1: identify and eliminate issues that can lead to dangerous situations
Speaker 1: on the road. So we're going to learn about some
Speaker 1: product recalls and how they all played out. And the
Speaker 1: very first one I'd like to cover comes from the
Speaker 1: same decade that I come from, the nineteen seventies, the
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds. Boy, I come from the nineteen hundreds. That
Speaker 1: feels weird anyway. The product is the Little Wonder TV antenna,
Speaker 1: which was a product that was manufactured by a company
Speaker 1: called the Akli Trick Corporation out of Brooklyn, New York. Now,
Speaker 1: for those of y'all who have never had a TV antenna,
Speaker 1: let me explain, before cable and before satellite television, and
Speaker 1: before internet delivered television programming, there was over the air broadcasting,
Speaker 1: and actually there still is. I'm being a little facetious
Speaker 1: here because some of y'all might take advantage of over
Speaker 1: the air antennas to this day. I don't mean to
Speaker 1: paint everyone with the same broad brush. Even in the
Speaker 1: twenty first century, there are regions where cable TV isn't
Speaker 1: available and satellite reception could be terrible due to stuff like,
Speaker 1: you know, mountains and trees and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: If you don't have a clear view of the sky,
Speaker 1: then you can't really pick up satellite signals. So sometimes
Speaker 1: over the air broadcast is how you get your your
Speaker 1: entertainment with over the air broadcasting. A television broadcaster beams
Speaker 1: TV signals via radio waves. It's part of the radio spectrum,
Speaker 1: and the television station uses a big, old transmitter antenna
Speaker 1: to blast out those waves, and they travel outward in
Speaker 1: all directions, and they get progressively weaker as they travel outward.
Speaker 1: If you are close enough to pick up the signal
Speaker 1: while it's still of decent enough strength, then your receptor
Speaker 1: antenna you're receiving antenna will collect those radio waves and
Speaker 1: convert them into an electrical signal, and your television processes
Speaker 1: this electrical signal and you can watch your programs, you
Speaker 1: can watch your stories. For some reason, I'm imagining it's
Speaker 1: more commendy, and I might just be channeling my own
Speaker 1: childhood at this point, because I certainly had televisions that
Speaker 1: relied on over the air broadcasts for quite some time.
Speaker 1: I didn't get cable till the eighties. Anyway, the little
Speaker 1: wonder TV antenna would draw power from an electrical outlet
Speaker 1: in the home in order to amplify the incoming radio
Speaker 1: signals that were going to the television. Now, not all
Speaker 1: television antennas do this. Many antennas are non amplified. You
Speaker 1: just connect them to your TV and that's it. But
Speaker 1: the whole concept behind amplification is that you take an
Speaker 1: incoming week signal and through the use of an electrical current,
Speaker 1: you boost that into a much stronger signal. But amplification
Speaker 1: is a tricky thing. It's a tricky thing for me
Speaker 1: to say, I'm recording this at the end of the
Speaker 1: day rather than at the beginning, so I'm tripping over myself.
Speaker 1: But amplification can be tricky because with television antennas, you're
Speaker 1: amplifying everything that's coming in. You know, that doesn't just
Speaker 1: include the signal you want. Right Like you've tuned your
Speaker 1: television to a specific channel, your antenna is picking up
Speaker 1: all the different frequencies and there can be noise that's
Speaker 1: included in the same frequency band as the channel that
Speaker 1: you're tuning to. And for that reason, a lot of
Speaker 1: resources actually suggest that if you do depend upon an
Speaker 1: over the air antenna to get your television programming, that
Speaker 1: you first try it in a non amplified capacity before
Speaker 1: switching it to an amplified version, because it just might
Speaker 1: be that the non amplified approach works better for you,
Speaker 1: you know, otherwise you might just end up amplifying all
Speaker 1: the noise, and yeah, the TV signal stronger, but so
Speaker 1: is everything else, and so you still can't see anything anyway.
Speaker 1: In some places, an amplifier is necessary to boost a
Speaker 1: signal to great enough strength to make TV programming watchable.
Speaker 1: So here we have the Little Wonder TV antenna and
Speaker 1: it's plugged into the wall. So what necessitated the product
Speaker 1: recall in nineteen seventy three, Well, the US Consumer Product
Speaker 1: Safety Commission, which we will mention multiple times in this episode,
Speaker 1: found that the Little Wonder TV antenna lacked a safety
Speaker 1: device that would isolate the electrical current from the home
Speaker 1: outlet where it was plugged in to the antenna itself,
Speaker 1: which meant that it was possible through normal operation of
Speaker 1: the antenna. Like let's say that you were like, oh,
Speaker 1: I need to move the bunny ears so I can
Speaker 1: get a better signal, you could actually get an electrical shock.
Speaker 1: You could even suffer electrocution. Electrocution is death through an
Speaker 1: electrical shock, and that's obviously a severe health hazard. So
Speaker 1: the CPSC urged the Federal Trade Commission or FTC to
Speaker 1: investigate Ak Electric Corporation, alleging that the company had used
Speaker 1: quote misleading and possibly fraudulent advertising end quote for their product,
Speaker 1: and their recommendation was for people who had bought this
Speaker 1: thing to unplug the antenna from the wall first of all,
Speaker 1: then to disconnect the antenna from their television, then to
Speaker 1: toss the antenna in the trash. Pretty phenomenal. Now going
Speaker 1: from an early example to a much more recent one,
Speaker 1: A famous recall that happened less than a decade ago
Speaker 1: was the Samsung Galaxy Note seven fablet. Do you remember fablets?
Speaker 1: We don't use that word much anymore, but those are
Speaker 1: like the very large smart phone somehow, like you know,
Speaker 1: kind of like a the love child between a phone
Speaker 1: and a tablet. And this was a doozy of a recall,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure a lot of you actually remember when
Speaker 1: this happened. It wasn't that long ago. The problem quickly
Speaker 1: reached a point where here in the United States, the
Speaker 1: TSA and the Department of Transportation, as well as airlines
Speaker 1: all around the world, would begin to deny passengers entry
Speaker 1: onto a plane if they were carrying a Galaxy Note seven.
Speaker 1: The problems would lead to an incredibly expensive recall. They
Speaker 1: even played a small part in the impeachment of South
Speaker 1: Korea's president. So what the heck happened? Well, first, Samsung
Speaker 1: was pushing the Note seven pretty darn hart. The company
Speaker 1: had a couple of Android smartphone flagship lines. There was
Speaker 1: the Galaxy S series, then you had the higher end,
Speaker 1: larger Galaxy Note series, And like a lot of smartphone manufacturers,
Speaker 1: Samsung designated different generations of these phones with a number
Speaker 1: after the name, But the Note and the S series
Speaker 1: were one number off from each other. The S was
Speaker 1: a generation ahead of the Note, so when the S
Speaker 1: six came out, the Note five was coming out. So
Speaker 1: after the Galaxy Note five, Samsung decided they were going
Speaker 1: to give six a skip. They go straight to the
Speaker 1: Galaxy Note seven. This was kind of in an era
Speaker 1: in which tech companies were skipping numbers in their product lines.
Speaker 1: It kind of makes me think I should write a
Speaker 1: science fiction novel set in an alternate universe where everyone
Speaker 1: has a Samsung Galaxy Note six or an iPhone nine
Speaker 1: and they all work on Windows nine machines. But anyway,
Speaker 1: Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Note seven on August second. They
Speaker 1: launched it on August nineteen, This is in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: and they showed off a ton of new features in
Speaker 1: the phone. They built up anticipation for it, particularly in
Speaker 1: South Korea, where the sales were going pretty darn well.
Speaker 1: But on August twenty fourth, less than a week after
Speaker 1: the phone had launched, the first report of a Galaxy
Speaker 1: Note seven catching fire made the news, and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be the last time. On September second, Samsung announced a
Speaker 1: recall of two and a half million Galaxy Notes seven
Speaker 1: units and said the problem was with a faulty battery.
Speaker 1: They blamed a supplier that had supplied the batteries for
Speaker 1: these two and a half million units. Customers had the
Speaker 1: option of either getting a replacement so they could turn
Speaker 1: their phone in and they would get a new phone
Speaker 1: with a different battery in it, or they could get
Speaker 1: a refund. Less than a week later, on September eighth,
Speaker 1: the United States FAA told airlines to alert customers who
Speaker 1: had a Galaxy Note seven that they were not to
Speaker 1: charge or to turn on their devices during flight. The
Speaker 1: very next day, the US can Consumer Products Safety Commission
Speaker 1: there they are again. They released a statement saying people
Speaker 1: should not be using the phone full stop, whether you're
Speaker 1: on a plane or not. The agency later would issue
Speaker 1: a full recall on September fifteenth. Now, Samsung was trying
Speaker 1: to address the problems and keep the Galaxy Note seven afloat.
Speaker 1: The company planned to start selling the phones again in
Speaker 1: South Korea starting on September twenty eighth. However, before that happened,
Speaker 1: news reports from China stated that there were also issues
Speaker 1: with the Note seven catching fire and exploding in China.
Speaker 1: Now this was very concerning, not just because obviously you
Speaker 1: don't want your product exploding and hurting your customers, but
Speaker 1: because the batteries in the Chinese phones actually came from
Speaker 1: a different supplier, right, And remember Samsung had said that
Speaker 1: it was the supplier that had sent faulty batteries, but
Speaker 1: now this was a different supplier. What was going on here?
Speaker 1: And Samsung did start selling phones again in South Korea
Speaker 1: and issuing replacements for US customers, but the problems didn't stop.
Speaker 1: The replacements would have similar issues to the original phones.
Speaker 1: They still would catch fire or sometimes explode. On October sixth,
Speaker 1: a Southwest Airline flight in the United States had to
Speaker 1: be evacuated when a Galaxy Note seven that was on
Speaker 1: board the plane began to start smoking. More reports of
Speaker 1: overheating phones would follow. US carriers announced they would stop
Speaker 1: selling the phone, like phone carrier said, we're gonna curtail
Speaker 1: selling this phone, and they start they'd stop issuing replacements too,
Speaker 1: like they would stop replacing older Note sevens older by
Speaker 1: like a week with newer ones. So on October eleventh,
Speaker 1: Samsung issued a statement saying the company was investigating the
Speaker 1: issue and recommended that all Galaxy Note seven owners powered
Speaker 1: down their phones and to stop using them. That's a
Speaker 1: message you definitely don't want to give when you're a manufacturer,
Speaker 1: is to stop using our product. The investigation revealed that
Speaker 1: the early Galaxy Note seven models had a problem with
Speaker 1: a battery that was too large for the phone that
Speaker 1: it was inside. Essentially, the battery was big because Samsung
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure that the battery life was sufficient
Speaker 1: to give you a full charge for a day. But
Speaker 1: remember this is a fablet. It's a smartphone with a
Speaker 1: really big screen. I mean that's a power hungry device.
Speaker 1: So these batteries would fit in the very slim form
Speaker 1: factor of the Galaxy Note seven, but only just and
Speaker 1: it was such a snug fit that it could squash
Speaker 1: the negative electrodes on the battery to come into contact
Speaker 1: with the positive electrodes through making contact with a conductive
Speaker 1: element in the phone itself. And this is where we
Speaker 1: have to talk about stuff like short circuits and thermal runaway.
Speaker 1: So normally, in a circuit, you have a path like
Speaker 1: a circuit is just a pathway, right, and ultimately the
Speaker 1: pathway has terminations at a negative terminal and a positive terminal,
Speaker 1: and electricity flows through this pathway and it does some
Speaker 1: sort of work along the way. Whatever the circuit is for,
Speaker 1: it does the work of that circuit. But if you
Speaker 1: were to create a direct connection between the negative and
Speaker 1: positive terminals that bypass this whole pathway, well, the electricity
Speaker 1: would have a much easier and shorter path to take,
Speaker 1: and it would do that and there's no work that's doing.
Speaker 1: There'd be no governing elements to put a check on
Speaker 1: the flow of electricity. You would have a short circuit,
Speaker 1: and the electrochemical reactions in the battery would give off
Speaker 1: more and more heat. They are exothermic reactions, and eventually
Speaker 1: you would get hot enough where you could potentially have
Speaker 1: a structural failure of the battery itself and a potential
Speaker 1: fire or explosion on your hands. That appeared to be
Speaker 1: the issue with the first set of phones. The tight
Speaker 1: fit of the battery really seemed to be to blame.
Speaker 1: But that's not the end of the story. We're going
Speaker 1: to take a quick break. When we come back, I'll
Speaker 1: finish up on Samsung. We'll talk about some other recalls
Speaker 1: as well, but first let's think our sponsors. Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1: So Samsung engineers thought that they had identified and then
Speaker 1: addressed the exploding battery issue by switching to handsets that
Speaker 1: had batteries that were made by a different supplier, because surely,
Speaker 1: if it was a manufacturing error that came from one supplier,
Speaker 1: the other supplier should be cushioned against that. However, the
Speaker 1: pressure to get replacements off the assembly line and into
Speaker 1: customers hands as quickly as possible perhaps contributed to a
Speaker 1: scenario where there were more manufacturing issues different ones, But
Speaker 1: there were still manufacturing issues with the batteries themselves. So
Speaker 1: this time the manufacturing errors in the batteries created a
Speaker 1: situation in which some batteries had the positive electrode make
Speaker 1: contact with the negative one inside the battery really like
Speaker 1: the positive part of the battery and the negative part
Speaker 1: of the battery would get squished together so tightly that
Speaker 1: there would be contact inside the battery instead of separation
Speaker 1: like you're supposed to keep it separated. Otherwise you still
Speaker 1: have a short circuit. Well it had a short circuit,
Speaker 1: so in the end you still had batteries catching fire
Speaker 1: and exploding, and Samsung would recall millions of handsets and
Speaker 1: they had to take a loss on the entire generation
Speaker 1: of the Galaxy Note smartphone. Samsung would continue to make
Speaker 1: more handsets in the Galaxy Note line, but they released
Speaker 1: the final one in twenty twenty with the Galaxy Note
Speaker 1: twenty so and that wasn't the twentieth generation. They just
Speaker 1: gave that the name because it was coming out in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. The cost of the Galaxy Note seven recall
Speaker 1: was in the billions of dollars, and there were lawsuits
Speaker 1: brought against Samsung related to the battery incidents, so that
Speaker 1: was even more cost on top of just the expense
Speaker 1: of replacing these phones and then ultimately recalling a refunding.
Speaker 1: The scrutiny that followed the scandal may have contributed to
Speaker 1: a massive political change in South Korea. Now I stress
Speaker 1: may so I'm going to explain what happened, but keep
Speaker 1: in mind, like the Samsung Note seven thing, if anything,
Speaker 1: was just sort of an early event that led to
Speaker 1: more scrutiny on the company itself. So Samsung is what's
Speaker 1: called a chable, meaning it's a company, a Korean company
Speaker 1: that ultimately is run by a very powerful individual or family.
Speaker 1: In Samsung's case, it's a family. One member of that family,
Speaker 1: the one presumed to be the heir of Samsung, the
Speaker 1: person who will inherit it is Lee Jay Yong. And
Speaker 1: in early twenty seventeen, Lee Jayyong was arrested on charges
Speaker 1: of bribing a confidant to the president of South Korea.
Speaker 1: That case went well beyond Samsung, and it was not
Speaker 1: just Samsung that was thought to have participated in bribery,
Speaker 1: but Samsung played a big part in this scandal. So
Speaker 1: the scandal was huge, and ultimately Lee j Young was
Speaker 1: found guilty on all charges and sentenced to five years
Speaker 1: in prison. He served a year and then the court
Speaker 1: eventually reduced his sentence and then suspended the remaining amount
Speaker 1: and he was released. But he did spend a year
Speaker 1: in prison. South Korea's president was impeached as a result
Speaker 1: of this massive scandal. She was shown the door. So
Speaker 1: while the exploding phones didn't directly contribute to that story,
Speaker 1: you could argue they brought unwanted attention to Samsung's activities
Speaker 1: and that's what led people to discover this case of bribery.
Speaker 1: If you're wondering what the bribery was all about. Allegedly
Speaker 1: it was about bribing the president so that a big
Speaker 1: merger could go through for Samsung, essentially greasing the wheels.
Speaker 1: Samsung would argue that there was no bribery. There was
Speaker 1: just a customary gift, something that was just, you know,
Speaker 1: just a custom in South Korea. But the courts did
Speaker 1: not agree with that particular defense, So there we have it. Now.
Speaker 1: Sometimes a tech recall isn't for the tech part of
Speaker 1: the product, not necessarily directly anyway, but it's still something
Speaker 1: that poses as a potential hazard or legal liability. That
Speaker 1: was partly the case for Toyota, with one of the
Speaker 1: costliest recalls ever at that point. Though to be fair,
Speaker 1: this recall also segues into some other related recalls, like
Speaker 1: two other ones, one of which related to a very
Speaker 1: similar problem, and this was happening really around late two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine. That's when Toyota and the National Highway
Speaker 1: Traffic Safety Administration or NHTSA, responded to reports that some
Speaker 1: Toyota owners had experienced what was called unintended acceleration, which
Speaker 1: is the car would go when no go was really
Speaker 1: the desired outcome, but then cargo when it should no go.
Speaker 1: Toyota had been through this before, actually two years earlier.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and seven, Toyota discovered that its optional
Speaker 1: all weather floor mats had the potential to slide around
Speaker 1: if unsecured, and that it could mean the mat could
Speaker 1: slide and snag the accelerator pedal, thus holding the pedal
Speaker 1: down even after the driver would lift their foot off
Speaker 1: of the pedal. So the company swiftly issued a recall
Speaker 1: for around fifty five thousand vehicles that had these all
Speaker 1: weather mats back in two thousand and seven. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, the problem was larger than all weather mats.
Speaker 1: It appeared to be an issue with millions of Toyota
Speaker 1: and Lexus vehicles. Floor mats on the driver side could
Speaker 1: similarly snag and trap the accelerator pedal, so the company
Speaker 1: issued a wide recall, but at least for a subset
Speaker 1: of vehicles. This solution of removing the floor mat didn't
Speaker 1: fully address the problem, so in early twenty ten, Toyota
Speaker 1: issued another recall, this time for faulty accelerator pedals themselves.
Speaker 1: The shape of the pedal appeared to be the problem.
Speaker 1: The pedal could catch on the floorboard and it could
Speaker 1: stay down. Most but not all, of the recalled vehicles
Speaker 1: were also under the recall for the driver matt issue,
Speaker 1: so Toyota and the NHTSA had a bit of a
Speaker 1: spat about this. The car company initially insisted that the
Speaker 1: floor mats were the beginning and end of the problem,
Speaker 1: and the NHTSA kept saying the problem hasn't been fixed yet. Now.
Speaker 1: There were other issues as well that Toyota had to
Speaker 1: address with its various vehicles, but the floor mat slash
Speaker 1: faulty accelerator pedal. Those flaws cropped up and stayed an
Speaker 1: issue into early twenty eleven, and they necessitated several recalls
Speaker 1: of various Toyota vehicles. The company and its dealerships incurred
Speaker 1: billions of dollars in costs as result of these recalls. Moreover,
Speaker 1: the company's image took a big hit, and in the end,
Speaker 1: while the problem had the potential to cause accidents, very
Speaker 1: few incidents were ever reported. To learn more about the
Speaker 1: media hype that surrounded the problem, I recommend reading Robert E.
Speaker 1: Cole's twenty eleven pieces in The Atlantic. It as the
Speaker 1: title who was really at fault? For the Toyota recalls?
Speaker 1: Because it's a complicated story, Like, there was definitely an
Speaker 1: issue there, and a potentially very dangerous issue, but there
Speaker 1: were a lot of players in the space that complicated
Speaker 1: things beyond how they already were. So Toyota has also
Speaker 1: been affected by another recall, one that affected eighteen other
Speaker 1: auto makers and more than thirty brands of cars. So
Speaker 1: I'm talking about air bags made by a part supplier
Speaker 1: called Takata. A fault was found in Takata air bags
Speaker 1: that could lead to accidental and explosive deployment, and this
Speaker 1: could also include the air bags rupturing and the explosion
Speaker 1: propelling dangerous or even deadly shrapnel into a vehicle. Multiple
Speaker 1: people died as a result of this over the course
Speaker 1: of several different years. So the issue originated with the
Speaker 1: inflator for the air bags, the actual device responsible for
Speaker 1: pushing gas into the air bag at an incredible speed.
Speaker 1: So the inflators used a propellant of ammonium nitrate, and
Speaker 1: the propellant that Takata was using in these early steel
Speaker 1: inflators did not have a chemical drying agent, a desiccant
Speaker 1: in other words, and that meant that in humid environments,
Speaker 1: moisture could affect the propellant and high temperatures could make
Speaker 1: this very very reactive. So here in the United States,
Speaker 1: the NHTSA identified a few regions as being more conducive
Speaker 1: to the environmental factors that have an impact and make
Speaker 1: these things more dangerous. It's dangerous no matter where you are,
Speaker 1: but there's certain areas where because of the climate, it's
Speaker 1: more likely to happen. So that includes the southeastern United States,
Speaker 1: including my home state of Georgia, as well as the
Speaker 1: state of Hawaii and a few other places. So they
Speaker 1: kind of divided up the United States into three zones,
Speaker 1: with each zone having a certain level of risk, and
Speaker 1: the zone my states and is in the highest risk. Now,
Speaker 1: the problem has been around since the late nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: There were models from like model year ninety eight or
Speaker 1: ninety nine that were included in the various recalls eventually,
Speaker 1: and there were vehicles as recent as the model year
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen that were part of this. Around sixty seven
Speaker 1: million airbags are affected by this recall or the series
Speaker 1: of recalls here in the United States. Global figures are
Speaker 1: closer to one hundred million. The NHTSA says at least
Speaker 1: twenty seven people have died from these exploding airbags, more
Speaker 1: than four hundred had been injured due to them, and
Speaker 1: Takata in twenty fifteen said it was aware of eighty
Speaker 1: four ruptures occurring since two thousand and two, So it
Speaker 1: very much is a thing. Are the odds high that
Speaker 1: it could happen to you if you happen to be
Speaker 1: driving one of these vehicles? Not necessarily, I mean, it
Speaker 1: depends upon where you live and the conditions of the
Speaker 1: environment as to whether or not you know your vehicle
Speaker 1: might be vulnerable. But it's a really good reason to
Speaker 1: check to see if your vehicle has been affected by
Speaker 1: this recall because you can actually take your vehicle to
Speaker 1: a dealership to have the air bags replaced for free.
Speaker 1: That is part of the deal that Takata agreed to
Speaker 1: in order to fix this massive problem. Now of great
Speaker 1: concern is the timeline of not only when the airbags
Speaker 1: were incorporated into vehicles, but when Takata engineers first became
Speaker 1: aware that there was a problem in the first place. So,
Speaker 1: according to a twenty fourteen article in The New York Times,
Speaker 1: Takata workers first began to test their air bags for
Speaker 1: possible deficiencies way back in two thousand and four, because
Speaker 1: that was when an airbag had apparently deployed spontaneously and
Speaker 1: propelled debris at a driver in Alabama. Apparently, the workers
Speaker 1: found that the inflators they were using were not as
Speaker 1: resilient as they thought they were. But the company would
Speaker 1: actually wait four years before filing a report about faulty
Speaker 1: air bag systems with regulators, So between two thousand and
Speaker 1: four and two thousand and eight, according to The New
Speaker 1: York Times, Takata knew about this but kept quiet about
Speaker 1: the issue, putting potentially hundreds of thousands of people, maybe
Speaker 1: even millions, at risk. Now, Takata's two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: filing prompted a recall in two thousand and eight, one
Speaker 1: that covered several car makes and models, across multiple automakers.
Speaker 1: This is what I was talking about earlier, Like, automakers
Speaker 1: don't make everything that goes into their vehicles, So if
Speaker 1: a manufacturer that creates a critical component does a bad
Speaker 1: job of it, it can affect cars across numerous car manufacturers,
Speaker 1: not just one. The list of cars affected actually grew
Speaker 1: year by year, Like it was one of those things
Speaker 1: where the story got worse the longer it went, where
Speaker 1: Takata would say, Oh, it turns out these types of
Speaker 1: airbags or airbags that are similar enough where they can
Speaker 1: have the same problem can also be found in these
Speaker 1: other vehicles on top of all the ones we've already
Speaker 1: listed that kept happening year after year. Again, the NHTSA
Speaker 1: really was focusing on regions that were more likely to
Speaker 1: have hot and humid weather. Because there's only so much
Speaker 1: you could do so quickly, right, Like, this is a
Speaker 1: critical piece in a car's safety systems and it needs
Speaker 1: to be addressed, but you can only make air bags
Speaker 1: so quickly. You can only make the replacements at a
Speaker 1: certain speed, And so there was a bottle there. You
Speaker 1: couldn't get the airbags to dealerships fast enough to be
Speaker 1: able to meet the needs of all the people who
Speaker 1: had cars that had these air bags in them. In
Speaker 1: November twenty fourteen, the NHTSA called for a national recall,
Speaker 1: and by spring twenty fifteen, the number of vehicles affected
Speaker 1: by the recall had reached thirty three point eight million
Speaker 1: in the United States. That summer, Reuters reported that some
Speaker 1: of the replaced airbags still had faulty inflators in them
Speaker 1: and that they would need to be replaced again. And
Speaker 1: by some I mean like four hundred thousand or so.
Speaker 1: While all this was going on, there were still incidents
Speaker 1: involving air bags deploying prematurely, sometimes leading to deaths. This
Speaker 1: was a terrible situation. You had this great sense of
Speaker 1: urgency to have these faulty air bags replaced. You had
Speaker 1: this bottleneck in airbag production and delivery. The supply chain
Speaker 1: just couldn't keep up with the need to replace all
Speaker 1: of these Because this was, you know, affecting cars across
Speaker 1: multiple years of manufacturing. It wasn't like it was one
Speaker 1: fleet of cars, it was several. An effort was made
Speaker 1: to prioritize the specific regions of vehicles that were most
Speaker 1: found to be vulnerable, but it still was a real challenge,
Speaker 1: and there was a challenge in communicating all of this
Speaker 1: to the public. The NHTSA has gone so far as
Speaker 1: to issue a do not drive advisory for certain vehicles,
Speaker 1: stating that owners should prioritize having their cars repaired, which
Speaker 1: dealerships should perform for free. Takata would face hefty fines
Speaker 1: in lawsuits and eventually had to file for bankruptcy in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, which is not a big surprise because the
Speaker 1: last estimates I saw for the total cost of the
Speaker 1: recall is somewhere in the neighborhood of like twenty four
Speaker 1: billion dollars. In twenty eighteen, Takata submitted a plan that
Speaker 1: included a trust fund established for people who had been
Speaker 1: directly affected by airbag explosions. Because these were still an
Speaker 1: issue and the number of vehicles recalled continued to grow
Speaker 1: and it's very much ongoing. There are still vehicles on
Speaker 1: the road right now that have these old Takata air
Speaker 1: bags installed. The NHTSA recommends the driver's check to make
Speaker 1: sure their older vehicles aren't on the list of models
Speaker 1: affected by this issue, and if they are, that you
Speaker 1: then take the vehicle in to get that free airbag replacement.
Speaker 1: Considering this summer here in the United States has already
Speaker 1: seen record temperatures, my feeling is that even people who
Speaker 1: live in states that aren't traditionally associated with high heat
Speaker 1: and humidity should probably double check to make sure their
Speaker 1: vehicle is in the clear. Here in the US. You
Speaker 1: can go and do that by visiting the website in
Speaker 1: HTSA dot gov. Submitting the state and license plate number
Speaker 1: of your vehicle or your vehicle's ven will tell you
Speaker 1: if there are any unrepaired recalls associated with your specific vehicle.
Speaker 1: It's a quick way to check that could save you
Speaker 1: from injury or worse. So I highly recommend doing it,
Speaker 1: Like just check and see if you're fortunate there won't
Speaker 1: be anything there, and then it'll tell you there are
Speaker 1: zero unresolved repairs anything like that, and that's awesome. It's
Speaker 1: great peace of mind. According to numerous sources, there's still
Speaker 1: are millions of affected vehicles on the road today. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to take another quick break and then we'll
Speaker 1: come back to finish up this discussion about tech recalls.
Speaker 1: We're back. So not all tech recalls necessitate a return
Speaker 1: to a manufacturer or a dealership or something like that.
Speaker 1: Some can be addressed through software updates that are pushed
Speaker 1: out over the air. That was the case with the
Speaker 1: Google Nest smoke detector. In early January twenty fourteen, Google
Speaker 1: completed an acquisition of the Nest company, best known for
Speaker 1: their thermostats, and a few months later, Nest engineers realized
Speaker 1: that the Nest Protect Smoke plus carbon monoxide alarm had
Speaker 1: a feature that could lead to dangerous situations, and that
Speaker 1: feature was called Nest Wave. As the name implies, this
Speaker 1: was a gesture control system, so the idea was that
Speaker 1: you could wave at an alarm in order to shut
Speaker 1: it off. So imagine you're in your kitchen. You're toasting
Speaker 1: some bread, but you forgot that the day before you
Speaker 1: toasted a bagel, so you had the toaster set higher
Speaker 1: than you normally would, and your bread starts to burn,
Speaker 1: and the smoke detector goes off, and you eject your toast,
Speaker 1: and then you're waving frantically at the smoke alarm to
Speaker 1: stop it from making that terrible noise, which seems like
Speaker 1: a pretty cool feature and definitely easier than like getting
Speaker 1: a step ladder out so you can reach the reset button.
Speaker 1: At the center of an alarm, or do what I do,
Speaker 1: which is where you grab a nearby broom and use
Speaker 1: the handle to kind of poke that button. But there's
Speaker 1: a problem with this gesture system, and that is that
Speaker 1: the nest Wave had the potential to pick up on
Speaker 1: gestures that were not intended to be a command to
Speaker 1: shut the alarm off, and the device might not sound
Speaker 1: at all if it happens to be in the presence
Speaker 1: of somebody who is waving their hands around while there's
Speaker 1: some smoke. I'm reminded of a friend of mine who
Speaker 1: is extremely expressive and she talks with her hands. If
Speaker 1: she was on the phone, one hand would be holding
Speaker 1: the phone to her ear, the other hand would be
Speaker 1: gesturing wildly. Well, if in the background something had caught
Speaker 1: fire and the smoke detector had picked up on it,
Speaker 1: it might see her gesturing and think, oh, she's got
Speaker 1: this handled because she's waving me to shut up. That's
Speaker 1: not great. So Google promptly issued a recall affecting more
Speaker 1: than four hundred thousand smoke alarms, and the company issued
Speaker 1: a software update to disable the nest Wave functionality. There
Speaker 1: you got your problem solved. Now you can no longer
Speaker 1: turn off the alarm just by waving at it. So
Speaker 1: this recall was a necessary regulatory step, but it did
Speaker 1: not mean that customers actually had to send their alarms
Speaker 1: into Google for replacement. They just needed to make sure
Speaker 1: their alarm was connected to the internet in order to
Speaker 1: receive the software update. Nest said it received no reports
Speaker 1: of the issues leading to injury or property damage, which
Speaker 1: is good. There are lots of other tech recall stories
Speaker 1: that essentially end with software updates. Quite a few with
Speaker 1: Tesla have gone that way. All of the ones we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about with the cyber truck are more
Speaker 1: about bringing the truck in to have something physically addressed.
Speaker 1: Well again, we'll get to that before the end. So
Speaker 1: we've got one other one I want to chat about
Speaker 1: before we get to cyber trucks, and that is a
Speaker 1: thing that was a little tech gadget. It was a
Speaker 1: giveaway in happy Meals at McDonald's in twenty sixteen, and
Speaker 1: it became a big pr headache. So in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: McDonald's introduced a couple of fitness tracker type things. They
Speaker 1: were called the steppe It Activity wristbands. These were not
Speaker 1: sophisticated by any means. But you wouldn't expect them to
Speaker 1: be sophisticated either, right, because it's a giveaway. It's a
Speaker 1: kid's toy in a happy meal. It's not going to
Speaker 1: be some sort of expensive gadget. They were essentially pedometers,
Speaker 1: and they were not particularly good from what I understand.
Speaker 1: I read a review of one, I think it was wired,
Speaker 1: and it said it was strangely very sensitive to non
Speaker 1: steps and not so sensitive to actual steps. But they
Speaker 1: looked like toy smart watches, right, They kind of looked like,
Speaker 1: you know, a very cartoonish smart watch, but that's kind
Speaker 1: of what they look like. The promotion with the toy
Speaker 1: fitness trackers began on August ninth of twenty sixteen, but
Speaker 1: before very long, some parents were reporting that their kids
Speaker 1: were getting rashes or blisters or even burns after wearing
Speaker 1: the tracker for just a short while. In fact, according
Speaker 1: to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, our old friends over there,
Speaker 1: there were more than seventy reports of such cases. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously that's a very bad look, and McDonald's quickly issued
Speaker 1: a recall for all thirty three million of these things
Speaker 1: they had purchased them from China and apparently there were
Speaker 1: some real issues. Whether it was chemicals on the thing
Speaker 1: that were causing it or some other issue. I can't say.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing it's a chemical thing, like probably similar to
Speaker 1: I have a nickel allergy, so if I wear something
Speaker 1: that's got nickel on it against my skin, I get blisters.
Speaker 1: So by August seventeenth, the wristbands were gone from Happy Meals.
Speaker 1: They'd only been there for a little less than two weeks.
Speaker 1: So the incident prompted discussions as to whether the decision
Speaker 1: to include the toy trackers in the first place was
Speaker 1: even a good idea. Not that McDonald should have known
Speaker 1: that these would potentially cause harm. That wasn't really the question.
Speaker 1: It was more like, was this really just a cynical
Speaker 1: attempt to make McDonald's appear to be more health conscious
Speaker 1: because there were already criticisms leveled against the company regarding
Speaker 1: the nutritional quality or lack thereof, of the food that
Speaker 1: it was serving to people, and some critics said McDonald's
Speaker 1: didn't really attempt to create a serious message around health
Speaker 1: and wellness. They just included this as a toy because
Speaker 1: they figured some kids would have seen their parents wearing
Speaker 1: something similar and now they got to do it too.
Speaker 1: Parents were encouraged to bring the wristbands back to McDonald's,
Speaker 1: whereupon the company would replace the wristband with a different
Speaker 1: happy meal toy, as well as a choice of either
Speaker 1: yogurt or apple slices to compensate the children whose wrists
Speaker 1: were potentially put in danger. I'm not sure how many
Speaker 1: parents felt like saying I'm loving it by the end
Speaker 1: of that day. And now we will finish by talking
Speaker 1: about the Tesla cybertruck recalls. So the first recall was
Speaker 1: a relatively small one. It happened in April twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: It did affect fewer than four thousand trucks. I mean,
Speaker 1: four thousands a big number. But when we're talking about
Speaker 1: the other recalls here, when we're chatting about the millions,
Speaker 1: four thousand's not that bad. So what was the problem. Well,
Speaker 1: the issue was a faulty accelerator pedal cover which could
Speaker 1: fall off. And if the cover fell off, it created
Speaker 1: the possibility of the accelerator pedal sticking against the interior
Speaker 1: trim of the cyber truck. And so we get back
Speaker 1: to an unintended acceleration problem similar to what happened in
Speaker 1: the Toyota vehicles that I mentioned earlier. So Tesla issued
Speaker 1: the recall, but it also said that the company didn't
Speaker 1: have any record of any incidents happening due to this issue,
Speaker 1: which is good, you know, considering the potential severity of
Speaker 1: the problem. But you know, it's it's great that this
Speaker 1: was solved before you know, any catastrophe could happen. However,
Speaker 1: that was just the first of the Tesla cyber truck recalls.
Speaker 1: There were two more since then, and again that just
Speaker 1: that one happened in April of twenty twenty four. So
Speaker 1: in June twenty twenty four, two Tesla recalls popped up
Speaker 1: on the NHTSA website. So one was due to an
Speaker 1: issue with exterior trim detaching from the side of the car,
Speaker 1: which is an issue that affected like eleven three hundred
Speaker 1: eighty three cyber trucks that were produced between November thirteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three and May of twenty twenty four. The
Speaker 1: second recall was for eleven thousand, six hundred eighty eight
Speaker 1: vehicles and the problem was potentially a much more dangerous
Speaker 1: one windshield wiper motor that could fail and just leave
Speaker 1: the driver unable to clear their windshield in a rainstorm,
Speaker 1: or what have you. The company said the issue was
Speaker 1: quote a wiper motor whose gate driver may have been
Speaker 1: damaged due to electrical overstress during functional testing end quote.
Speaker 1: So I guess the message is we safety tested this
Speaker 1: thing so hard that we made it unsafe that we
Speaker 1: wore it out. That's kind of how I read that.
Speaker 1: That might be an unfair reading. That's my own opinion,
Speaker 1: So I just want to put that out there. But
Speaker 1: according to posts on web forums, some cyber truck owners
Speaker 1: had been waiting for a replacement wiper motor for weeks.
Speaker 1: That's both frustrating and dangerous, depending upon what driving conditions
Speaker 1: happened to be, right, Like, if it's boring down rain,
Speaker 1: it's not really safe to drive your cyber truck if
Speaker 1: the wiper motor isn't working. All that being said, I
Speaker 1: think it's unfair to pick on any one automaker too
Speaker 1: much when it comes to these recalls, because, like I said,
Speaker 1: there's so many different components go into a finished vehicle,
Speaker 1: and different suppliers are for lots of these different pieces, right,
Speaker 1: and to expect everything to go perfectly all the time
Speaker 1: from every supplier that's unrealistic. The key I think is
Speaker 1: that companies need to be quick to acknowledge when there's
Speaker 1: a problem and to have a solution ready to go.
Speaker 1: It's important for all parties involved. It's definitely important for
Speaker 1: customers who depend upon the reliability and safety of the
Speaker 1: products that they're purchasing, but it's also important for the
Speaker 1: companies if they want to avoid stuff like massive fines
Speaker 1: and hefty class action lawsuits and like pr that's just
Speaker 1: really bad for the company that tends to be also
Speaker 1: bad for the stock price. So there's just a handful
Speaker 1: of recalls and tech products and what caused them to happen. Ideally,
Speaker 1: of course, a tech product is put through thorough testing
Speaker 1: and all the major stuff gets worked out and if
Speaker 1: if there's anything left over, it's minor and not hazardous.
Speaker 1: But that's not how the real world works, right Either
Speaker 1: there are urgent deadlines to meet and people start cutting
Speaker 1: some corners, or you're depending upon products that were made
Speaker 1: by someone else that you thought were reliable turns out
Speaker 1: they're not. There are a lot of things that can
Speaker 1: go into that, and so I don't want to put
Speaker 1: too much blame. I know I am very hard on
Speaker 1: Tesla in general, but I don't feel like that I
Speaker 1: can make a case that Tesla did a bad job
Speaker 1: with this. I think it's just unfortunate. I think the
Speaker 1: cyber truck in general is unfortunate, but that's mostly due
Speaker 1: to the fact that I still think it's really an
Speaker 1: ugly vehicle. But that's my own personal opinion. Again, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's necessarily bad. You would have to ask
Speaker 1: someone who reviews cars for a living what they thought
Speaker 1: of it and get that sort of data from them.
Speaker 1: I am not the right person to ask. But yes,
Speaker 1: that's a selection of recalls. I am going to sign
Speaker 1: off for this episode. I am currently probably on my
Speaker 1: way back to Atlanta as you listen to this because
Speaker 1: I took a long weekend to celebrate my belated birthday.
Speaker 1: I hope all of you had a great weekend, and
Speaker 1: I will talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
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