NHTSA to Modernize Vehicle Recalls With a Focus on OTA Fixes

NHTSA wants to improve the way vehicle recalls work, and over-the-air updates are a big part of the plan. Speaking at NHTSA’s Recalls Next summit, Administrator Jonathan Morrison said the agency is looking for new ways to get more recalled vehicles repaired, since millions are still on the road with open safety recalls.

“What ultimately matters is not the number of mailers sent – what matters is the number of vehicles repaired,” Morrison said.

Why OTA Recalls Work

In 2025, NHTSA oversaw nearly 900 recalls affecting more than 29 million vehicles. According to Morrison, a major reason owners skip recall repairs is inconvenience. Even when the fix is free, getting to a dealership can mean missing work, arranging childcare, or finding another ride, and about four in 10 owners named inconvenience as a main reason for not completing a recall.

That’s where OTA updates come in. “Over-the-air recall remedies generally result in high completion rates, because they remove the inconvenience of arranging for physical repair,” Morrison said. He added that NHTSA oversees OTA recalls the same way as physical ones and is “exploring ways to provide additional flexibility in the manner of notification.”

That could eventually mean fewer paper letters for recalls that have already been fixed.

Tesla Has Been Doing This for Years

Tesla owners know this well. Most Tesla recalls are fixed with a software update, and owners are only asked to come in when a hardware repair is unavoidable or required by regulators. In 2024, Tesla fixed a TPMS issue affecting about 700,000 vehicles entirely through an OTA update before the recall notice was even published. Around that time, NHTSA started recognizing recalls fixed by software on its website, but owners still got recall letters in the mail weeks later.

Not a Tesla App

Tesla uses OTA updates for recalls worldwide. In China, Tesla is addressing a recall of nearly 3 million vehicles over emergency door releases mainly with a software update that lowers the windows after a crash, along with warning stickers for the manual releases.

Other Changes Coming

NHTSA is also making $1.5 million in grants available to help more states include recall information with vehicle registration renewals. Morrison said letters from state DMVs sometimes led to repair rates two to three times higher than notices from manufacturers alone.

The agency also launched a bulk VIN lookup tool that lets dealers and fleet operators check up to 100 vehicles at once. Individual owners can still check whether their Tesla has an open recall using NHTSA’s or Tesla’s VIN lookup.

The summit also covered how OTA recalls apply to autonomous vehicles. NHTSA is accepting public comments through December 5, so changes to how recall notices are delivered could follow sometime after that.