“Initiated safety recalls require a manufacturer's action to announce and remedy the defects.
A recall is issued when a manufacturer or NHTSA determines that a vehicle, equipment, car seat, or tire creates an unreasonable safety risk or fails to meet minimum safety standards. Most decisions to conduct a recall and remedy a safety defect are made voluntarily by manufacturers prior to any involvement by NHTSA.”[1]
Note how it only talks about the presence of a critical problem, not how it is solved. A “recall” is stating that the defective version of the product in the field must be “removed” and replaced/updated with a non-defective version at the manufacturer’s expense.
The only reason this is confusing is because Tesla has been actively and intentionally misusing the term and sowing confusion to downplay the number of critical safety defects in their cars.
But I agree, at this point Tesla has sufficiently poisoned the term that they and everybody else can convince customers that they do not have critical safety defects because they can fix them remotely.
As such, the term should be replaced with “public critical safety defect notice” which is clear, precise, accurate, and can not be misused.
My Ford, with a cell connection, receives OTA updates for stuff like the entertainment system, but I've had to bring it in a couple of times for updates to safety systems.