What prompted China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) to order Tesla’s largest ever recall in the country—covering 2,740,642 Shanghai built Model 3 and Model Y vehicles produced from March 4, 2019, through December 7, 2025—how will the required over the air upda

SAMR’s action reflects two distinct safety concerns: insufficient driver-attention monitoring in Tesla’s Level 2 assistance system, and emergency door releases that occupants or rescuers may struggle to find when power is lost. Together, the two filings cover roughly 5.72 million vehicle instances—Tesla’s largest combined recall action in China—though some vehicles may fall within both campaigns.

• Driver-monitoring recall: Tesla must update 2,740,642 Shanghai-built Model 3 and Model Y vehicles by over-the-air software. The update adds cabin-camera eye tracking to the existing steering-wheel-torque check while assisted driving is engaged.

• Why torque was insufficient: A torque signal can indicate that a hand—or an object exerting resistance—is on the steering wheel; it does not reliably establish that the driver is alert, looking forward, or ready to intervene. Regulators therefore treated it as inadequate protection against a crash caused by inattention.

• Reported evasion: Reports said some Chinese drivers tried to defeat the newly introduced camera monitoring by placing face-like objects near the rear-view mirror, including plastic doll heads and a Dwayne Johnson figurine. This illustrates why monitoring based on a camera alone can also be vulnerable to spoofing; the recall’s stated remedy is eye tracking integrated with the existing torque-based system. from the recall materials available here to conclude that those workarounds themselves were the formal trigger for SAMR’s action.