Yeah it's not a big recall in the scheme of things but it is a major percentage of the total production of the Model S (wikipedia says they were up to 212,000 at end of 2017).
GM's big ignition switch recall was 800,000, Firestone recalled the tires for millions vehicles back around 2000.
Most automakers sell millions and millions of units in a short period of time, but Tesla does not. I’d be more interested to see what percentage of Tesla’s have been subject to recalls vs the total shipped, and compare that to a similar mainstream metric.
I thought that seemed really high, so I did a little looking and horrifically it’s actually a bit lower than the industry average of 46%! Some of that is skewed by VW recalling more cars in a year than it sells in a year, but still...
Although that's not to say it isn't still a serious issue for a smaller firm like Tesla.