NHTSA – Some years back, Tesla pushed that the large touchscreens in its electric vehicles were powered by an NVIDIA Tegra 3 chipset. But as configured in some cars, the infotainment setup has a known issue that causes the 8GB eMMC NAND to flash memory device to wear out after it has been overwritten too many times, and that causes the touchscreen to go blank.
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But after too many owners experienced the issue, Tesla launched a “Warranty Adjustment Program” in late 2020 that will cover repairs if the problem occurred within eight years or 100,000 miles from when the vehicle was first delivered.
The program also allows owners to get their money back if they had already paid for the repair. Tesla products affected by the issue are the 2012-2018 Tesla Model S and 2016-2018 Model X.
That said, the feds, in the form of NHTSA, aren’t happy with the Tesla move for remedy and sent a letter ‘PDF’ to Tesla today asking the company to institute a recall that would notify owners of 158,000 Model S and Model X vehicles built prior to March 2018.
According to the letter, losing touchscreen access means losing the backup camera and controls for things like defogging your windshield, which they argue could lead to accidents.
A TechCrunch report shows that they also write that “Tesla provided confirmation that all units will inevitably fail given the memory device’s finite storage capacity.
Tesla provided its own statistical model showing the number of projected weekly MCU repairs from 2020 to 2028, estimating that replacement rates for MCU failures will peak in early 2022 and gradually decline until (near) full part turnover has been accomplished in 2028.”
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The letter seeks a request from Tesla by January 27th. Earlier today Tesla openly promoted NHTSA’s five-star safety rating for the Model Y but has not publicly commented on the recall request as demanded by NHTSA.
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