Customers looking for a Tesla Motors Inc. Model X electric vehicle on display at the company’s showroom in Shanghai, China on Tuesday, September 12, 2017.
Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in a letter on Wednesday asked Tesla to recall 158,716 of its Model S and Model X vehicles manufactured before 2019, after owners complained about touchscreen faults that led to the loss of various safety-oriented functions.
The cars involved, which are manufactured in Tesla’s Fremont, California, car factory, include Tesla Model S sedans manufactured between 2012 and 2018, and Model X SUVs in model years from 2016 to 2018.
Tesla may refuse to carry out the recall, but will have to submit a full explanation of the reason for this to NHTSA, which may then propose further steps. The recall of 158,716 vehicles would represent about 10% of Tesla’s lifetime production by the end of 2020. Tesla manufactured its millionth electric vehicle in March 2020, CEO Elon Musk tweeted at the time, and in the last three quarters of 2020, the company tweeted. produced more than 400,000 additional vehicles.
Reuters reported earlier on the letter.
The memory devices in some Tesla MCUs have a limited ‘write cycle’, which means that they – and therefore the media controller itself – will not work properly, or at all, after reaching a certain number of programs or cycles erase. .
Owners of Tesla vehicles that were affected earlier told CNBC that the display on their media control units (or MCUs) will sometimes appear blank, in part or in full. The touchscreen issues have the drivers’ ability to use heat, air conditioning, defrosting and de-masking systems in their cars, or to use their truck cameras and Tesla Autopilot features while parking and driving.
In the letter, sent to Tesla’s vice president of lawful Al Prescott, the federal vehicle safety authority wrote that Tesla’s MCU issues could reduce the risk to drivers due to the “possible loss of audible chime, driver observation and alerts “that are part of Tesla Autopilot, the company’s advanced driver assistance system.
The media unit’s failure rates were up to 17% in older Tesla Model S vehicles (manufactured from 2012 to 2015) and as high as 4% for cars manufactured by Tesla from 2016 to 2018, the letter reads. And the MCU failures are expected to increase as cars get older and stay in use, NHTSA said, referring to Tesla projections.
“Given Tesla’s MCU repair projects, even ME [model year] Subject vehicles in 2018 will experience 100% failure of the MCU within about ten years, ”NHTSA investigators wrote.
Tesla had earlier offered a “warranty extension” to upset customers about the defect. As CNBC then reported, some owners who paid for the replacement of media control units could recover their costs under the extended warranty.
Read the full letter from NHTSA to Tesla.