According to the letter published by the agency on Wednesday, the national traffic safety administration has asked Tesla to call in about 158,000 Model S and Model X vehicles that could suffer from defective display consoles. The failures of the so-called “media controls” in these vehicles could disrupt the owner’s access to their vehicle’s backup camera, climate control and Tesla’s autopilot driver assistance system, increasing the risk of an accident, the safety agency said.
The problem that is at the heart of the shortcoming that NHTSA wants Tesla to repair is worn flash memory chips used in the exhibits of Model S sedan 2016-2018 and 2016-2018 Model X sports utility vehicles. Each time an owner turns on one of these Teslas, he eats up the total capacity of the 8 GB eMMC NAND memory chip aboard the NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor that powers the monitors. When the capacity is reached – usually about five to six years later, the agency says – the exhibits are bricked in. Motherboard first reported on the issue in 2019.
According to the agency, Tesla confirmed to NHTSA that all units with this chip would “inevitably fail”, and also provided a statistical model showing the projected weekly repairs lasting from 2020 to 2028, with most failures occurring in 2022.
NHTSA opened a formal investigation into the problem last June and said on Wednesday that the investigation was still ongoing despite the request that Tesla recall the vehicles. It is unclear whether Tesla will comply. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the letter, NHTSA acknowledges that Tesla has released over-the-air software updates intended to mitigate the failures, but the agency believes it does not go far enough – especially as the problem reduces access to the backup camera, which now a federal mandate function. ‘[T]these updates are procedurally and materially inadequate, ”the agency writes.
While Tesla made the use of large touchscreens popular in cars popular, it had more than one problem with these earlier models. In addition to the flash memory problem at the heart of NHTSA’s recall request, early Tesla screens also had bubbling and yellow streaks as they did not meet typical car standards.