Getty Images / Jonathan Gitlin
It’s official: Tesla has to recall nearly 135,000 Models S and X electric vehicles due to a design flaw that occurred within four years of clipping the motorcycle vehicle’s infotainment screens. The recall applies to Model S sedans built between 2012 and 2018, as well as Model X sport utility vehicles built between 2016 and 2018, and the carmaker must notify them in March.
The issue, which we only dealt with in November 2020, has been known to the Tesla ownership community for some time. The problem is caused by an 8 GB eMMC NAND flash memory chip mounted on the Media Control Unit of the Nvidia Tegra 3 powered infotainment systems. Logs are written in flash memory every time the car is used, which soon reaches its lifelong number of writing cycles; once this limit is reached, the touch screen dies, taking out the legally required backup camera and defrosting / unmasking, as well as outside flashing light. (The problem no longer affects recent models S or X that use Intel’s Apollo Lake processor; those models also use a 64 GB eMMC.)
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began a preliminary investigation into the matter in June 2020 and then upgraded it to an engineering analysis in November 2020. In mid-January 2021, the regulator concluded that the loss of these functions to the level of safety has risen. defects and asked Tesla to recall the vehicles. At the end of January, the carmaker pushed back and ‘declared its opinion that the wear and tear condition of the eMMC is not a defect and that it poses an unreasonable risk to safety.’
However, the NHTSA disagreed and on January 29, Tesla agreed to a voluntary recall, which would replace a daughter board in the Media Control Unit with a new one using the 64 GB of eMMC memory.