After 12,523 replacements, Feds investigate Tesla Media Control Unit failures
Logs fill up its 8GB eMMC NAND flash card in 3-4 years, causing complete failure. …
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Is one of Tesla’s infotainment systems defective by design? That’s a question the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration hopes to answer. It has started an engineering analysis after hundreds of customer complaints of bricked systems resulted in a preliminary investigation in June.
NHTSA thinks it knows what the problem is: an 8GB eMMC NAND flash memory chip—an SD card in other words—with a finite number of write cycles, fitted to its Media Control Unit. The MCU regularly writes logs to this chip and, within three or four years, reaches the lifetime number of cycles. At this point the touchscreen dies, taking with it functions like the car’s backup camera, the ability to defog the windows, and also the audible alerts and chimes for the driver aids and turn signals.
After the regulator’s Office of Defects Investigation received 537 complaints, it asked Tesla if it knew of any more problems with the Nvidia Tegra 3-based system, which is fitted to approximately 158,000 Models S (2012-2018) and X (2016-2018). Tesla did, handing over 2,399 complaints and field reports, 7,777 warranty claims, and 4,746 non-warranty claims.
The finite—and short—lifespan of these infotainment systems is a relatively well-known problem within the Tesla community. A video on the popular YouTube channel Rich Rebuilds that delved into the problem in May 2019 has racked up more than 669,000 views:
As that video
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