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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has asked Tesla to recall some 158,000 Model S and Model X vehicles that may be suffering from faulty display consoles, according to a letter released by the agency on Wednesday. Failures of the so-called “multimedia control units” in these vehicles can interrupt the owner’s access to their vehicle’s rear view camera, climate controls and Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistance system, increasing the risk. accident, according to the security agency.
The problem at the heart of the flaw that NHTSA wants Tesla to fix is the worn out flash memory chips used in the displays of 2012-2018 Model S sedans and 2016-2018 Model X SUVs. Every time an owner turns on one of these Teslas, it eats away at the full capacity of the 8GB eMMC NAND flash memory chip onboard the NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor that powers the displays. When this capacity is reached – usually about five to six years later, depending on the agency – displays become bricked. Motherboard first reported the issue in 2019.
Tesla confirmed to NHTSA that all units equipped with this chip “would inevitably fail,” the agency said, and also provided a statistical model showing scheduled weekly repairs from 2020 to 2028, with the highest number of failures occurring in 2022.
The NHTSA opened a formal investigation into the issue last June and said on Wednesday the investigation was still ongoing despite requests that Tesla recall the vehicles. It is not known if Tesla will comply. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the letter, the NHTSA acknowledges that Tesla has released over-the-air software updates intended to mitigate the failures, but the agency believes these don’t go far enough – especially because the issue cuts off access to the rear view camera, which is now a function mandated by the federal government. “[T]These updates are procedurally and substantively insufficient, ”writes the agency.
While Tesla popularized the use of large touch screens in cars, it had more of an issue with these previous models. Beyond the flash memory issue at the heart of NHTSA’s recall request, early Tesla displays also suffered from bubbles and yellow stripes because they did not meet typical automotive standards.
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