Customers see 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) asked Tesla in a letter on Wednesday to revoke 158,716 of its Model S and Model X vehicles manufactured before 2019, after owners complained of touch screen failures that led to the loss various security-related features.
The affected cars, made at the Tesla car plant in Fremont, California, include the Tesla Model S sedans produced between 2012 and 2018 and the Model X SUVs in the 2016 to 2018 model years.
Tesla may refuse to conduct the recall, but would have to provide a full explanation of the reason to NHTSA, which could then propose additional actions. A recall of 158,716 vehicles would represent about 10% of Tesla’s reported lifetime production through the end of 2020. Tesla produced its millionth electric vehicle in March 2020, CEO Elon Musk tweeted at the time, and in the past three quarters of 2020 the company produced more than 400,000 additional vehicles.
The news of the letter was previously reported by Reuters.
The memory devices on some Tesla MCUs have a limited “write cycle”, which means that they – and therefore the media control unit itself – will not work well, or at all, after reaching a certain number program cycles or erasure.
Affected Tesla vehicle owners previously told CNBC that the display on their media control units (or MCUs) was sometimes blank, in part or in full. The problems with the touchscreen interfered with drivers’ ability to use heating, air conditioning, defrost and defrost systems in their cars or to use their rear-view cameras and Tesla autopilot features while parking and driving.
In the letter, sent to Tesla legal vice president Al Prescott, the federal vehicle safety authority wrote that Tesla’s MCU problems could increase the risk of driver accidents due to “possible loss of audible bells, driver detection and alerts “that are part of Tesla Autopilot, the company’s advanced driver assistance system.
Failure rates for the media control unit were as high as 17% on older Tesla Model S vehicles (made from 2012 to 2015) and as high as 4% for cars made by Tesla from 2016 to 2018, the letter said. And MCU failures are expected to increase as cars age and remain in use, NHTSA said, citing Tesla’s projections.
“Given Tesla’s MCU repair projects, even MY [model year] Vehicles in 2018 will experience 100% MCU failure within approximately 10 years, “wrote NHTSA researchers.
Tesla previously offered a “warranty extension” to ease customers upset about the defect. As reported by CNBC, some owners who paid out of pocket to replace the media control unit would be able to recover their costs with the extended warranty.
Read the full NHTSA letter to Tesla.