Getty Images / Jonathan Gitlin
It’s official: Tesla has to collect almost 135,000 electric Models S and X vehicles due to a design defect that joins EVs infotainment screens four years after driving. The recall affects the Model S sedans built between 2012 and 2018, as well as the Model X SUVs built between 2016 and 2018, and owners must be notified by the automaker in March.
The problem, which we first tackled in November 2020, has been well known to the Tesla community of owners for some time. The problem is caused by an 8GB eMMC NAND flash memory chip, installed in the media control unit of the brand’s Nvidia Tegra 3 powered infotainment systems. The records are recorded in flash memory every time the car is in use, which soon reaches its lifetime number of recording cycles; once this limit is reached, the touchscreen dies, removing the legally required backup camera and the defrost / defrost controls, as well as the illumination of the external change signal. (The problem does not affect the latest Models S or X that use Intel’s Apollo Lake processor; these models also use a 64 GB eMMC.)
The National Road Traffic Safety Administration initiated a preliminary investigation into the matter in June 2020, then updated it for an engineering review in November 2020. In mid-January 2021, the regulator concluded that the loss of these functions reached the defects safety level and asked Tesla to collect the vehicles. At the end of January, the automaker backed down, “explaining its view that the eMMC’s wear condition is not a defect or poses an irrational safety risk.”
NHTSA, however, disagreed, and on January 29, Tesla agreed to a voluntary recall, which will replace a daughter card in the Media Control Unit with a new one that uses 64 GB eMMC memory.