After 12,523 Replacements, Feds Investigate Tesla Media Control Unit Failures (arstechnica.com) 147
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: 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 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. "The automaker told NHTSA that as of firmware 2020.20, each block of NAND flash should only receive 0.7 read/write cycles a day, which would therefore take between 11 and 12 years before the chip reached its end of life," the report adds. "However, owners who use their cars more often could see this time before failure halved."
"However, Tesla also told NHTSA that 'the MCU failures are likely to continue to occur in subject vehicles as vehicles continue to operate and use available memory in the 8GB eMMC NAND flash memory until 100 percent of units have failed.'" Ars says an official recall may occur in the coming months.
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. "The automaker told NHTSA that as of firmware 2020.20, each block of NAND flash should only receive 0.7 read/write cycles a day, which would therefore take between 11 and 12 years before the chip reached its end of life," the report adds. "However, owners who use their cars more often could see this time before failure halved."
"However, Tesla also told NHTSA that 'the MCU failures are likely to continue to occur in subject vehicles as vehicles continue to operate and use available memory in the 8GB eMMC NAND flash memory until 100 percent of units have failed.'" Ars says an official recall may occur in the coming months.
Herein lies the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have something called a "Media Control Unit" either responsible for or capable of causing failure of critical automotive functions, then you've fucked the design from the get-go and failed miserably. Bad engineer! Bad! Bad!
Likewise if you've made critical functions dependent on components with a known failure horizon measured in single-digit years, then you should go design web pages for cat videos and stay the fuck away from critical hardware and software designs.
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"Media Control Unit"
No press is bad press.
Define "Critical" (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have something called a "Media Control Unit" either responsible for or capable of causing failure of critical automotive functions, then you've fucked the design from the get-go and failed miserably. Bad engineer! Bad! Bad!
It depends on your definition of "cirtical". The brakes, steering wheel, the electric drive, the pedals, the blinkers, safety belts and airbags, everything that is actually the car itself (and which happens to be the things legally required in a car, at least here around Europe) keeps working, even things considered "extras" like power steering keep working.
If it suddenly happens to you while you're driving, you can still successfully reach your destination, though you'll be limited mostly to the same comfort level as if you did borrow your grandma's old VW (though with additionnal powersteering).
(But maybe I am too old / was too poor when I was young and are used to drive cars with bare minimum features).
The only thing that goes dark is the main screen.
The only thing you loose is comfort feature that are on the main screen/main sound system: backup camera and audio feedback from the sonars/radars, skeumorphic "relay clicks" from the turn signals, etc., automatic defrosting the windows by diverting the air conditioning's hot air (instead of good old manual elbow grease like your grandma's cars with its dead heating).
They are all nice to have, but something you're supposed to be able to drive without if you're successfully obtained your license. Your car won't insta-crash without them. If you don't feel comfortable you can still pull out to a safe place.
From the perspective of what is expected from a car (at least here around in Europe), even after an MCU crash, the car works perfectly acceptably.
Now, I agree: some of those nice to have could be avoided.
- In lots of cars (in my personnal experience: Volvos, most of thing out of Skoda/VW/Audi/Seat), the backup camera is able to directly take over the screen and stream directly to it if the infotainment system isn't available. Tesla could have allow the back camera to be display in a PIP on the screen if the MCU is unresponsive.
- Adding a dedicated mechanical switch for the auto-defrosting would have added marginal cost but could have avoided relying on the infotainment to control it. (and avoided the driver need to pull out of traffic and take time to rub any accumulated condensation).
etc.
So yes, these problems could be avoidable, but non of these problems is critical to driving a car.
Likewise if you've made critical functions dependent on components with a known failure horizon measured in single-digit years, then you should go design web pages for cat videos and stay the fuck away from critical hardware and software designs.
That implies the possibility of predicting the failure years in advance.
The things which makes this more problematic is that Tesla handles the MCU as a desktop computer: something that would see continuous update and improvement over the lifetime of the vehicle (the same way you can upload OS and software suites on your laptop) and not as a fixed firmware whose version is set in the factory (like a lot of car manufacturer do).
So yes, 8GiB sounded like it should last a decade back when the first cars shipped.
A dozen of complete overhaul of the software later, and suddenly the latest versions are logging so much more data, that they actually end up burning the flash faster on the older car models that shipped with 8GiB installed.
It's basically the same situation as back when Bill Gates was giving feedback to IBM for their upcoming PC, and the architecture 640k sounded mind bogglingly big and promising to last a decade in an era of 8bits computers when 64k was already a lot [wikiquote.org] (apocryphally simplified to "640kb ought to be enough for everyone").
Except with Elon musk in the main role, and a 8GiB flash
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The only thing you loose is comfort feature that are on the main screen/main sound system: backup camera and audio feedback from the sonars/radars
Just stop. Read what you just wrote. Now read it again.
Now understand that the backup camera is a legally mandated safety system.
Now read it again.
Now write your retraction.
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Double check the US. It's is mandated for any vehicle manufactured after 2018.
Just like the EU has different laws on privacy, so does the US on forcing people to dumb down and use up rare metals in their LCD screens, forcing children back in to the mines so they can be a bit more comfy, and enabling actors in the near future to give impassioned speeches while the background track plays some Sarah McLachlan song for a fund raiser.
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Dangit. Replied to the wrong post.
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Now, the question is, was anything lost that would cause an IMMEDIATE accident? Having my axle fail on my honda was a CRITICAL FAILURE. Having my heater fan switch on my highlander was NOT a critical failure. Having our displays go out on the MS and then MX was not a critical failure. Losing power steering on a pontiac catalina was NOT a critical failure. Losing the brakes on our jeep wagoner WAS a critical failure.
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EU: cameras bonus, not requirement. (Score:2)
Now understand that the backup camera is a legally mandated safety system.
Okay, I wasn't aware that on your side of the ocean the cars must be "retarted-proof".
Here around (mostly driving in CH, and also DE, FR, CZ, IT, AU, PT) you should be able to drive a box that only has a wheel, side mirror and rear/gas pedals.
Even rear view mirror aren't necessarily mandatory (on most tourist vehicles like cars: yes. On transport vehicles like trucks and mini vans: actually no. The professional licences mandates that one of the crew goes out to check from the outside).
If you're unable to dr
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No. A backup camera is NOT a mandated safety system. The rear-view mirror is. All teslas have one.
In the US (where Tesla is based) and in Canada, the backup camera is a legally mandated safety system.
If it isn't in your market, it's because your politicians don't give two fucks about you.
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Failover (Score:2)
If it isn't in your market, it's because your politicians don't give two fucks about you.
Swiss military professional driving licence (from a decade ago): if a rear view isn't available, it's mandatory that one of your mate goes out and watches for your while you're backtracking.
Having *a system* to check when driving back is mandatory, but it doesn't necessarily need to be some brittle electronic system that can fail.
Re:Define "Critical" (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's because some people understand that mirrors don't help for shit if someone's three-year old or a pet is wandering around directly behind the car.
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You are wrong https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/0... [cnbc.com]
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requiring the rearview cameras and video displays on new models.
Are these Teslas "new models"?
You're not exact (Score:2)
You are wrong https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/0... [cnbc.com]
Please read the test that you wrote:
- it was *announced* already in 2014
- it is *mandatory* only, in 2018
Which is going to be complicated to apply backward in time on a car built in 2012.
(Though maybe the US is different from Europe and maybe in your country such law is retro active and car produce before that year need to be retro-fitted.
In Europe that only happened with day-time front lights. Hence my confusion)
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It depends on your definition of "cirtical". The brakes, steering wheel, the electric drive, the pedals, the blinkers, safety belts and airbags, everything that is actually the car itself (and which happens to be the things legally required in a car, at least here around Europe) keeps working, even things considered "extras" like power steering keep working.
You can't demist the windscreen if the MCU fails because the heater controls are built into the windscreen. A bit of a problem in much of Europe from October to April.
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Old school VW (Score:2)
So, you have never opened your window to find out how to defog a window?
Yup, my opinion too.
As if my hinting at grandma's VW wasn't clear enough.
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So, you drove an old VW? Did it have seat belts? Every so often, I ride in ancient cars, mostly VWs, etc that do not have seat belts. VERY STRANGE to have that again.
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It's also a bit of a problem in much of Canada from October to September.
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That implies the possibility of predicting the failure years in advance.
The things which makes this more problematic is that Tesla handles the MCU as a desktop computer: something that would see continuous update and improvement over the lifetime of the vehicle (the same way you can upload OS and software suites on your laptop) and not as a fixed firmware whose version is set in the factory (like a lot of car manufacturer do).
So yes, 8GiB sounded like it should last a decade back when the first cars shipped.
The problem isn't that 8GiB isn't enough storage. The problem is that NAND flash memory has a fixed number of writes before it becomes unusable. This is known from the fab and is part of the chip's spec. Any engineer designing the system would know of the chip's write endurance and could fairly easily calculate how long it would last given how often his software writes to it. This isn't unreasonable and Tesla's issues are due to poor design and incompetence.
They should have either changed how they do loggin
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The confusion is based on another strategy. Double the size of the flash and due to wear leveling, you can double it's expected lifetime as long as you don't write more data as well.
Re:Define "Critical" (Score:5, Insightful)
They should have either changed how they do logging or have picked flash memory with longer write endurance.
I suspect the error was that they seriously underestimated how much logging was happening, so they thought everything was fine with the proposed software and flash memory.
I think there have been mistakes like this in Linux and Windows, where logging is killing flash memory, or just wasting huge amounts of time and disk space. Often the change that started it happening looked trivial and was not even considered to change predictions.
Nitpicking. (Score:2)
The problem isn't that 8GiB isn't enough storage.
Yeah okay, it's a bit of simplifying.
8GiB (+ a bit of wear leveling extra room) x number of flash erase-rewrite cycles afforded by the tech (1000 for MLC / aka samsung 2bit MLC) x {factor that represent the efficiency of the wear-levling algo runing on the flash controller} = total amount of log data that can be written before the flash burns.
Thus:
{total amount of data writeable} / {daily produced log by specific software version} = {expected total lifetem}
(Except that the "specific software version" will c
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Nope.
That's true in a classic car that will run the same software (save for a few very small security patch) even 10 years after leaving the factory.
That's not the case in cars that consider their infotainment centre as a computer that will radically get updated over the vehicles' lifetime.
Touchscreen infotainment systems with OTA updates are not new nor are they unique to Tesla. My car has such a unit, is over 4 years old and has managed to avoid wearing out its flash memory storage. And as I said there are many embedded applications that use flash as primary storage and operate for a very long time without wearing their flash out. Everyone has logs, everyone overwrites storage yet only Tesla has this problem.
The root cause likely isn't singular, its probably a combination of cheaping out on
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You have to agree, though, that for a company so hell-bent on making self-driving/safe cars, such engineering decisions/mistakes are strange to say the least.
Re: Define "Critical" (Score:2)
There is a reason why the entertainment system and vital aircraft systems are kept seperate from each other
(IIRC), there was a case where the entertainment system brought down an aircraft, but this was due to a fire in defective wiring.
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Re: Define "Critical" (Score:3)
The law mandates backup cameras now, rear view mirrors aren't enough.
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THink what happens in an accident? Or when we have to reboot our system. All data gone.
We need the flash. What surprises me, is why not pull the old units, replace flash with 32G and simply use corrected units to replace old ones?
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Because money.
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The real problem is that the people in charge of the software didn't look up the specifications of the hardware.
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The problem is they had their OS and logging on the same media. Your log destination dying should not bring your entire system down.
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My wife LOVES the rear camera and AP showing what is around the car. However, I still make use of the rear view mirror along with checking side windows.
However, we had our MX backed into this past weekend, by a 16 y.o. who was either talking to her friend, OR did not use the rear view mirror. Had the 4 runner had a camera, she mi
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Backup cameras may be legally required, but are dumb. I would much prefer auto makers just design the car so I can actually see out of the back; visibility in general has gone to absolute shit on many newer vehicles, both cars and trucks.
I don't think I've ever seen a car that offers visibility directly behind the vehicle below the trunk line via the windows. I suppose you could put mirrors on the rear bumper, but frankly, cameras are cheaper nowadays.
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Well to be fare the term Media has been bastardized during the 1990's with "Multi-Media" where we associate that word strictly with entertainment type of functions.
However Media is just a form of communication.
While I hate single points of failure, but chances are you non-Tesla car has a Single point of Failure "Media Control Unit" it is just hidden behind knobs and buttons, to emulate the look and feel of the old cars, where you had each item, interdependently controlled.
But why would the Engineers do th
Re:Herein lies the problem (Score:5, Informative)
Consider what the process was to get to this stage.
The decided to make critical safety features a function of the Media Control Unit, and only controllable through the touch screen. They decided to use a flash memory chip with known lifespan, but didn't bother do basic testing to determine how long it would last. There was no process in place to check how fast it was being consumed, nothing to stop developers logging excessively. In fact the developers didn't even seem to know about the limited lifespan of flash memory.
Their response was to try to convince owners that it wasn't a design flaw and to get them to pay for an upgrade to MCU V2.
And now they are rolling out alpha quality "full self driving" software for owners to test at their own risk. Whatever the engineering processes are at Tesla, they are not good.
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If they needed to do testing to figure out the flash lifetime, as opposed to straightforward analysis of existing design information, they really don't have any business designing a car. There should be a list of what goes into that log, how big each record is, and what the expected rate is. Combine with the manufacturer's rated minimum lifetime to get in-service lifetime.
This is what people used to call engineering, before some software people decided that banging on a keyboard should qualify as engineer
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As an engineer I'd still do accelerated testing and make it part of the continuous testing system. Even if you know exactly how many bytes are being written it's harder to predict things like what impact the journaling filesystem has, how writes get amplified by the wear levelling and block re-use algorithm etc. You could probably simulate the entire lifetime overnight but I'd still have production hardware sitting around running continuously.
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If you have something called a "Media Control Unit" either responsible for or capable of causing failure of critical automotive functions, then you've fucked the design from the get-go and failed miserably. Bad engineer! Bad! Bad!
Except that it does not cause failure of CRITICAL automotive functions.
1) the car's backup camera,: Rear view mirror anybody?
2) the ability to defog the windows,: open the side window slightly. Interestingly, you can still turn them on via voice command in 2014 and later.
3) and also the audible alerts and chimes for the driver aids: enough said.
4) turn signals: these work, however, the display does not indicate since it is blank
All in all, we do not lose critical functions, such as steering, brakes
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Unwarranted assumptions being made. I have never had a rear view mirror that gave me enough view that I didn't have to turn around and look directly out the rear window to back up safely. Some people get the back up camera because a neck or other injury prevents them from twisting around to do that while still being able to reach the brake and steering. Even a stiff neck from sleeping wrong makes that uncomfortable at best.
Opening the windows slightly won't do much unless you're already moving. If you get o
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Telsa's "Media Control Unit" is like Linux's systemd.
Stop making "black blobs" in charge of fucking everything and go back to the tried-and-tested (for decades) Unix philosophy: make small blocs in charge of one thing and connect them together. It becomes easier to code, easier to debug, easier to update.
Can you imagine your PC's CPU being in charge of reading the keys matrix of your keyboard or your mouse movements? There's a reason why external peripherals have a microcontroller/CPU in them and only commu
No good (Score:4, Insightful)
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The 'Ice-T Car Shield' advert [youtu.be] sums up the way an industry can hold its customers by the balls...
"It's not like the old days when you could fix anything with a wrench and a screwdriver. Now ya need to be a Rocket Scientist! And when your *check engine light* comes on? It's GAME OVER!"
That Elon Musk actually *is* a rocket scientist is just the icing on the cake.
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I don't know where this fallacy comes from. You can still read any engine codes from any car. The exception being some vendor specific but it still lets you know what system is causing it. You can also still repair any car with the same tools from decades ago. Brakes, suspension, spark plugs, exhaust, you name it. I bought a $100 code reader that reads my Mercedes suspension codes. All the parts are readily available.
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No problem.... (Score:3)
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Re: No problem.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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These are the log files amongst other things, including odometer. They do not want you to be able to easily change these.
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Most of the log files are NOT the odometer. They are simple debugging logs that will go poof within a day or so anyway.
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The "e" in "eMMC" means embedded. eMMC is almost always soldered onto boards that also carry processors, RAM, power supplies, and other components. There are good reliability reasons to do solder eMMC down, but it is pretty gross malpractice to ship the device without understanding its likely lifetime.
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And usually the eMMC contains things that are rarely if ever written to, such as the boot loader, kernel, binaries etc. The day to day writing is typically done to a more easily replaced device like an SD card.
If it can be gotten right on inexpensive things like Raspberry PI and Beagle Boards, surely it can be gotten right in an expensive car.
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Their extended warranty bothered me (Score:4, Interesting)
A recall seems sensible. And future designs should make any media like this easily replaceable.
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Bad news is that the new models still have the flash memory soldered on, and swapping in a new one requires special Tesla software to make it work. If you catch it early enough a 3rd party might be able to copy the data from the old one to the new one to avoid needed Tesla's help, but it still requires soldering.
Oh and you have to dismantle the dashboard just to get at the thing, and good luck getting that back together cleanly.
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Yeah socketed critical parts in a high vibration environment. What could go wrong?
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Not that Tesla has a bad suspension, but in applications where I have stuff bouncing around I use a socket where the end of the chip gets screwed in with a drop of Locktite.
This is c. 1970's tech. Wear parts shouldn't be soldered on for anything that isn't subject to planned obsolescence.
I'm not saying that Tesla did that intentionally - supposedly the original code was low-writes and later code "forgot" about the problem, and now it's better.
BUT they are selling the new Teslas as million-mile machines. T
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It wasn't about inserting their own firmware, they can stop that with digital signatures, and it's not like there's nobody out there who can resolder these chips. Lots of people can manage it, albeit not just any joe schmoe. It was about saving money on sockets and flash parts.
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Sockets can be a problem because of vibration. You can get automotive sockets that lock shut for things like SD cards but they cost more money. The cheapest option is to just solder the thing down. They make solder down SD "cards" (actually just a chip but the same interface for easy software compatibility) but again they cost more than raw flash memory where you need to do your own wear levelling and bad block management.
The other issue with sockets is that they make it easier for people to mess about with
How many other time bombs in Teslas? (Score:5, Insightful)
Designing a vehicle with a difficult/expensive to replace part that only has 11 and 12 years before failing should be criminal (especially if they knew it during design and failed to disclose it). This could easily be fixed in so many ways - reduce writes, use a much bigger chip, make it an easily accessible SD card that can auto-format...
Re:How many other time bombs in Teslas? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not quite criminal, but because the fault affects a mandatory safety system (the back-up camera) which is needed to deal with modern car design (rollover standards increased, and could only reasonably be complied with by increasing the size of the rear pillars of the vehicle, which reduces rear visibility; also rear impact standards raised trunk lines, same story) Tesla can and almost certainly will be forced to provide recall replacements to everyone forever and ever amen. It's only a matter of time.
Soldered in eMMC is dumb. These days you can get more than enough performance out of a socketed part. Tesla did it to themselves in order to save a few pennies, what a bunch of tools.
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12 years is highly optimistic, owners report problems starting from just 2 years in for heavily used vehicles.
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I get that they were badly wrong in their forecast - what I'm saying though that selling a car with a part that was known to fail in even 11-12 years (and be difficult and expensive to replace) is unacceptable.
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Indeed, as was using consumer grade parts. Consumer flash memory not only has a finite lifespan for writes, it can lose data over time and has temperature limits that are not suitable for a hot car environment.
The issue with the screen going yellow is due to the car getting too hot for the consumer grade glue used as well.
There is a reason automotive grade parts exist.
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For instance, let's say that you're looking for a mobile CPU. You essentially have 3 options: 1) Consumer grade - Get a contract with Samsung, Qualcomm, etc. Buy in quantities of 100k+ with no long-term availability. 2) Automotive/industrial grade - Use Freescale or TI. Oh wait, TI exited the market. So what does Freescale have?
Their top of the line processor i
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Other manufacturers manage to have responsive graphical UIs at higher resolution than Tesla using automotive grade parts. My guess is that in the early days Tesla couldn't place big enough orders to get anyone interested so used consumer grade stuff and stuck with it until it backfired.
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Tesla was visionary in trying to bring the consumer phone experience to a car.
Cell phone lifespan parts in a vehicle that I want to keep for 10-20 years? Sign me up!
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Wow - I guess I should RTFA more often. When I posted it hadn't occurred to me that the part in question might not be automotive grade. WTF? The fact that the part doesn't have an extended temperature range - never mind the other ways in which automotive semis are hardened - could be contributing to the failures. Not to mention that temperature-induced misbehaviours could be responsible for some of the flakiness-as-opposed-to-outright-failure that others have mentioned.
No 2020s classic cars in the future. (Score:4, Insightful)
There are cars running today from the turn of the century. There are cars running from the turn of the previous century and before.
A trip to a motor museum such as https://www.beaulieu.co.uk/ [beaulieu.co.uk] is fascinating and shows how these machines can be kept running.
I doubt very much that there will be 2020s 'classic' cars running in 2120.
CPU based engine management and dashboard control systems will die and manufacturers are not likely to make spares for any real length of time.
Who expects their mobile phone, which is basically the same technology, to still be functional in 10 years?
Maybe there will be a trade in 3rd party "universal" replacement units but I suspect that this will be an uphill battle as manufacturers try to prevent this.
I think very strong right to repair laws are going to be required to allow moderns cars to age and become classics.
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Don't get me wrong, I'm not a supporter of Tesla's actions here. But the car doesn't die, it 'just' needs a too-expensive repair. It's still a design flaw, but it doesn't spell the end of the car.
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Ultimately there is no part of any car which cannot be replaced.
However, replacing parts of a Tesla may mean diving down a deep rabbit hole, because they are interdependent.
Still, if there is sufficient demand, someone will create an alternate stack of modules which can do the job.
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My 2014 Tesla is still in its normal warranty for another week or so. I had been considering having this done as soon as it leaves warranty as a preventative measure. Now I'm wondering if there's going to be a recall or not - hmm.
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Cars had CPU managed ignitions in the 1980s and they still operate today.
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Cars had CPU managed ignitions in the 1980s and they still operate today.
Die sizes were a couple orders of magnitude larger back then. With today's semis I wouldn't be surprised to learn that some long-term failures will result from damage caused by background radiation, although I don't know this to be the case.
Also, the systems in today's cars are much more complex, rely a lot more on software, and are highly interdependent. That means they're a lot harder to reverse engineer and copy.
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I doubt very much that there will be 2020s 'classic' cars running in 2120.
CPU based engine management and dashboard control systems will die and manufacturers are not likely to make spares for any real length of time. Who expects their mobile phone, which is basically the same technology, to still be functional in 10 years?
Maybe there will be a trade in 3rd party "universal" replacement units but I suspect that this will be an uphill battle as manufacturers try to prevent this.
I think very strong right to repair laws are going to be required to allow moderns cars to age and become classics.
I disagree. I drive lorries in the UK. We have ones that are over 6 years old with over 1 million km or 600,000 miles on the clock done at no more than 56MPH and they're running day and night. That's a lot of run time and at least 12,000hrs of the driver information display being operational. And they don't suffer from engine management failures or the dashboard screens failing. Any electronics failures are down to intermittent connections developing in the wiring loom from water ingress or wires rubbing ag
11 and 12 years before end of life by design? (Score:3)
Really?
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It wouldn't surprise me at all if Tesla's thinking wasn't a combination of two factors.
1) Intense optimism about their own abilities to produce vastly improved cars that rendered their existing models obsolete or economically undesirable within 12 years. Maybe also with some notion that used Teslas would be bought back by Tesla for parting out or refurbishment.
2) The target market for Teslas has always been upscale buyers. These people don't keep cars for 12 years. The assumption being that no original b
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I don't doubt at all that there was some engineering decisions made about the car's useful life being short -- "1st gen" when 3rd or 4th was "just around the corner" and combined with the idea that affluent buyers would be out of them after 3-4 years at most and even enthusiastic used buyers would want the next generation sooner. It doesn't have to be the usually greedy planned obsolescence logic.
At that point they can probably cut a lot of corners, shaving pennies all over the car, especially those relate
Re: (Score:2)
Most likely a software problem (Score:2)
Interesting. I was warned that this could happen if you're using the FatFS on a write limited device.
It looks like the engineering analysis was done but the software is writing to the Flash a lot more than 0.7x/day.
Somebody should be evaluating how many times the Flash was actually written to per day on the devices that failed.
Wise buyers think like used car dealers. (Score:2)
Expensive toys are meant to be disposable and leased, not purchased (German luxury cars are a famous example). They don't have the same design priorities as trucks intended for fleet use nor will they ever. If you have Tesla money you can afford to lease instead of own and ditch it like any other luxury car well before it shits the bed. The aspirational chump who buys it afterwards will deal with the problems but by then the new car buyer has a fresh toy. Wise buyers think like used car dealers and after a
Here is some real insight into the failures (Score:2)
How did they give those numbers? (Score:2)
What this calculated for brand-new flash or from an average of the already-used flash used in the affected cars?
Because from my understanding, previous firmwares really wore down the flash. So if it's 11~12 years before EOL for brand new flash, maybe it's only a few years with the already-bea
Not ideal, from a Tesla customer (Score:2)
Since every time there's critical story about Tesla someone inevitably makes a comment like "But I doubt the true Elon Musk believers will recognise it as a fault" (confirmation bias is alive and well here on Slashdot) - here's a customer saying I don't think this is ideal.
Serviceable memory stick?? (Score:2)
Not pulling the trigger yet (Score:2)
How can Tesla be so bad at this? (Score:2)
ach block of NAND flash should only receive 0.7 read/write cycles a day, which would therefore take between 11 and 12 years before the chip reached its end of life,
So a piece of electronics will for sure die in a decade... even under ideal conditions? And this was OK'd by who knows how many managers/engineers at Tesla? Just another reason I am going to look at a lot of other electric vehicles besides Tesla when I finally replace my ICE car down the road.
Re: (Score:2)
I had a Model S (2016) and it was shite. I now drive an Audi E-tron.
...which is named [interglot.com] shite.
I owned an Audi. It was a service nightmare. Never again.
Re: (Score:2)
and Tesla isn't shit?
If I had meant that, I'd have said it. I said "and", not "but". When you learn to speak English, you'll understand the distinction.
The Audi service is a world away from the one of Tesla.
Yes, yes it is. If your Tesla eats a major powertrain component it will be replaced. If your Audi does it even just a few years in, you'll be paying. PO of my PA (prior Audi) luckily had an extended third party warranty that paid for his transmission swap, since it cost about $8k all in for his new ZF HP524A, a transmission which had known issues for which it received a long ser