Customers look at an electric vehicle Tesla Motors Inc. Model X 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) on Wednesday asked Tesla to recall 158,716 Model S and Model X vehicles manufactured before 2019, after owners complained of touch screen failures that caused the loss. of various security-related functions.
Affected cars, manufactured at the Fremont, California auto plant, include Tesla Model S sedans manufactured between 2012 and 2018 and Model X SUVs during the 2016-2018 model years.
Tesla may refuse to carry out the withdrawal, but should present a full explanation of why to NHTSA, which could then propose further action. A withdrawal of 158,716 vehicles would account for about 10% of Tesla’s reported production by the end of 2020. Tesla produced its million electric vehicles in March 2020, then tweeted CEO Elon Musk, and in the last three quarters of 2020 the company produced more than 400,000 additional vehicles.
Reuters previously reported the news of the letter.
The memory devices of some Tesla MCUs have a limited “write cycle”, which means that, therefore, the media control unit itself will not work properly, or at all, after touching a certain number of programs or delete cycles.
Affected Tesla vehicle owners previously told CNBC that the screen of their media control units (or MCUs) would sometimes be blank, partially or completely. Problems with the touch screen interfered with drivers’ ability to use heat, air conditioning, defrost and unpacking systems in their vehicles, or to use their rear view cameras and Tesla autopilot functions while parking and they were driving.
In the letter, sent to Tesla’s legal vice president, Al Prescott, the federal vehicle safety authority wrote that Tesla’s MCU problems could increase the risk of drivers crashing due to the “possible loss of bells , driver detection and alerts “that are part of the Tesla autopilot, the company’s advanced driver assistance system.
The failure rates of the media control unit were as high as 17% in older Tesla Model S vehicles (manufactured between 2012 and 2015) and up to 4% in vehicles manufactured by Tesla from 2016 to 2018, according to the letter. And MCU failures are expected to increase as cars age and stay in use, NHTSA said, citing Tesla projections.
“Considering Tesla ‘s MCU repair projects, including MY [model year] Subject vehicles in 2018 will experience 100% MCU failure in about ten years, ”NHTSA researchers wrote.
Tesla previously offered an “extended warranty” to soothe customers annoyed by the defect. As CNBC reported at the time, some homeowners who had paid out of pocket for media control unit replacements could recover their costs with the extended warranty.
Read the full NHTSA letter to Tesla.