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Well this does not inspire confidence in Tesla.

Discussion in 'Tesla' started by orenji, Feb 2, 2021.

  1. orenji

    orenji Senior Member

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  2. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    Any idea of replacement cost, just the part? This could be a lottery (no peeking). I’ll say $8k USD.
     
  3. orenji

    orenji Senior Member

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    No idea but I am sure it’s not cheap!! It is the central control center for the whole car.
     
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  4. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    Tesla messed up when sourcing the main screen for the S and X. Not being automotive duty could mean it is cheaper than a similar screen for a car though.

    But...
    "Further, Prescott argued that it was wrong for the NHTSA to assert that the touchscreen "should last at least the useful life of the vehicle, essentially double its expected lifespan." The fact that the average age of vehicles on U.S. roads hit an all-time high of 11.6 years in 2020, "
    ...I agree with Tesla on this. Other manufacturers, when speaking on such things as lifetime belts and fluids, may only be defining lifetime as 100k miles, which can be accumulated in 5 to 6 years for some people. If NHTSA wants to apply a lifetime standard, they need to come up with a hard definition, and apply it to all.
     
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  5. 2k1Toaster

    2k1Toaster Brand New Prius Batteries

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    Tesla was charging $2500 for out of warranty replacements of the MCU, and after the "voluntary recall" they just changed the price to $1500. This was an upgraded MCU versus older ones being swapped in for a couple years now.

    Remember than Tesla doesn't use many automotively qualified parts in their electronics (AECQ-100/200) because a lot of the automotive gremlins of legacy cars don't affect them and they have argued the design architecture is redundant enough to not need some of this.

    With the recent decision to move the gear stalk and turn indicators into the MCU, I am sure the global automotive certifications will be taking a look at underlying IC certifications.
     
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  6. Tideland Prius

    Tideland Prius Moderator of the North
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    The title is mislead. It's not the touchscreen that needs replacing, it's the memory card (although the Model X does have a separate touchscreen issue with the glue and yellowing but that's not the focus of this NHTSA recall and it is mentioned at the end of that article).

    My concern is this statement from "Tesla Vice President of Legal Al Prescott"

    It's not economically feasible to make a CAD$100k-$200k car have a unit last the life of the vehicle? Or you're too cheap/lazy to take the time to design one because you were rushing to be "first" on the market back in 2012?

    Or in other words, on any other car, Tesla is basically saying once outside of the basic new car warranty, don't expect anything to last - the cameras, the radars, the glass roof, the leather on the seats, the heating elements for heated seats, the rubber seals for the trunk or doors. Yeah everything is game for failure after 3 years so don't expect it to last.

    While that above paragraph is totally legal and within Tesla's right, it leaves a bad taste when someone buys a car for the "state-of-the-art" technology but yet has to deal with failures of other basic features.
     
    #6 Tideland Prius, Feb 3, 2021
    Last edited: Feb 3, 2021
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  7. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    Sorry, but this post shows you are not very bright. This silly comment "5 to 6 years and then your done!" truly shows a ignorance of both Tesla products and owners.

    We really don't give a sh*t about technical issues posted by faux Tesla critics. After all, some of us are former Prius owners who have known for decades about Toyota's poor support for the 2001-2003 Prius. Perhaps you are not a Prius owner?

    In my case, Prius ownership led to getting a 2014 BMW i3-REx that I added 400 miles on Tuesday for an experiment with our 2019 Std Rng Plus Prius Model 3. These were throughly enjoyed miles to get the a pair of new tires for the Tesla.

    Seriously, your ignorance in this post betrays ...

    Bob Wilson
     
    #7 bwilson4web, Feb 3, 2021
    Last edited: Feb 3, 2021
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  8. Zythryn

    Zythryn Senior Member

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    I am quite surprised at this, did you get hacked?
    The statement you quoted specifically mentioned “electronic” components.
    Last I checked, this doesn’t include many of the things you included.
    More importantly, the type of electronics are more likely computers. As the car capabilities grow, they may outgrow the capabilities of original elements.

    In this case, it is a memory issue. Now, Tesla could resolve most of this by not updating existing cars with new capabilities.
    Personally, I like having new capabilities and am willing to pay the upgrade price should it be required. Much cheaper than buying a new car.
     
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  9. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    Hope one or two manufacturers have a look at this site, pay more than passing interest: they may be “within their rights”, but watch out if potential customers catch on.

    Same story with several other “improvements“ these days, but I’ll restrain myself lol.
     
    #9 Mendel Leisk, Feb 3, 2021
    Last edited: Feb 3, 2021
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  10. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    it's likely not ignorance - so much as it is resentment that all his attempts to win over hydrogen fuel cell car fans ends up as a bad rebuttal/fact beating scenario - as many here have already read many documents showing that hydrogen cars are a lost effort .... and even now are suffering even lower than usual sales. Any other car would have already been axed.

    Not to say that there isn't some validity regarding this article as our moderator brings forth. This was the part of the article that seemed to be the most eyebrow raising statement from Tesla;

    The "state-of-the-art" statement is pure BS. The screens in current Tesla models have liquid cooled elements in the MCU. Electronics need to stay cool and Tesla knows it. Those components were readily available even more than 10 years ago. But they were more costly.
    The component that failed is written to, and then rewritten & rewritten throughout every day, and the notion that it's only when people use the touchscreen too frequently is wholely untrue.
    Tesla has been denying this defect for years, which actually created a mini service market for the defect. The components don't require entire MCU to be replaced. Tesla makes more money replacing the whole shebang, & doesn't want to have to fiddle with servicing the burned out component on the MCU, but would rather ditch the entire MCU. The aftermarket company does take the time to replace the emMC component from salvaged cars - so when your unit fails, they simply install (with a rebuildable/core deposit) the whole MCU.
    What's amazing, as an upside, despite the loss of Goodwill that a scenario like this causes, or orher scenarios, like our ghosting windshield on the model X, or software updates that cause reduced charging rate as batteries age, or the many under engineered ½ shafts still in service that wear prematurely due to huge amounts of torque they endure when you put your foot into it, only to hear the dealership say the shutter is "normal" .... & the cure tesla provides is they download software so you can no longer set your air suspension to drive in high height position .... etc.
    Despite all of this kind of nonsense, owners still do love love love their Tesla's. That's very frustrating to the orangi guy

    Even worse ... even with the older MCU's - (newer ones are version 3) many could buy the self-driving feature, years before it would even enter roadworthy beta versions. If your screen went black, Tesla will charge owners for repairs when you are out of warranty, even though you would eventually have to get version 3, "on the house", in order to use full self-driving features.
    Crappy financial decisions like this happen with every manufacturer, and you hate to see it, but sometimes they have to learn the hard way.
    .
     
    #10 hill, Feb 3, 2021
    Last edited: Feb 3, 2021
  11. Tideland Prius

    Tideland Prius Moderator of the North
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    Well no I wasn't hacked but I am irked at the lawyer-speak of "well it's not economically feasible to make it last" for this component, who's to say that thought process wasn't applied to anything else in the vehicle?

    One could say the same for CD or DVD-based navigation systems or early Onstar vehicles that used 2G but at least those vehicles had 10 years of support and are still operable after obsolescence.
     
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  12. Zythryn

    Zythryn Senior Member

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    I understand, and agree with being irked about the techno-babble.
    Equating Leather or Windows to electronic equipment seemed over the top, and unlike you.
     
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  13. 2k1Toaster

    2k1Toaster Brand New Prius Batteries

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    I honestly believe it was just an oversight. The MCU is a small embedded box. There is a long history of embedded linux systems with soldered eMMC working fine, but it requires lots of partitioning so that the RAM is used and the eMMC is basically just a boot drive and failure logging. It would last indefinitely like that. My guess (pure speculation) is that this is how it was designed and engineered. Over the years they needed some logging, and it is very common to start logging to the eMMC because it is non-volatile and more importantly it is right there! The goal is that you solve the problem with all this debug then turn that feature off for production. Somewhere along the way the coders and the hardware designers forgot what they were writing to or forgot to convert the logs back into RAM and then write to eMMC on alert (like airbag deployment). With the fast nature of Tesla's coding, I don't think they have line by line firmware reviews.
     
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  14. Tideland Prius

    Tideland Prius Moderator of the North
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    That's fair. Thanks for looking out for me. :) I am still human after all.
     
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  15. ozmatt

    ozmatt Active Member

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    Just watching rich rebuilds on youtube is enough for me, some of the issues he comes up against makes me itch!

    Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
     
  16. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    if you can afford a tesla, you can afford to fix it, and rent a car while awaiting repairs.

    i'm not an ownewr, but this seems like much ado about nothing.

    seems like my brothers mercedes is in the shop every other month to the tune of 1-2k in repairs or replacement.
    being on priuschat, and the owner of many toyotas over the years, i could go down a long list of toyota problems that they refuse to stand behind
     
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  17. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    My backup car is a BMW i3-REx that I drove 400 miles Tuesday to Atlanta and back. It is the second best car I've owned and what led the 2017 Prius Prime to be traded in for the 2019 Tesla Std Rng Plus Model 3.

    Bob Wilson
     
  18. dbstoo

    dbstoo Senior Member

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    Personally, I find it appalling when manufacturers do shoddy engineering of parts that are used to control the car, and then brush it off as normal wear and tear. One would expect that the maintenance schedule would include the interval at which the part would need to be replaced if it were really expected to fail every 5 years. The fact that they did not provide advance notice tells me that they hid the fact from potential buyers.

    I would certainly take the mindset of the company leadership into account before buying any Tesla product. I would never trust their products. Not their solar products. Not their power wall. Not their cars.

    Dan
     
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  19. orenji

    orenji Senior Member

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    Please do make that list - it would be interesting

    And ?
     
    #19 orenji, Feb 4, 2021
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 4, 2021
  20. orenji

    orenji Senior Member

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    It appears that Elon in a recent interview confessed that many cars were rushed through the build process leading to defects, especially paint issues. He even said many cars had wet paint during the build process which led to paint issues. Not a great way to achieve quality control.