Tesla recalls 158K vehicles for touchscreen failure

[jerrin91]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55902779

https://uk.pcmag.com/cars-auto/130984/tesla-asked-...


The issue is down to the Nvidia Tegra 3 processor's integrated flash device, which gets overwritten each time the vehicle is started. Overwrite the drive enough times, and it will reach capacity and break down, causing the screen to go blank.

The failure has led to:

-Loss of rear-view camera images and controls for heating, air conditioning and defrosting
-Loss of mirror adjustment & Wiper Speed
-Potential loss of audible chimes and alerts associated with indicators and the drive-assistance Autopilot feature

"Tesla during the investigation has stated that expected usage life rating for the flash memory device is approximately 3,000 Program-Erase cycles and has provided confirmation that all units will inevitably fail given the memory device's finite storage capacity which, according to the evidence gathered by the investigators would take only five or six years to reach"



Maybe Tesla drivers for once can actually focus on the road now?! :P

[underwhelmist]

Nobody could have foreseen this. Who knew there was a limit on the number of times flash memory could be written to? This is completely unprecedented.</s>

[anonymous-user]

3000 cycles. And nobody designing it thought "hang on a minute...only 3000..?"

Do the school run twice a day and maybe the shopping at the weekend and you'll hit 600+ in a year just doing that, and nobody twigged that 3000 sounds a bit low...???

Well at least they didn't accidentally fit square wheels or put the seats in backwards, maybe saving that for the next model.

[h0b0]

I am very sure they did realise this but pushed the problem down the road as they were struggling to ship any cars.

[Sheepshanks]

JimSuperSix said:

3000 cycles. And nobody designing it thought "hang on a minute...only 3000..?"

Do the school run twice a day and maybe the shopping at the weekend and you'll hit 600+ in a year just doing that, and nobody twigged that 3000 sounds a bit low...???

Well at least they didn't accidentally fit square wheels or put the seats in backwards, maybe saving that for the next model.

There’s more to it than that - you don’t use the whole device at once so the wear is spread out. Tesla’s issue is the size of the software, and the amount of stuff they were logging, increased beyond what they designed for.

The device isn’t integrated either - it can be replaced on its own, although not by your average garage.