Wiki Consolidated eMMC Thread (MCU repair) (Black Center Screen)

[EV-Fixme]

Wow really? Do the signals still work with a dead MCU but stop once the tegra is removed and MCU reinstalled? Or just stop all together when it does?

You would think that should be some kind of safety recall now

I had originally collected the info that was out there and complied it together. I believe it was generally though that driving limited with no tegra was safe. So I'm updating my list as I test out more cases and verify findings.

Correct, however Tesla never designed the car to function without the tegra. I'm guessing they did at least test for it failing. However I'm interested if signals still work if car totally lost power and was rebooted after tegra has failed. I will be testing this scenario as soon as I can.

 

[MP3Mike]

Is anyone aware of a Class Action suit on this?

Not that I have seen, even though I have seen a number of people say that they have contacted lawyers. And that is probably because the lawyers told them that they have a very slim chance of succeeding. The issue is that it isn't a defect, it is a design decision. (You can lookup an example of this with the shrinking Prius gas tanks where the class action was dismissed.)

Is the eMMC defective? Nope, it is working as it was designed which like all eMMC has limited write cycles, some more than others. (There could be some of the eMMC modules that fail early because of a defect but most of them probably are not.)

Is the software defective? Nope, it was logging what Tesla designed it to log. "But, they fixed it to log less to make the eMMC last longer, so it must have been defective." No, they made another design decision that they don't need all of the logging all of the time.

But it is a safety issue because x. Lots of things safety related things fail outside of warranty, that doesn't mean that they then need to recall them. For example your turn signal bulbs burn out, that is safety related, but not recall worthy. They have a limited number of blinks just like the eMMC has a limited number of writes.

 

[Akikiki]

Excellent point and well explained Mike. As always.

About three months ago, I started counting MCU/eMMC failures. I've counted 166 eMMC failures that have been reported on TM and TMC. TonyT has told me he's repaired 150. Let's assume for a moment that Jason Hughes and his crew have fixed at least that many. Let's round that number of 466 up to 500. And for those other 3rd party fixers that we've not seen reports in the U.S. and Canada another 200. And we know there's 3rd party fixers in Europe. Let's now double our count (just guessing) for Europe. That's still only 1400 by our rough guess. And this is a rough count of those fixed not at Tesla. (Some of my 166 were fixed at Tesla, but its excuse that/those.)

We know another number has been fixed at Tesla, because owners have reported them fixed. The count? Don't know - will likely never know. So, let's take that 1400 from U.S./Canada and Europe - double it and add it back to the 1400. That's 4,200 MCU/eMMC repairs from Tesla and 3rd party repairer. You are welcome to challenge that number. What's your count?

Annual financial statements have the total S's sold between 2012 and 2016 at approximately 184,605. Let's take that 4,200 repairs and bounce it against the cars sold until 2017. That's MCU/eMMC failures count by my best guess of 2.2% of sales. And until just about one year ago, many of these repairs would covered under warranty. If the company repairs the failed component, can that be counted towards the class action suit?

Before you spend your money on starting a class action suit, you should consider finding a risk analysis bean counter and ask if a less than 2% failure rate on a 2010 design is a defect or even safety issue.

 

[Barry]

Akikiki - Like the number of covid19 cases, I think your estimate is WAY low.

 

[Akikiki]

Barry you think as many as cases of Covid19?

 

[tomas]

Akikiki - Like the number of covid19 cases, I think your estimate is WAY low.

But his logic is right on. A class action lawyer wouldn’t touch this with a 10’ pole. I’m sure I’ll get disagrees on this post, but if you disagree, you’ve got to find a lawyer who will. And you won’t.

 

[Barry]

Barry you think as many as cases of Covid19?

81K cases at the moment, so probably not yet. However, the eMMC flaw in MCU1 has a 100% mortality rate, unless the car dies of another cause first.

 

[EV-Fixme]

Excellent point and well explained Mike. As always.

About three months ago, I started counting MCU/eMMC failures. I've counted 166 eMMC failures that have been reported on TM and TMC. TonyT has told me he's repaired 150. Let's assume for a moment that Jason Hughes and his crew have fixed at least that many. Let's round that number of 466 up to 500. And for those other 3rd party fixers that we've not seen reports in the U.S. and Canada another 200. And we know there's 3rd party fixers in Europe. Let's now double our count (just guessing) for Europe. That's still only 1400 by our rough guess. And this is a rough count of those fixed not at Tesla. (Some of my 166 were fixed at Tesla, but its excuse that/those.)

We know another number has been fixed at Tesla, because owners have reported them fixed. The count? Don't know - will likely never know. So, let's take that 1400 from U.S./Canada and Europe - double it and add it back to the 1400. That's 4,200 MCU/eMMC repairs from Tesla and 3rd party repairer. You are welcome to challenge that number. What's your count?

Annual financial statements have the total S's sold between 2012 and 2016 at approximately 184,605. Let's take that 4,200 repairs and bounce it against the cars sold until 2017. That's MCU/eMMC failures count by my best guess of 2.2% of sales. And until just about one year ago, many of these repairs would covered under warranty. If the company repairs the failed component, can that be counted towards the class action suit?

Before you spend your money on starting a class action suit, you should consider finding a risk analysis bean counter and ask if a less than 2% failure rate on a 2010 design is a defect or even safety issue.

Well.... TBH I dont think keeping track of the numbers will be truly meaningful. I like how Mike put it, here's another way to look at it. eMMC's are like tires. Every tire will eventually wear out, some have failures before the life should end, due to external factors, like a nail puncture. So some eMMC may be in extreme conditions such as high heat with no cooling, causing early failure (like a nail.) Now sometimes I think there has been cases where tires were not designed/made correctly and could fail, needing a recall. That's not what we are seeing. A small amount die quick, actually I bet Tesla has all recorded all the factors for those cars, since they logged so much in the past.

Would have been nice if they made the chip easier to access, however at the same time, that chip contains all the information to your car. So if it was easily accessed, your car could be easily stolen...

We have found ways to repair this, so it's not really that bad. It is a inconvenience though, and Tesla can make things easier for the owners... However I'm guess Tesla likes people buying new cars and having the old ones recycled.....

 

[EV-Fixme]

81K cases at the moment, so probably not yet. However, the eMMC flaw in MCU1 has a 100% mortality rate, unless the car dies of another cause first.

There's a cure for transplant for eMMC failure with a 100% recovery rate when preformed early. Even after failure we could if Tesla chose to make it accessible.

 

[Tonem11]

Hello! I just received 2016 Model S with 14k miles in January. New to the forum. I read the main post here and things made more sense. Streaming was showing music playing, but no sound coming out. Then microphone wouldn't work for texts or music. Then the map and browser moving slow. Yesterday I went in and the touchscreen didn't turn on for first time. Ruh roh.

 

[GlmnAlyAirCar]

81K cases at the moment, so probably not yet. However, the eMMC flaw in MCU1 has a 100% mortality rate, unless the car dies of another cause first.

[off topic] 3% mortality rate vs. 100% mortality rate is immaterial when the infection growth curve is exponential.

 

[Banjo]

...... I like how Mike put it, here's another way to look at it. eMMC's are like tires. Every tire will eventually wear out, some have failures before the life should end, due to external factors, like a nail puncture.

Continuing on this analogy, I would say that this is like taking said tire to Tesla asking for a patch and they instead INSIST that you replace all four tires and rims with refurbished ones at a price that is illogical (ie complete MCU replacement), when Discount Tire could do a free patch. But, if you use Discount Tire to patch it, Tesla might not support your car any more. Oh, and Tesla dumped a bunch of nails on the road (extraneous logging).

 

[VictorD]

We can help, I'll pm you

I need the EMMC replaced as well sir.

 

[EVTuning]

It would be great if the Electrified Garage could use the video to remove MCU and add how to remove and replace the digital FM radio. Many of us planning on doing the Infotainment upgrade and would like to install the digital FM radio since Tesla will not do it for us. I know that the configuration has to be change. I assume you need root access to do this.

This comes up a lot for people. It would make more sense to use tune-in and find the station through streaming. The audio quality is better and not geographically limited (you can go on a long road trip and not lose the station). I don't think enough people know about this option. When I was a technician we used to constantly get "FM reception" complaints. Once people were shown how to use tune-in instead they never went back or missed FM.

 

[Art VandeIay]

It would be great if the Electrified Garage could do a video of how to remove and replace the digital FM radio tuner.

This would be beyond helpful. I would be happy to pay and see Chad tackle this job on video. And YouTube earnings would go through the roof with this!!!

Just from reading the comments here on TMC and other forums, people are eager to do their own tuner swap.

I guess sourcing the wiring for the new digital tuner would be the hardest part [as well as removing the back bolt on the analog tuner...]

This comes up a lot for people. It would make more sense to use tune-in and find the station through streaming.

I respectfully disagree @EVTuning. It may work for some, but not for all...

All of the FM radio stations I listen to are available on TuneIn, but it's just plain impossible to listen to them digitally. I live on a major metropolitan area and even so, AT&T coverage sucks.

Since I found out that Tesla was not changing the FM tuner on the Infotainment Upgrade process, I made the experiment to try and live with TuneIn as my only audio source. I live in an apartment complex, so my Model S is parked every night several feet below the ground, where as you might imagine, there is no AT&T service.

As soon as we surface to ground level every morning, the MCU takes about 2 to 5 minutes to lock into the LTE signal. Now traffic and several other data are refreshed or uploaded/downloaded, so still no streaming audio, just the spinning thingy. Approximately 7 minutes or 8 minutes into the drive a delightful sound exit's the speakers of my UHFS system, but it usually goes away in a few seconds in order for the MCU to buffer.

This is a good time to add that I'm very fortunate to live very close to my office, so by this time I'm 3/4 of the way to work.

If all the stars align correctly, I'm now listening to my TuneIn sourced FM radio station, which sometimes it stutters and buffers, and sometimes it doesn't, and plays a continuous stream of audio.

By now I've listened to more minutes of silence than audio, and we are reaching the entrance gate of my office building, which also has an underground parking garage with no AT&T service.

Since I'm no big time CEO, CFO, COO of any kind at this multinational corporation, I have to go down several floors to my parking spot, and halfway through the ramps, my buffered audio in the MCU is now gone.

Non of these troubles happen when I listen to the good ol' FM radio through my good ol' analog FM radio tuner. I get perfect audio during the journey, and good enough audio during the ingress and exit of the corresponding buildings.

I'm no good with tools at all, but this experiment showed me that I'm willing to fly Chad in, all expenses paid (no joke), in order for me to get the digital FM tuner swapped after my Infotainment Upgrade. It's hard enough to carpool with myself every day, let alone in pure dead silence during most of the journey...

 

[Nosken]

This would be beyond helpful. I would be happy to pay and see Chad tackle this job on video. And YouTube earnings would go through the roof with this!!!

Just from reading the comments here on TMC and other forums, people are eager to do their own tuner swap.

I guess sourcing the wiring for the new digital tuner would be the hardest part [as well as removing the back bolt on the analog tuner...]



I respectfully disagree @EVTuning. It may work for some, but not for all...

All of the FM radio stations I listen to are available on TuneIn, but it's just plain impossible to listen to them digitally. I live on a major metropolitan area and even so, AT&T coverage sucks.

Since I found out that Tesla was not changing the FM tuner on the Infotainment Upgrade process, I made the experiment to try and live with TuneIn as my only audio source. I live in an apartment complex, so my Model S is parked every night several feet below the ground, where as you might imagine, there is no AT&T service.

As soon as we surface to ground level every morning, the MCU takes about 2 to 5 minutes to lock into the LTE signal. Now traffic and several other data are refreshed or uploaded/downloaded, so still no streaming audio, just the spinning thingy. Approximately 7 minutes or 8 minutes into the drive a delightful sound exit's the speakers of my UHFS system, but it usually goes away in a few seconds in order for the MCU to buffer.

This is a good time to add that I'm very fortunate to live very close to my office, so by this time I'm 3/4 of the way to work.

If all the stars align correctly, I'm now listening to my TuneIn sourced FM radio station, which sometimes it stutters and buffers, and sometimes it doesn't, and plays a continuous stream of audio.

By now I've listened to more minutes of silence than audio, and we are reaching the entrance gate of my office building, which also has an underground parking garage with no AT&T service.

Since I'm no big time CEO, CFO, COO of any kind at this multinational corporation, I have to go down several floors to my parking spot, and halfway through the ramps, my buffered audio in the MCU is now gone.

Non of these troubles happen when I listen to the good ol' FM radio through my good ol' analog FM radio tuner. I get perfect audio during the journey, and good enough audio during the ingress and exit of the corresponding buildings.

I'm no good with tools at all, but this experiment showed me that I'm willing to fly Chad in, all expenses paid (no joke), in order for me to get the digital FM tuner swapped after my Infotainment Upgrade. It's hard enough to carpool with myself every day, let alone in pure dead silence during most of the journey...

I will miss my AM and FM stations--since AT&T is bad in your area--can't you just stream from your SmartPhone connected by Bluetooth to your car?

 

[Akikiki]

Art_Vandelay (I get a chuckle every time I see your name). That issue you have with no audio when you pull back up to the street ... I have always had that too - with each of three S's. It happens when I transition from WiFi to 3G or LTE as I pull away from the garage. What always works but its a PITA to have to do, is move off the station and move right back. I simply scroll up or down with left button to move off that station and back. Audio starts. I recommend you give this a try. Your situation may be so much like losing WIFI, that the same fix, fixes your too. (And like yours, if I just wait a while, the spinning stops and the audio shows up - miles from my starting point.)

Don't forget, you could play media on your USB via flash drives.

No one is saying that you don't deserve your FM if you want it. Or no one is saying trying to restore it after the upgrade is not allowed or is not going to work. I personally applaud your comments to bring it back.

 

[S100D]

This comes up a lot for people. It would make more sense to use tune-in and find the station through streaming. The audio quality is better and not geographically limited (you can go on a long road trip and not lose the station). I don't think enough people know about this option. When I was a technician we used to constantly get "FM reception" complaints. Once people were shown how to use tune-in instead they never went back or missed FM.

I logged into my Tune-in account yesterday and tried to find the FM station Mix 94.7 in Austin, TX. I listen to it all of the time and it is not available on Tune-in. This is why I want to replace my AM/FM radio my MCU1/AP2 Model S with a digital FM radio.

 

[EV-Fixme]

Not doing much driving? It's a great time to get your eMMC done!

 

[JustADude]

I logged into my Tune-in account yesterday and tried to find the FM station Mix 94.7 in Austin, TX. I listen to it all of the time and it is not available on Tune-in. This is why I want to replace my AM/FM radio my MCU1/AP2 Model S with a digital FM radio.

TuneIn on the Tesla is limited to streams with a bitrate of 64kbps or less I think. Anything higher doesn't appear.