My Feb built 2017 S has received the MUC2 Infotainment Upgrade.
Before: MCU1 w/ HW 2.0
After: MCU2 w/ HW 3.0
Two hours into the upgrade the SC discovered that the mothership supply folks had left out the new MCU1 car to MCU2 harness. It was supposed to be in the hardware kit but left out. So the SC ordered it. Nothing gets here over night except Coronavirus. Getting the harness took a little longer than it should have.
SETTINGS: My car’s configuration lost one setting, WiFi. That makes sense. We get a new WiFi card in the MCU that supports both 2.4 and 5 GHz, so it does not have the home WiFi password. Reconnected in seconds at home.
ALL OTHER settings were still there. Driver Profiles, Easy-Exit, Outside Rear view mirror settings, Homelink, and Radio Favorites. I can’t speak to what happens when you select FM radio favorites, never had them. Remember, we lose FM radio, so even if there, would not work. And I had no browser favorites saved, so none there.
FM Radio. As expected, FM radio is gone. No stations available. Service Advisor reminded me that it was gone when I picked up my car. Its not big deal to me. TuneIn has all our local FM stations.
AP on NAV. AP w/HW 3.0 now has visualization that include traffic lights, showing red, changing to green at the intersection. As I drove under the light, they got larger showing green, until they disappeared as I went under them. Also, traffic marking such as thru arrows and turning arrows on the road show on the IC screen. As I drove past construction, each traffic cone appeared along the side of the car’s IC screen too. One section for contraflow has 4 foot yellow rubber poles in the road. The visualizations showed even those poles as I pasted them. At traffic lights, the cars surrounding me were not shaking as per AP 2.0.
CALIBRATION: My Service Advisor reminded me that AP would need to calibrate during the first drives. A message “CALIBRATION IN PROGRESS” appeared on the IC below the speed indicator. As soon as I started driving, a small blue spot leading to an outer blue ring began to encircle the Auto Pilot symbol (steering wheel) on the IC. Calibration finished in 10 miles. Then another message appeared at the bottom of the IC. I could enable AP on NAV in settings. I did. Then in a couple of minutes, I noticed the visualizations appear.
After calibration, I tested AP for a few miles. I had only tried AP for about 4 miles, so it’s too few miles for me to judge much.
PRO: Response and lane centering was better than before upgrade. As before, approaching an intersection with cars already stopped, my car slowed. And I was 4-5 car lengths away from last car when light changed and other cars started through intersection. Mine was still slowing until the green light appeared on the IC – then the car stopped slowing and picked up speed through the intersection. AP seems steadier than before. But visualizations are improved and appear to me to be in concert to what AP is doing.
CON: The steering wheel nag interval seems to be more frequent. I counted 15 seconds one time and 20 seconds twice.
TESLACAM and SENTRY: With MCU2, my car now supports the Tesla dash cam and Sentry modes.
BROWSER: I visited only a couple of web sites, but response was immediate. It’s previously not been that fast.
SCREEN: The MCU screen looks brighter and images appear crisper, but that could just be because it’s on a new screen.
ENTERTAINMENT: With MCU2, I now have Tesla Theater and Games.
INVOICE: Shows NO LABOR PERFORMED. (We know labor occurred. However its included in the Upgrade cost.)
Two part numbers are shown on my invoice.
1582613-00-A MCU Upgrade - Qty 1.0 Price @,500 Customer Pay 2,500.00
Additional items for upgrade (MCU2 + HW3 package)
Performed Media Control Unit Upgrade with harness retrofit. Installed firmware and checked infotainment functions. All systems function as intended at this time. The retrofit disables FM radio. For local radio stations, please use Tune In.
Correction: Infotainment Upgrade From Tegra MCU and Autopilot 2.5 To Intel MCU And Autopilot 3.0 (Model S)
Parts Replaced or Added
MCU INTEL HW3 UPGRADE-For TegraAP2.5- NA (9874561-00-A) Qty 1.0 Customer Pay 0.00
Final Price included state tax.
LESSONS LEARNED:
1. Check with the SC and ask them to verify that they have all the parts in the kit, not just look at the sealed box.
2. After MCU/eMMC replacements a few owners have reported being unable to unlock the car with the fob or the app. Recommend before you leave the SC to check both the fob locking/unlocking and light/horn and unlocking/starting the car via the app. Initially, the app could not connect to the car (sitting in the car, - active). Closed the app and reopened it and response was immediate.
RECOMMENDATION: Highly recommend. It’s great. So very glad I did this. It’s worth it simply for the performance.
My 2017 S is relatively young by MCU1 standards. However, mine had a number of idiosyncrasies that gave me reason to believe it was dying. Although under warranty, the MCUs eMMC would still have the same size chip and would likely have an another short life. The MCU2 has a 4 X larger eMMC and I can expect longer life. Out of warranty MCU1 repair would cost by today’s cost at least $1700+ including Tax. MCU2 cost is only $1,000 more than the MCU1 replacement and in my opinion is worth double that difference for longer life, better performance of AP and NAV plus the addition of Tesla dash cam and Sentry. Theater and Games are a small plus but I will likely never use.
Mine was the first one done at the SC in Honolulu.
Before: MCU1 w/ HW 2.0
After: MCU2 w/ HW 3.0
Two hours into the upgrade the SC discovered that the mothership supply folks had left out the new MCU1 car to MCU2 harness. It was supposed to be in the hardware kit but left out. So the SC ordered it. Nothing gets here over night except Coronavirus. Getting the harness took a little longer than it should have.
SETTINGS: My car’s configuration lost one setting, WiFi. That makes sense. We get a new WiFi card in the MCU that supports both 2.4 and 5 GHz, so it does not have the home WiFi password. Reconnected in seconds at home.
ALL OTHER settings were still there. Driver Profiles, Easy-Exit, Outside Rear view mirror settings, Homelink, and Radio Favorites. I can’t speak to what happens when you select FM radio favorites, never had them. Remember, we lose FM radio, so even if there, would not work. And I had no browser favorites saved, so none there.
FM Radio. As expected, FM radio is gone. No stations available. Service Advisor reminded me that it was gone when I picked up my car. Its not big deal to me. TuneIn has all our local FM stations.
AP on NAV. AP w/HW 3.0 now has visualization that include traffic lights, showing red, changing to green at the intersection. As I drove under the light, they got larger showing green, until they disappeared as I went under them. Also, traffic marking such as thru arrows and turning arrows on the road show on the IC screen. As I drove past construction, each traffic cone appeared along the side of the car’s IC screen too. One section for contraflow has 4 foot yellow rubber poles in the road. The visualizations showed even those poles as I pasted them. At traffic lights, the cars surrounding me were not shaking as per AP 2.0.
CALIBRATION: My Service Advisor reminded me that AP would need to calibrate during the first drives. A message “CALIBRATION IN PROGRESS” appeared on the IC below the speed indicator. As soon as I started driving, a small blue spot leading to an outer blue ring began to encircle the Auto Pilot symbol (steering wheel) on the IC. Calibration finished in 10 miles. Then another message appeared at the bottom of the IC. I could enable AP on NAV in settings. I did. Then in a couple of minutes, I noticed the visualizations appear.
After calibration, I tested AP for a few miles. I had only tried AP for about 4 miles, so it’s too few miles for me to judge much.
PRO: Response and lane centering was better than before upgrade. As before, approaching an intersection with cars already stopped, my car slowed. And I was 4-5 car lengths away from last car when light changed and other cars started through intersection. Mine was still slowing until the green light appeared on the IC – then the car stopped slowing and picked up speed through the intersection. AP seems steadier than before. But visualizations are improved and appear to me to be in concert to what AP is doing.
CON: The steering wheel nag interval seems to be more frequent. I counted 15 seconds one time and 20 seconds twice.
TESLACAM and SENTRY: With MCU2, my car now supports the Tesla dash cam and Sentry modes.
BROWSER: I visited only a couple of web sites, but response was immediate. It’s previously not been that fast.
SCREEN: The MCU screen looks brighter and images appear crisper, but that could just be because it’s on a new screen.
ENTERTAINMENT: With MCU2, I now have Tesla Theater and Games.
INVOICE: Shows NO LABOR PERFORMED. (We know labor occurred. However its included in the Upgrade cost.)
Two part numbers are shown on my invoice.
1582613-00-A MCU Upgrade - Qty 1.0 Price @,500 Customer Pay 2,500.00
Additional items for upgrade (MCU2 + HW3 package)
Performed Media Control Unit Upgrade with harness retrofit. Installed firmware and checked infotainment functions. All systems function as intended at this time. The retrofit disables FM radio. For local radio stations, please use Tune In.
Correction: Infotainment Upgrade From Tegra MCU and Autopilot 2.5 To Intel MCU And Autopilot 3.0 (Model S)
Parts Replaced or Added
MCU INTEL HW3 UPGRADE-For TegraAP2.5- NA (9874561-00-A) Qty 1.0 Customer Pay 0.00
Final Price included state tax.
LESSONS LEARNED:
1. Check with the SC and ask them to verify that they have all the parts in the kit, not just look at the sealed box.
2. After MCU/eMMC replacements a few owners have reported being unable to unlock the car with the fob or the app. Recommend before you leave the SC to check both the fob locking/unlocking and light/horn and unlocking/starting the car via the app. Initially, the app could not connect to the car (sitting in the car, - active). Closed the app and reopened it and response was immediate.
RECOMMENDATION: Highly recommend. It’s great. So very glad I did this. It’s worth it simply for the performance.
My 2017 S is relatively young by MCU1 standards. However, mine had a number of idiosyncrasies that gave me reason to believe it was dying. Although under warranty, the MCUs eMMC would still have the same size chip and would likely have an another short life. The MCU2 has a 4 X larger eMMC and I can expect longer life. Out of warranty MCU1 repair would cost by today’s cost at least $1700+ including Tax. MCU2 cost is only $1,000 more than the MCU1 replacement and in my opinion is worth double that difference for longer life, better performance of AP and NAV plus the addition of Tesla dash cam and Sentry. Theater and Games are a small plus but I will likely never use.
Mine was the first one done at the SC in Honolulu.
