Well the last MCU1 vehicles were made in March, 2018 so they would be in warranty until at least March, 2022. So at least a year and a half. Then there are the cars re-sold with a used car warranty, or where the owner purchased an ESA. So there will be MCU1s under warranty for many more years.
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
If MCU1 fails under warranty, can MCU2 be negotiated cheaper?
- Thread starter Nuclear Fusion
- Start date
Well the last MCU1 vehicles were made in March, 2018 so they would be in warranty until at least March, 2022. So at least a year and a half. Then there are the cars re-sold with a used car warranty, or where the owner purchased an ESA. So there will be MCU1s under warranty for many more years.
Ostrichsak
Well-Known Member
Your stance assumes that no other parts of the MCU fail that can't be repaired. This isn't the case and, like all electronics, eventually it costs more to keep old tech going than it's worth at which point newer tech replaces said older tech. Eventually, over time, this is what we will see happening as we can probably assume Tesla isn't had hasn't made any new MCU1's in a number of years since shifting all new production to a single unit saves cost.
As I stated previously, I don't see that we're at this point yet but we will eventually be at the point where MCU1 replacements are upgraded to MCU2 (refurbs where possible) units out of necessity. The start of this will be random MCU1 failures being replaced with MCU2 units at Tesla's discretion which we've already seen. The frequency of this will ramp up as fewer and fewer MCU1 refurbs are available until finally they're wiped out and every replacement is done with MCU2 units.
Ostrichsak
Well-Known Member
The aspect you may be missing is the current NHTSA investigation into the high rate of failure of the eMMC on the MCU1 units since the MCU controls safety aspects of vehicle operation. This could result in a TSB whereby all MCU1 units are replaced with an "upgraded" version which would last longer and this would w/o a doubt be the MCU2 since it's already developed, implemented for years and would cost less than trying to retroactively correct the MCU1.
Last edited:
Cars sold used and cars with extended warranty will still have MCU1 under the B2B warranty. My car, for instance, is an early 2016 that I bought used last year, so the B2B will continue to 2023. Assume that some large fraction of 2018s will be lease returns in 2021 and see a second buyer with another 4 years of B2B that means that they'll be on the hook for fixing these out to 2025.
Also, hopefully, tesla will maintain spare parts for these cars past the warranty period. I believe there is some mandate that manufacturers must maintain spare parts for a car for some period of time, depending on which country the car was sold in.
After that, hopefully there will continue to be support for these cars. I've seen Roadsters at the local service center, so maybe they'll support the S well into the future as well. It is, however, TBD.
Sure that is possible, but what failures have you seen of the MCU1s other than the screen and the eMMC? (I've heard of SD card failures and LTE modem failures, but they are both very rare.)
Are you saying you have seen Tesla do a MCU1 to MCU2 upgrade for free under warranty? As far as I have seen that has never happened, but Tesla has given people the option to pay for the upgrade to get their car repaired faster than they would if they wait for the free MCU1 replacement under warranty.
BigNick
Infamous Fat Sweaty Guy
Theoretically, Tesla announces $$$ MCU2 upgrade as mandatory at some point in the future if you want to (keep navigation active, keep receiving software updates, insert other functions here).
Screwd if you've already paid to upgrade your MCU1's eMMC chip to something that won't self-destruct in a couple years - you've paid to fix MCU1 but now need to pony up for MCU2.
Screwed if you want to keep the MCU1 because you listen to AM/FM/XM radio, but after you pay for MCU2, those functions are gone.
I suppose "SOL" isn't the correct term here, but "screwed" might be.
Ostrichsak
Well-Known Member
"w/o a doubt" huh?
Then why has Tesla told people in Europe that the refurbished MCU1s now already have a different eMMC chip that won't suffer the same problem. (Just like the aftermarket eMMC replacements that people have been getting.)There is also the issue that the failure we are seeing appears to be bad batch(es) of the eMMC chip, so any possible recall issued might not apply to all MCU1s, it might only apply to the ones identified with the faulty chips.
Do you have a link to that? I have looked in the past and have never found anything.
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
Ostrichsak
Well-Known Member
By your own admission you've heard of other components fail and, as is the nature with all electronics, this will increase over time. Rare today or not, this only going to become more prevalent over time.
That's correct. Someone has posted about exactly this in another MCU thread. We have WAY too many of these MCU threads currently active which is why I'm a big proponent of keeping all related conversations in one single thread to avoid fragmentation where other users miss important aspects of the topic. To me, that's a large aspect of this topic. The owner didn't request it but received a MCU2 upgrade from his MCU1 w/o any additional charge. I believe this is a sign of that first phase I mentioned earlier where we start seeing MCU1's randomly replaced by MCU2 as is Tesla's discretion. This could be one of two reasons: 1) they simply don't have enough refurbished MCU1's currently which necessitated an upgrade in this particular instance (which supports my previous post) or 2) the service center is incompetent and ordered the wrong part. While the latter is certainly possible given the displayed ineptitude of Tesla service center employees I still lean towards the former of the two being the most likely scenario. This may happen again in a week or two or a month or two or a year or two... nobody knows. But it is the first real life signal we've seen that the demand for replacement MCU1's has exceeded the supply of refurbished replacements.
Ostrichsak
Well-Known Member
Forced mandatory upgrades at owner's expense? No. This will never happen. Ever.
Ostrichsak
Well-Known Member
If Tesla said it then it MUST be accurate, right? Never has a rep at a Tesla email address given wildly incorrect information after all."w/o a doubt" huh?
There is also the issue that the failure we are seeing appears to be bad batch(es) of the eMMC chip, so any possible recall issued might not apply to all MCU1s, it might only apply to the ones identified with the faulty chips.
Also, you seem to have missed the qualifier at the beginning of that "If they replace it with an upgraded unit" as in if they chose to swap over the older units to a newer unit... they already have one. The MCU2.
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
Temporarily, maybe. I don't think this is any real ongoing concern. Just a few weeks ago there were news stories about MCU1s being found in service center dumpsters, so I don't think they're particularly worried about having enough units to R&R.
Ostrichsak
Well-Known Member
Do you happen to have a link to that person's post?
The problem is that Tesla can't just decide to replace an MCU1 with an MCU2 as that removes features from the car, which would require approval from the owner. (Unless they replace the tuner as well, but even then it would still remove the AM radio support.)
BigNick
Infamous Fat Sweaty Guy
I don't WANT it to happen, but I do see them eventually dropping support for older hardware.
Maybe my view of the future is too pessimistic.
Ostrichsak
Well-Known Member
I don't have a link immediately handy as I'm honestly not sure which of the dozen currently active threads this occurred in. See previous statement about fragmented conversations across several threads with basically the same topic.
Someone asked him for a copy of his invoice and a screen shot of the advanced info screen to prove his claims and, to the best of my knowledge, he has yet to produce. Could be made up since it's unverified but this all happened recently enough that I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt until more time passes w/o either of those two pieces of proof.
Ostrichsak
Well-Known Member
If Tesla decides to EOL the older MCU this would come with a final "stability" firmware upgrade to lock it in it's existing feature set forever. No more updates is FAR different from forced upgrades at owner's expense. There's enough negativity to focus on w/Tesla w/o making up crap that's not going to happen. So, yes, you are being pessimistic on the verge of neurotic to make up such things that won't happen. Let's not derail the conversation with stuff that's not going to happen.
