Suspected repeater camera defect that affects FSD performance

[STS-134]

The person I was responding to said it's not a design defect so I was responding to that.

As for the warranty I would have thought a repeater module is a material and/or that the assembly process not covering the holes would be a workmanship issue.

It's not really a workmanship issue if it was done to specifications. The design itself is the issue, not the workmanship. It's like a blueprint for a house that specifies that the roof should have a hole in it (through which rain pours into the living room). Workmanship problem? Nope, done to specifications.

Now the question is, why was this in the specifications in the first place? Was it an accident on the part of the people doing the design or was it intentional? If, as @JVINFL suggested, it is not actually a design defect, then that means it was not mere incompetence or an accident on the part of the design team but an intentionally malicious act (which is even worse).

 

[MP3Mike]

Now the question is, why was this in the specifications in the first place? Was it an accident on the part of the people doing the design or was it intentional? If, as @JVINFL suggested, it is not actually a design defect, then that means it was not mere incompetence or an accident on the part of the design team but an intentionally malicious act (which is even worse).

My guess is the holes were put there for heat dissipation and/or weight issues. (Or possibly to make assembly easier.)

 

[Ruffles]

It's not a design defect because at the time it was designed, delivered, and used in cars, the holes in the PCB didn't matter. There was no blind spot camera feature and FSD & AP all work fine. The only way it would be a design defect is if it happened on a car that was delivered with V11.

 

[sleepydoc]

It's not really a workmanship issue if it was done to specifications. The design itself is the issue, not the workmanship. It's like a blueprint for a house that specifies that the roof should have a hole in it (through which rain pours into the living room). Workmanship problem? Nope, done to specifications.

Now the question is, why was this in the specifications in the first place? Was it an accident on the part of the people doing the design or was it intentional? If, as @JVINFL suggested, it is not actually a design defect, then that means it was not mere incompetence or an accident on the part of the design team but an intentionally malicious act (which is even worse).

It's not a design defect because at the time it was designed, delivered, and used in cars, the holes in the PCB didn't matter. There was no blind spot camera feature and FSD & AP all work fine. The only way it would be a design defect is if it happened on a car that was delivered with V11.

Historically, components that do not function for their intended purpose are covered under warranties. Even if they are built as designed, the design is considered to be defective.

For Tesla there's an interesting twist the camera worked for its intended purpose at the time of manufacture but does not work for a new purpose that Tesla added after manufacture. So where does this fall? It's not exactly clear.

 

[Graham J]

It's not really a workmanship issue if it was done to specifications. The design itself is the issue, not the workmanship. It's like a blueprint for a house that specifies that the roof should have a hole in it (through which rain pours into the living room). Workmanship problem? Nope, done to specifications.

Well, maybe. The module is a bit different from a roof in that it's assembled at a factory via a specified process. The holes may be an intentional design (though I would still call that an error) but we don't know that the holes not being covered isn't an assembly error. After all, they started covering them at some point - was this because they were always supposed to be covered and the error was discovered? Maybe there was an omission in an assembly guide or something. Would that be workmanship?

I mean look at panel gaps - the panels are to spec but they are sometimes installed wrong and Tesla does cover that, at least initially. If the module was assembled incorrectly I would call that workmanship.

 

[Graham J]

FSD & AP all work fine

Do they? It's not hard to imagine scenarios where a blinded camera would be problematic. And on the flip, if broken cameras make no difference why are they there?

 

[Ruffles]

I have a 2020 Y with the old cameras. I have the glare. I have FSDBeta and it works fine. AP works fine. All of the talk about it *must* affect self driving is simply a guess. The cameras have been this way for years. If it was an issue, it would have been immediately apparent to Tesla engineers and it would have been resolved. They have millions of hours of footage from millions of cars and if they suddenly discovered that half of their footage was unusable, they would have done something about it. The cameras didn't change until after V11 was release. Maybe the original holes were part of an assembly to hold the part while it was populated?

 

[Graham J]

I have a 2020 Y with the old cameras. I have the glare. I have FSDBeta and it works fine. AP works fine. All of the talk about it *must* affect self driving is simply a guess. The cameras have been this way for years. If it was an issue, it would have been immediately apparent to Tesla engineers and it would have been resolved.

You're right, it's a guess. All we can do is guess because we don't have data. AP/FSD do seem to work well enough so presumably they don't need a stable video feed, even when turning or switching lanes, enough to matter. Cameras get dirty and wet and it still works so maybe it's simply resilient enough to make this not matter.

Or maybe the cameras are sh|t at night anyway and the software relies more heavily on the ultrasonic sensors at night.

I still think parts that logically cannot be serving their intended purpose should be replaced but since Telsa has the final say ultimately what I think doesn't matter. It's still interesting to discuss.

 

[sleepydoc]

No one really knows if the glare causes issues for AP & FSD except Tesla. Neither FSD nor AP are perfect. Is it possible that some of the mistakes they make are from the cameras? Yes. Can anyone prove it? No.

 

[Ruffles]

My co-worker got their 2022 Model Y last week. We have compared AP performance and it is the same with both new and old cameras.

 

[momo3605]

Situations like this warrant a Technical Service Bulletin. Blind spot monitor is a feature that our cars now have, and it doesn’t operate as intended, hence why Tesla has updated the part.

But as a TSB, they can basically say, hey if you notice the issue, and it’s bothering you, we’ll replace it. I bet no more than 5% of the pre-2021 population would actually care enough to get this done.

 

[drtimhill]

You articulated it absolutely brilliantly in your messages - really, you did it way better than I did. I went through the same hoops and escalated it via email. I essentially got told the same thing. I emphasise how utterly infuriating it is for them to lie through their teeth to you while trying to make you feel like an idiot.

While no doubt everyone will howl "fan boy" at me, I'm a bit confused by your logic. When you bought the car it didn't have side view cameras at all. Correct? Now Tesla add the feature for free, but it doesnt work as well as you want, and you demand that they upgrade your hardware (again for free) so it meets your expectations?

 

[momo3605]

While no doubt everyone will howl "fan boy" at me, I'm a bit confused by your logic. When you bought the car it didn't have side view cameras at all. Correct? Now Tesla add the feature for free, but it doesnt work as well as you want, and you demand that they upgrade your hardware (again for free) so it meets your expectations?

Correct. Tesla added a feature that does not work correctly on cars pre-2021.

 

[Ruffles]

Correct. Tesla added a feature that does not work correctly on cars pre-2021.

So your choice is to turn the feature off and continue to use your car as delivered, turn it on and live with the glare (or fix it yourself if your adventurous), or buy new cameras.

 

[Graham J]

While no doubt everyone will howl "fan boy" at me, I'm a bit confused by your logic. When you bought the car it didn't have side view cameras at all. Correct? Now Tesla add the feature for free, but it doesnt work as well as you want, and you demand that they upgrade your hardware (again for free) so it meets your expectations?

I bought it used after the update was made available. The issue isn’t so much the camera view itself but the fact that the module has a defect. I paid a large sum of money for this car and feel it’s reasonable to expect all of its systems to function properly even if I would have been unable to tell they weren’t at some point in the past.

Anyway whatever, I don’t actually care that much at this point but that’s the topic here so that’s what we’re discussing.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

First off, let me set the record, I paid to have my repeaters replaced.

As to blaming Tesla not to replace the repeater cameras under warranty, I have to agree with them. This is not a design defect or manufacturing issue of the cameras. I originally asked if they would replace them under warranty and they explained their reasoning, which I may not like but I must agree. They function correctly based on the design of the car at the time of manufacture and features offered.

If you purchased a Dell computer and they add a new security feature but let's say the network card in the system doesn't support that feature, is the network card hence the computer defective? I think not. It is working the way it was designed at the time. IMHO, the same applies to the car. Tesla offered the feature as a FREE enhancement and it is your choice to use it or not. I didn't like the way the new free feature worked at night with the old design of the repeaters so I CHOSE to upgrade my repeater cameras at my cost. Is it any different than spending money on carbon fiber covers because the dash accents are wood and you like carbon fiber?

Just my 2 cents...

Do you have either EAP or FSD on your vehicle?

If you do the repeater cameras are used for auto-lane change.

Based on my own observations from my vehicles behavior I firmly believe the design defect does reduce the functionality of auto lane change.

Your analogy also isn't really correct.

Instead this would be the case of the network card not supporting a new security feature because of a defect with the network card. Like some functionality simply wasn't tested. In this case I could see Dell choosing to go either way with it. They be honorable in fixing it or they could simply say they don't support this new security feature, and that you'll have to pay to upgrade.

This is something where there is a LOT of examples of due to how much SW tends to lag HW.

Heck I've had it happen to things I designed. As an engineer its a huge gut punch because it means you failed to adequately test a design.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

Correct. Tesla added a feature that does not work correctly on cars pre-2021.

Features that use the repeater camera

FSD + EAP
DashCam
Manually selected Camera view where you see the side rear facing cameras along with rear camera
The newly added camera view on lane change

In all cases it impacts the quality of the feature that relies on it.

As a result I don't think Tesla has much of an argument when it comes to not replacing it under warranty.

 

[sleepydoc]

While no doubt everyone will howl "fan boy" at me, I'm a bit confused by your logic. When you bought the car it didn't have side view cameras at all. Correct? Now Tesla add the feature for free, but it doesnt work as well as you want, and you demand that they upgrade your hardware (again for free) so it meets your expectations?

FAN BOY!!!!!

See my post above - Tesla is in a somewhat unique and uncharted situation here. One of the advertised features of Teslas is that you get software upgrades. If you bought a new car and the included blindspot camera had the glare people are experiencing then the manufacturer would rightly be expected to fix the problem. Does a software feature upgrade imply an obligation to upgrade the hardware? No other manufacturer does software and feature upgrades like Tesla does so there's no precedent for the current situation.

It may be that Tesla only tested the feature on newer cars and was unaware of the issues until after release but they could have avoided a lot of this by issuing a warning with the software on older cars when you activate the feature stating there 'may be glare in some models d/t hardware incompatibilities.'

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

Situations like this warrant a Technical Service Bulletin. Blind spot monitor is a feature that our cars now have, and it doesn’t operate as intended, hence why Tesla has updated the part.

But as a TSB, they can basically say, hey if you notice the issue, and it’s bothering you, we’ll replace it. I bet no more than 5% of the pre-2021 population would actually care enough to get this done.

Blind Spot monitoring the car has had for awhile.

The only difference is it now visually shows the camera view where before it would just be a UI indictor on the green.

In either case the design defect impacts the quality of the feature.

 

[sleepydoc]

My co-worker got their 2022 Model Y last week. We have compared AP performance and it is the same with both new and old cameras.

Was this because the function is equivalent or because you did not encounter a situation in your testing that would be affected by the defect?