Tesla infotainment system upgradeable from MCU1 to MCU2

[Doctt]

Why would anyone beleive what Elon said? 8 times out of 10 he just lies.

The only time you can trust him is when he said something is coming in next weeks, then you know it is real. But timing will always off. New weeks always turns into few months. But at least it is real.

Anything else is just smoke.

 

[Droschke]

Faster (no lags, no need to use the sketch pad trick

What's the sketch pad trick?

 

[darxsys]

This is really nice to hear, I'll probably want to upgrade in a year or two! Now, if they would publish the price, that'd be nice, too.

 

[whitex]

I lost track of things Elon said are coming, even from 5 years ago. Just throw that one on the heap together with App SDK , battery capacity upgrades, unattended self driving, battery swap stations for travel, etc, etc. Tesla can't even keep up with servicing the current fleet, they are not going to add to that by performing MCU swaps.

 

[Naonak]

I wouldn't call this "news" or "confirmed". Elon has stated before that there will be an upgrade path but nothing official has ever been published other than his tweets.

Just like the main battery pack is upgradable? Still waiting on that one...

 

[BPeter]

I lost track of things Elon said are coming, even from 5 years ago. Just throw that one on the heap together with App SDK , battery capacity upgrades, unattended self driving, battery swap stations for travel, etc, etc. Tesla can't even keep up with servicing the current fleet, they are not going to add to that by performing MCU swaps.

Servicing is an issue but you'd have to assume they'd price the MCU swap such that it would be profitable, and maybe worth it to fit those in.

 

[buttershrimp]

Mcu 2 is pretty awesome... the rendering on the IC is better and more detailed.... I suspect they will do the upgrade option when they retrofit AP3.... let’s hope they have a large inventory so they can retrofit when they activate new chip... nothing worse than waiting to get into the club while all the young bucks walk right in... meanwhile I’m standing here with my Z Cavaricci’s ready to get inside and dance to hammertime

 

[whitex]

Servicing is an issue but you'd have to assume they'd price the MCU swap such that it would be profitable, and maybe worth it to fit those in.

I assume they make good profit off of a $750 annual maintenance too, and yet, long wait lists and reported service times of weeks in some places (one you drop the car off).

 

[bmah]

Regardless of what Elon said, or how much you believe him, this upgrade operation is technically not as easy as it sounds. If I remember right, the IC on MCU2 cars is different as well, because aren't they both driven from the MCU2's processor? (The IC on MCU1 cars has its own processor.)

Also, AP1 or pre-AP cars have substantially different connections between the MCU and the rest of the car (different wiring harnesses, etc.). I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it's not straightforward. Also supporting a swap on older cars would create more permutations of hardware to (gasp) test, so I could see some software issues involved too (this as an engineer who used to be responsible for supporting hardware appliances with various configurations). I would love a faster MCU in my AP1 car, but I'm not holding my breath.

Bruce.

 

[FlatSix911]

The browser in v9 MCU 1 pretty much does not run until you use the sketch pad to prevent the map from rendering.

What's the sketch pad trick?

Yes, more details on this

 

[Snowstorm]

Regardless of what Elon said, or how much you believe him, this upgrade operation is technically not as easy as it sounds. If I remember right, the IC on MCU2 cars is different as well, because aren't they both driven from the MCU2's processor? (The IC on MCU1 cars has its own processor.)

Also, AP1 or pre-AP cars have substantially different connections between the MCU and the rest of the car (different wiring harnesses, etc.). I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it's not straightforward. Also supporting a swap on older cars would create more permutations of hardware to (gasp) test, so I could see some software issues involved too (this as an engineer who used to be responsible for supporting hardware appliances with various configurations). I would love a faster MCU in my AP1 car, but I'm not holding my breath.

Bruce.

Agreed, hence I would settle for a MCU 1.5, exactly the same HW and hopefully same SW as MCU1, but just more RAM / Flash and faster CPU.

 

[Snowstorm]

Yes, more details on this

The Sketch Pad is one of the Easter eggs that is basically a basic paint app. You can activate it by triple tap the Tesla icon on the top center while driving or through the Easter egg tray invoked by dragging down the top edge of the about car window you being up after tapping the Tesla icon.

In V9, the map is almost always full screen in the background, and it takes up so much compute power that the browser won’t work. The exception is when the sketch pad is active. It takes over the full screen and disables the map, so if you activate the browser in the lower half after the sketch pad is active, it will actually work as no computer power is spent rendering the map.

 

[bmah]

Agreed, hence I would settle for a MCU 1.5, exactly the same HW and hopefully same SW as MCU1, but just more RAM / Flash and faster CPU.

That'd be great too, but I don't see that happening either. These aren't ordinary PCs that you can just upgrade the throwing new components into them...what you propose would still require a some hardware design work and a bunch of validation and testing. I don't see Tesla putting resources into this, unfortunately, both given the difficulty and the fact that there's not much precedent for doing this. I'd genuinely love to be proven wrong, however.

Bruce.

 

[KyleDay]

MCU 2.0 has an internal Tesla part designation as "transitional" (I've now seen this on Tesla's own internal documents as well as within firmware files).

The big question is "Transitional to what?". HW2.5 cars have been built with either MCU 1 or 2 depending upon build date, so it's not "transitional" in the sense that HW2.5 required MCU 2.0.

My guess is that "transitional" MCU 2.0 units are transitional until they can get a unified/universal MCU part developed that will fit into any generation S/X which will be compatible with new S/X as well as all previous generations as a retrofit.

This may tie into the recent mumbling that MCU replacement parts and screens are not being supplied by tesla for existing repair needs in favor of waiting until the redesigned parts are available later this summer. Perhaps Tesla is going to roll out new MCU units this year after all.

Or perhaps this is nothing and I'm reading the tea leaves all wrong.

 

[TaoJones]

It’s not real until you can get an SvC to produce a quote in writing for the retrofit.

And as of this past weekend, that’s still not possible.

So just to confirm, an MCU1 —> MCU2 retrofit gets me the dashcam functionality but I’m still SOL, even with prepaid FSD, insofar as stop sign reaction goes since I have an AP2 (not AP2.5) car?

 

[KyleDay]

It’s not real until you can get an SvC to produce a quote in writing for the retrofit.

And as of this past weekend, that’s still not possible.

So just to confirm, an MCU1 —> MCU2 retrofit gets me the dashcam functionality but I’m still SOL, even with prepaid FSD, insofar as stop sign reaction goes since I have an AP2 (not AP2.5) car?

Um no those are all wrong.

MCU is completely independent of dashcam. Dashcam is dependent on ape2.5, irrespective of MCU version. Also, stop sign recognition is stated by Elon (take that for what you will) as being dependent on APE 3.0 - of which both 2.0/2.5 cars are said to be able to retrofit if FSD is purchased.

Again, none of this matters until Tesla actually starts offering MCU and APE retrofits, but they are separate. APE is for Autopilot, Dashcam, and Sentry functionality ; MCU is just center display alone- nothing else (but some Atari games only work on MCU 2).

 

[MIT_S60]

What are the benefits of MCU2 vs 1?

You lose the AM radio (in the S, the X never had an AM radio).

 

[electronblue]

MCU2 is much faster in everything and it is starting to show also in availability of some software features, such as you get Pole Position Atari game MCU1 does not get. I would expect this gap to increase over time.

 

[Tes La Ferrari]

MCU2 is much faster in everything and it is starting to show also in availability of some software features, such as you get Pole Position Atari game MCU1 does not get. I would expect this gap to increase over time.

When was MCU2 released ? (What build dates of cars would have it ) ?

 

[electronblue]

When was MCU2 released ? (What build dates of cars would have it ) ?

For Model 3 from the start. For Model S/X was it around March 2018?