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Tesla infotainment system upgradeable from MCU1 to MCU2

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On the topic of radar, I remember the catchy claim that a Tesla will bounce a radar under the car in front of you to see two cars ahead. I had assumed that none of that processing happens on the MCU1 and that HW3 and HW4 would be just as capable of providing such a benefit, except that radar got removed. I thought maybe the radar info resides on the CANBus and talks to HW2+ directly.

But then I checked the dates. The electrek article is a month before AP2.0 HW2. Did this bouncing radar under the car exist on MobileEye as well? Or was Musk just talking about future features?

It does exist on MobileEye (AP1). My car can see the one in front of the one one front of me (2 cars ahead). If there is a big truck in front of you and you cant see past it, I have seen the screen show the car in front of the big truck on multiple occasions. I think this benefit being lost is very small in reducing the complexity by only having a vision based system and not relying on 2 inputs of data sources.
 
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I have a late 2016 90D AWD with FSD and HW3 computer upgrade. I have not received an upgrade since 2020.48. I this because I am still on MCU1? My MCU has occasionally blanked out but not lately. My understanding is that it is just a matter of time until it does. the band aid software patch seems to be working for now but I remember reading that the MCU upgrade would be free with failure. Any insight would be appreciated.
 
the band aid software patch seems to be working for now but I remember reading that the MCU upgrade would be free with failure.
Nope, no free upgrade. There is a recall where they will replace the daughtercard that has a 8GB eMMC chip on it with one that has a 64GB eMMC chip. But you will still have a MCU1. (And they are only ~10% of the way through vehicles subject to the recall.)
 
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I have a late 2016 90D AWD with FSD and HW3 computer upgrade. I have not received an upgrade since 2020.48. I this because I am still on MCU1? My MCU has occasionally blanked out but not lately. My understanding is that it is just a matter of time until it does. the band aid software patch seems to be working for now but I remember reading that the MCU upgrade would be free with failure. Any insight would be appreciated.
  • Yes, MCU1 computers appear to be "stuck" on 2020.48 by looking at trends on teslafi firmware tracker.
  • No, you wont get an upgrade "Free with failure" What you will get is a new eMMC memory chip which will not improve performance or help with getting additional updates. You will still have MCU1. It will help with freezes and reboots, but no real performance upgrade or features (Netflix, games, etc)
  • I would strongly suggest getting the Infotainment Upgrade . If you already have HW3, then it is only $1500 to upgrade. You would get a new instrument cluster (behind the steering wheel) and main screen.
Edit: Here are my impressions when I got the $1500 Infotainment Upgrade installed in April: Tesla infotainment system upgradeable from MCU1 to MCU2
 
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Tha
  • Yes, MCU1 computers appear to be "stuck" on 2020.48 by looking at trends on teslafi firmware tracker.
  • No, you wont get an upgrade "Free with failure" What you will get is a new eMMC memory chip which will not improve performance or help with getting additional updates. You will still have MCU1. It will help with freezes and reboots, but no real performance upgrade or features (Netflix, games, etc)
  • I would strongly suggest getting the Infotainment Upgrade . If you already have HW3, then it is only $1500 to upgrade. You would get a new instrument cluster (behind the steering wheel) and main screen.
Edit: Here are my impressions when I got the $1500 Infotainment Upgrade installed in April: Tesla infotainment system upgradeable from MCU1 to MCU2
Thanks, very helpful
 
Isn't FSD going to need some MCU powered support to operate safely?

Not as far as we know. Which is why you can reboot it while driving on AP.

Only if you aren't changing roads at all. The GPS receiver lives in the MCU. During an MCU reboot, the car can't do anything beyond basic lane keeping. NoAP goes away. Also, the map data lives in the MCU, so the AP computer has no idea whether to take an exit or not when the MCU isn't responding.
 
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Only if you aren't changing roads at all. The GPS receiver lives in the MCU.
Actually the APE, the AP computer, has it's own GPS receiver. (I think it has it's own GPS antenna too.)

During an MCU reboot, the car can't do anything beyond basic lane keeping. NoAP goes away. Also, the map data lives in the MCU, so the AP computer has no idea whether to take an exit or not when the MCU isn't responding.
I wonder if this is still true with the FSD beta. There is no reason the route can't be cached in the APE, or even calculated by itself. (We see plenty of times in the FSD beta where the MCU displays that the car should turn right, but FSD changes to the left turn lane and is going to turn left until the driver intervenes.)
 
Actually the APE, the AP computer, has it's own GPS receiver. (I think it has it's own GPS antenna too.)
I stand corrected.


I wonder if this is still true with the FSD beta. There is no reason the route can't be cached in the APE, or even calculated by itself. (We see plenty of times in the FSD beta where the MCU displays that the car should turn right, but FSD changes to the left turn lane and is going to turn left until the driver intervenes.)
Maybe? I don't know how much map data the FSD computer keeps on hand. The farther out you have to reroute around a problem, the more likely it is that it will have to go out to the MCU, and likely to a server backend. :)
 
I stand corrected.



Maybe? I don't know how much map data the FSD computer keeps on hand. The farther out you have to reroute around a problem, the more likely it is that it will have to go out to the MCU, and likely to a server backend. :)
That is one of the problems of making changes rapidly or on the fly - now you have a boatload of product out there with different configurations. The easiest way to handle that is to just ignore any problems with odd configurations that are having "minor" issues as long as it doesn't affect a lot of people. I think you can do that when your annual sales are in the 100s of thousands. When you get to the million units per year, you the numbers can become hard to handle.
 
Yuk! that is nearly a deal breaker.
I wouldn’t think that way. It has changed my car entirely for the better otherwise. It is much faster. The snappier interface is worth every penny, the added benefit of a cell connection that works, better games and entertainment is the icing on the cake.

open up an old iPhone from 2014. Use it. Daily. Wait for things to load. Wait for the phone icon to respond. Wait for the text to pop up. Wait for the browser to looooooaaa..crash. Reboot. Browser loads up.
For MCU 2, you can bring up a restaurants menu while waiting in a drive thru.

(that would be a neat geofencing feature for a phone or your tesla BTW- whereas it sees you are in a Wendy’s drivethru and asks if you’d want to see the menu).
 
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Any issues with the daytime camera brightness? Or those with camera brightness issues, were they resolved?
The problem was with nighttime brightness when it was very dark. This has been resolved with 2021.4+ firmware. I would say it is 95% as good as it was before, a tiny bit darker but not noticeable if I wasn't specifically looking for it. My full impressions here: Tesla infotainment system upgradeable from MCU1 to MCU2
 
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I wouldn’t think that way. It has changed my car entirely for the better otherwise. It is much faster. The snappier interface is worth every penny, the added benefit of a cell connection that works, better games and entertainment is the icing on the cake.
Just a reminder, the original MCU used to run the early software just fine, throw in some bloat, having the sat nav running in the background 100% of the time got us to where it is today (and probably more background tasks I've forgotten about).
 
Isn't this fully handled in the AP HW? I mean, you have to have AP2.5 or AP3 to do dashcam (not AP2), but either MCU1 or 2 works.
No, it isn't fully handled by the AP HW. The USB thumb drive is hooked to the MCU, so it has to handle streaming/storing the video to the thumb drive. (And keeping track of the files, deleting old files, and archiving/moving event videos.)
 
Dashcam. That's what brought it to its knees. But yeah, map imagery probably didn't help.
I don't use the dashcam function (in fact I don't think I can on my hardware), I try to have as little of the Sat Nav map showing as possible, it still runs like stuttering crud. This is the same company that somehow broke a simple function like displaying USB album art a year ago and haven't fixed it.

It was exposed a few years back that Tesla had some poorly written code that was not only killing the flash memory, it was hogging the CPU terribly, I'm betting there is still lots of those things going on but the new more powerful hardware makes it seem like there is nothing wrong.
 
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