Tesla legal claims MCU is a wearable part, like tires

[wooter]

Aside from English car companies, I don't think the general public expects the car's electronics to last a shorter time than the wear components like transmission, motors, battery, etc.

My eMMC made it to about 120000km, mileage where my previous Audi and BMW clunked out. One with a transmission problem and leaking oil and coolant, and the other with a faulty sensor cabling which caused the S54 engine to stall and flood the exhaust with unburned fuel, then setting it all on fire and burning out the inside.

I'm at 148000km now.

And if you look at anything else the public touches with similar flash memory, the expected lifespan is going to be like 20 years. The issue with Tesla was excessive writes on a small drive. If you want more life, you use a larger drive so it can wear level across more cells.

I just burned through my second SD card in less than a year in a Raspberry Pi, and I suspect the SD card in my dash cam is also dying.

 

[trm2]

Okay. “Undo the damage”. Sure.

I imagine I t is kind of like carbon credits.

 

[r1200gs4ok]

Yeah, for real.

“eMMCs indeed have finite lifespans and published expected write cycles / MTBF” is a SUPER different and less-informed statement than your “the issue with Tesla was excessive writes on a small drive.”

I’m glad we had you here to set us all straight by quoting a post from 5 pages ago to argue with but also apparently completely agree with by saying the same thing in different words.

not to argue the point but life cycle is a little bit different than MTBF or MTTR....

 

[whitex]

My eMMC made it to about 120000km, mileage where my previous Audi and BMW clunked out.

My eMMC crapped out before 40,000 miles. None of my other cars, even with much higher mileage, lost defrost, backup camera, directional signals, etc. Heck, none of my other cars which I kept to 40K miles ever became not drivable (assortment of vehicles from Honda, Toyota, Lexus, VW, Porsche).

I just burned through my second SD card in less than a year in a Raspberry Pi, and I suspect the SD card in my dash cam is also dying.

I'm not sure what your point here is. Are you saying your MCU uses an SD card you can just replace like on the Raspberry Pi??? Mine didn't, Tesla asked for 3 grand to replace the eMMC it when it died (they did not have the extended warranty or even just Tegra board replacements at the time).

 

[wooter]

My eMMC crapped out before 40,000 miles

Tesla asked for 3 grand to replace the eMMC it when it died

Basic Vehicle Limited Warranty
The Basic Vehicle Limited Warranty covers your vehicle for 4 years or 50,000 miles, whichever comes first.

Vehicle Warranty

So I presume you are talking about your 2015 P85D, which warranty expired in 2019, and the eMMC died in 2020, when 3rd party shops could help you and Tesla didn't charge 3 grand anymore to replace the complete MCU but only replace part of it? I have a quote for 1,5K back in June, and I went the 3rd party route for less than half a grand.

Indeed, changing an eMMC chip is not the same as replacing an SD card, but your Honda's, Toyota's, Lexus's, Vdubs and Porsches didn't have much defrosting heaters and backup camera computers writing logs.

I can't wait for you to complain that the camera of your smartphone isn't functioning anymore because of corrupt memory of your smartphone. It should be reasonable that the camera still works, no?

Nobody is saying that Tesla did a great job on this, but saying that 2012 technology solid state memory should have a lifetime expectancy of +20 years is not understanding the technology.

Also, try to read some of your CD-RW's you used 20 years ago. There is a reason why long term backups are still stored on tapes.

 

[whitex]

Vehicle Warranty

So I presume you are talking about your 2015 P85D, which warranty expired in 2019, and the eMMC died in 2020, when 3rd party shops could help you and Tesla didn't charge 3 grand anymore to replace the complete MCU but only replace part of it? I have a quote for 1,5K back in June, and I went the 3rd party route for less than half a grand.

Indeed, changing an eMMC chip is not the same as replacing an SD card, but your Honda's, Toyota's, Lexus's, Vdubs and Porsches didn't have much defrosting heaters and backup camera computers writing logs.

I can't wait for you to complain that the camera of your smartphone isn't functioning anymore because of corrupt memory of your smartphone. It should be reasonable that the camera still works, no?

Nobody is saying that Tesla did a great job on this, but saying that 2012 technology solid state memory should have a lifetime expectancy of +20 years is not understanding the technology.

Also, try to read some of your CD-RW's you used 20 years ago. There is a reason why long term backups are still stored on tapes.

Your assumptions are partially correct. Yes it was on my 2015 P85D. My eMMC started dying over the summer of 2019, literally a couple of months after the warranty expired (I got my 691hp P85D in May 2015) - I paid for an annual service just before the warranty expired and Tesla flagged no issues with MCU (or the rest of the car). Once the MCU started crapping out, Tesla wanted ~$3K out the door to replace it with a new MCU1 at that time. I procrastinated because I stopped accepting updates as I realized only one of the "emmc boot partitions" was having major issues, so every other update the car was working ok-ish. So I stopped accepting any updates. I didn't want to pay $3K but was lazy and procrastinated until April 2020 (the nag from Tesla telling me they will cut me off from connectivity in May as they moves away from OpenVPN helped motivate me). Around that time I heard of people reporting some refurbished replacements in the $2,000's, (so with tax mid $2K), but that was still more expensive than just doing it myself, so I didn't bother asking for another quote. After I was done replacing the emmc, I wrote up some lessons I learned here, if you want to confirm some of this story.

I still don't get your point. Things break, nothing lasts forever, sure. Phone lifecycle is 2-4 years, my milk expires in less than a month, so what? It doesn't mean a car which expires in a month is ok. Car's are expected to last much longer than phones, or milk. I would have had no complaints if Tesla simply communicated this as part of required maintenance - must replace MCU for $3K every 3 years or whatever. Ideally by the way, they would have made the emmc itself replaceable for $100, but I don't care about ideal, I would have been fine if they told me I must buy a brand new Tesla every 3 years because maintenance requires is (of course I would not have bought the car then, but it would have been fair disclosure). Just don't hide such costs in the car (and lie on the specs, but that's another conversation for another thread).

EDIT: Just for fun, I found an old CD-R I wrote in 1998, which survived my CDs and Tapes backups shredding I did a few years ago (I only found that CD-R couple of months ago when cleaning up, was already in the "to shred" pile). My current PC read it out without any issues (trip down memory lane, remember Warcraft II?). I never used CD-RW's much, so no chance of me finding one of those.

 

[David_Cary]

Question, do you think in 2015, when you bought your car, Tesla realized the EMMC issue we would have.
I guess my point is that full disclosure is pretty tough on newer technologies and pushing the envelope as Tesla has been doing.
I purchased in 2015 and you bet I was still worried about the problems we would discover (I had considered purchase since 2013).
Nobody should have bought a Tesla in 2015 thinking that Tesla had all the long term issues figured out. That would be silly.

Overall, I think we (2015 purchasers) have done better than expected. You got caught with a less than ideal failure time. I would be pissed too. I am not sure that I would buy another Tesla. But full disclosure in 2015 would have been really tough.

 

[trm2]

But full disclosure in 2015 would have been really tough.

Full disclosure, sure that would have been tough. But they now say the eMMC was only designed to last 5 or 6 years. It seems like they could have disclosed that or at least not made it such a pita to deal with repair.

 

[Chaserr]

Question, do you think in 2015, when you bought your car, Tesla realized the EMMC issue we would have.
I guess my point is that full disclosure is pretty tough on newer technologies and pushing the envelope as Tesla has been doing.
I purchased in 2015 and you bet I was still worried about the problems we would discover (I had considered purchase since 2013).
Nobody should have bought a Tesla in 2015 thinking that Tesla had all the long term issues figured out. That would be silly.

Overall, I think we (2015 purchasers) have done better than expected. You got caught with a less than ideal failure time. I would be pissed too. I am not sure that I would buy another Tesla. But full disclosure in 2015 would have been really tough.

people were talking about MCU failures already by then. I don't know if the public knew it was EMMC yet but Tesla probably did. They have been stringing thix along for a long time - I remember at one point Elon tweeting it was "all better" years ago when it was getting harder to ignore the problem.

 

[SO16]

people were talking about MCU failures already by then. I don't know if the public knew it was EMMC yet but Tesla probably did. They have been stringing thix along for a long time - I remember at one point Elon tweeting it was "all better" years ago when it was getting harder to ignore the problem.

They reduced the OS level logging to hopefully lengthen the lifespan of the EMMC. Evidently the damage was already done for some. My 4+ year old car with 56k miles (which would be MUCH HIGHER by now if not for covid) is still working fine. I will be upgrading to MCU2 this spring. Just don’t care to drive 5 hours to and from the service center in this weather. But my MCU1 is still running at an adequate state.

 

[AndrewTX]

Question, do you think in 2015, when you bought your car, Tesla realized the EMMC issue we would have.
I guess my point is that full disclosure is pretty tough on newer technologies and pushing the envelope as Tesla has been doing.
I purchased in 2015 and you bet I was still worried about the problems we would discover (I had considered purchase since 2013).
Nobody should have bought a Tesla in 2015 thinking that Tesla had all the long term issues figured out. That would be silly.

Overall, I think we (2015 purchasers) have done better than expected. You got caught with a less than ideal failure time. I would be pissed too. I am not sure that I would buy another Tesla. But full disclosure in 2015 would have been really tough.

Whether or not they knew that there would be an issue, they *should have known* there would inevitably be an issue. The wear characteristics of flash memory were not secret knowledge back in 2015.

 

[serendipitous]

Whether or not they knew that there would be an issue, they *should have known* there would inevitably be an issue. The wear characteristics of flash memory were not secret knowledge back in 2015.

So you as the buyer should also have known that it was a wear item.

This argument is tired now. There's a part on the car that wears out quicker than anyone would like. Tesla's response to it has been legal but not over-and-above what is expected of them. Some early adopters got the short end of the stick. Buy a Honda next time.

 

[SO16]

Yup. Should have known. And therefore they made changes in 2018 with a larger chip.

but now that there’s a recall, an upgrade option, a 3rd party replacement. This dead horse has been beaten so much, it’s now glue.

 

[AndrewTX]

So you as the buyer should also have known that it was a wear item.

This argument is tired now. There's a part on the car that wears out quicker than anyone would like. Tesla's response to it has been legal but not over-and-above what is expected of them. Some early adopters got the short end of the stick. Buy a Honda next time.

How exactly should I have known that? I did not know the size of the flash memory they used or that they were writing over the same sectors again and again, accelerating the failure.

 

[ks1972]

So you as the buyer should also have known that it was a wear item.

This argument is tired now. There's a part on the car that wears out quicker than anyone would like. Tesla's response to it has been legal but not over-and-above what is expected of them. Some early adopters got the short end of the stick. Buy a Honda next time.

How many buyers actually knew that Tesla was using an 8gb chip , was it actually published information back in 2014 ?

 

[trm2]

There's a part on the car that wears out quicker than anyone would like. Tesla's response to it has been legal but not over-and-above what is expected of them.

Their response was under and below what was required, that is why the NHTSA had them do the recall.

Buy a Honda next time.

Not a bad choice.

 

[serendipitous]

Their response was under and below what was required, that is why the NHTSA had them do the recall.

Incorrect - it was a voluntary recall.

 

[trm2]

Incorrect - it was a voluntary recall.

Do you actually think they would have recalled if it wasn’t for the NHTSA? NHTSA basically told them that they had two options.

1) recall the vehicles
2) find out how big the fine is

 

[David29]

Tesla will eventually be forced to improve their customer service once the legacy automakers join the game.

Or maybe not. Maybe at some point they will sell their most valuable assets (the drivetrain designs, battery factory, and supercharger networks) and fold. Sell the rights to service the fleet of cars on the road to some big car company, take the money and run. Musk seems set for a big chunk of Tesla anyway, so he'd come out ahead even if he loses a few billion in the deal.

 

[David_Cary]

I think the "voluntary" part of any recall is just being nice. Tesla has known about the issue for several years (at least) and they did nothing - well they did make progress. But there was zero progress before the NHTSA complaint.

I still think we should move on to chargegate which is a much much more serious issue. With no remedy other than battery replacement and we don't have a real price on that. And then there is no guarantee that would fix things. I guess the one argument there is that it seems to be a surprise to Tesla that they had to do it. Less foreseeable than an 8gb eMMC chip.