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The Model S touchscreen failure : Tesla under investigation
After having received 11 complaints about the problem in the past 13 months, National Highway Transport Safety Administration (NHTSA) has initiated a touchscreen failed investigation into old Tesla Model S vehicles.
The problems with the NAND NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor 8 GB eMMC flash memory chip that Tesla used for Model S cars from 2012 to 2015.
As Motherboard reported in early October last, the chip was prone to wear out, which could lead to the "loss of auditional and visual features, such as infotainment, navigation or web browsing" as reported by NHTSA.
The agency also points out that this failure in the chip would prevent the camera view from being used.
The sampling area is what the NHTSA defines as a "preliminary evaluation," in which investigators attempt to determine the amount of times the issue has happened and whether the owners have been affected.
It notes that it covers approximately 63,000 cars, but it acknowledges that in 2012 to 2018 it used the same chip, which accounts for around 159,000 cars in 2016-2018 models of Model S and Model X. A request for comment was not replied to by Tesla.
Two other inquiries in Tesla are currently available to the Department. One, launched last October, concerns Tesla's over-the-air software update that aims to limit potential fire hazards in car battery packages. The other one, opened in January, deals with claims from "sudden unexpected acceleration" vehicles of Tesla.
With the design alternative, Model S, which has spread across the automotive industry over last decade, tesla pioneered the idea to bring large touchscreens into a car dashboard.
But this isn't the only problem Tesla has faced with its touchscreens, which have been sourced from computer suppliers for years and have not met the typical standards of automotive grade.
As Ed Niedermeyer writes in Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors, the screens in older Model S vehicles were prone to bubbling at the edges when exposed to high heat.
Tesla's solve in manufacture resulted in yellow banding following high heat exposure.
The problems only subsided until the company moved to a whole new touchscreen.
