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Tesla has already extended the warranty on this part to 8 years / 100,000 miles. [1] Their software now detects the issue before it occurs and adds a notificat

by zaroth 6y ago

Tesla has already extended the warranty on this part to 8 years / 100,000 miles. [1] Their software now detects the issue before it occurs and adds a notification alerting the driver. [2] I assume the difference with a recall is there’s no limit to the age of the car, and it would have to be done proactively on all vehicles. Currently 15% of vehicles have had this issue according to Tesla. [1] - https://www.tesla.com/support/warranty-adjustment-program https://www.tesla.com/support/warranty-adjustment-program [2] - https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/attachments/96f386d3-2a95-496b-82c9-0df51470c44d-jpeg.608417/ https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/attachments/96f386d3-2a95-49...

matt-attack 6y ago
Neat that software can detect the failure. Anyone know how that works?
- Zhenya 6y ago
  Probably an access / write counter.
- dvdbloc 6y ago
  eMMC storage devices can provide a plethora of usage information to the eMMC controller such as read/write counters but also number of blocks of flash that have failed so far. After you hit a number of failed blocks the device could then send the notification to the user that failure is nearing. If you are curious this link expands a bit more on how this could work https://media-www.micron.com/-/media/client/global/documents/products/technical-note/sd-cards/tnsd02_enable_sd_health_monitor_system.pdf?rev=1fee627f3c974c139b3533bdd47a635f https://media-www.micron.com/-/media/client/global/documents...
gibolt 6y ago
There are a lot of owners who previously changed it themselves out of warranty. I assume they could get a refund now? One complication is that there were various reasons to upgrade, not just eMMC failure.
snoshy 6y ago
As someone who believes that Tesla will come to strongly dominate this industry, I'm happy that the regulators in charge have done their job, and worry that conceding to this kind of pressure would lead to lax controls on automotive product lifetimes. Sure, today, it's a generous 8 yr / 100k mile warranty voluntarily extended, but I can easily imagine a scenario where Tesla (or whoever else is large) has bean counters that figure out most of these parts will fail 2 years and a day from now, so throw 2 years as a cheap means to appease owners. In fact, many auto manufacturers today (and historically) have not covered technical defects in electronics as well as they should, in my opinion. I would argue for greater regulatory enforcement on this front. "Bumper-to-bumper" is not the same as "bumper-to-bumper-but-not-the-silicon-bits", and it can be a meaningful and large difference in the total cost of ownership of a vehicle that is increasingly focused on "the-silicon-bits". If this stays a purely proactive measure that adds to the Tesla experience, I'm all for it, but I really hope regulators continue to hold their ground without ceding to the industry pressure of "we'll self-regulate because we have the best data on individual component failures and can provide a better customer experience around it than recalls."
yudlejoza 6y ago
Proactively recall to replace with what? It's not like the regs and/or Tesla have fixed the discovered flaw in a new design, and will be replacing the old part with the newly designed part. In that case proactive recall would make sense. But that's not the case here. Here if you've only used 0.5 of 8Gb, and Tesla is required to make a recall, all Tesla is doing is replacing your old unit with the exact same model but now 8Gb free space instead of 7.5Gb free. Instead, if a new design is not developed, shouldn't it be treated like a recurring maintenance? like when the memory is 6 or 7Gb full, the user gets a warning to take it to the repair to have the unit replaced, or something. Also why isn't the memory emptied from time to time? old data should be of no use and should be backed up to Tesla cloud, or user's cloud storage outside the vehicle or something? In which case the whole exercise is moot.
- iancarroll 6y ago
  I think the article uses "capacity" a bit confusingly; the NAND chip is not at its storage limit, it is at its write cycle limit. Presumably there are NAND chips with much higher limits that they swapped it for, as this doesn't affect units after 2018 (according to the article).
- reitzensteinm 6y ago
  Surely Tesla has reduced the log write frequency in updates after this was discovered. My understanding is that the parts have decent endurance, it was just that a ton was being written there. If that's true, replacing the hardware is a long term fix. Edit: elsewhere in this thread points to 6000 cycle endurance, which means a best case of 42 TB lifetime writes, although write amplification will lower that. That's enough for 6gb of logs a day over a 20 year lifetime which seems plenty. Although that's also predicated on a controller that wear levels well.
  - StillBored 6y ago
    The 3k writes in the article sound like a single page lifecycle number, and the computation indicates it fails after that many vehicle starts. Meaning they are either rewriting the entire flash on every start (8G) or it simply doesn't have a FTL. Which means its not even to the level of needing to worry about write amplification. Pretty rookie mistake there.
octorian 6y ago
> Their software now detects the issue before it occurs and adds a notification alerting the driver. I've never seen this notification on my 2015 Model S, whose MCU (the center console display referred to here) has become increasingly unreliable over the past year. Its gotten so bad that there's almost a 50/50 chance of needing to reboot it every time I drive. (its actually even worse than that now, as the car now gets stuck installing a firmware update every night and needs a reboot to get that bit working again) I honestly can't tell if the issue is eMMC partial failure, corruption, or simply a lack of proper regression testing on Tesla's part. (After all, if all new cars use the new MCU2 then they probably don't care about my MCU1 car unless they have to.) That being said, I personally care a bit more about long term reliability and responsiveness than being annoying and making them pay. So the moment I qualified for an upgrade to their newer MCU, I just went ahead and scheduled that. Sure, it actually costs me money, but in exchange I get a faster UI, better software support, and hopefully fewer issues. (I plan to keep the car for a while still, and MCU quirks are really my only complaint.)
- capableweb 6y ago
  > Its gotten so bad that there's almost a 50/50 chance of needing to reboot it every time I drive Holy. Shit. If this is true (I no reason to doubt you, yet at least), the market cap of Tesla makes even less sense. Who in their right mind would invest in a car company that can't even build a car that work half of the time you're using it? Especially since all controls are depending on the console as well.
  - washadjeffmad 6y ago
    Honda's HondaLink panels in their Civics since 2013/14 can occasionally have poor or no responsiveness or display. The UI is also poorly designed enough that accomplishing anything with it is a distraction (eg- does not separate parked and in-motion UIs, allows navigating 4 menus deep for a feature before throwing up a verbose text warning about why interacting with an option the 5th deep menu would be dangerous). Honda's credibility and market didn't receive any scrutiny for it. Maybe touchpanels for any major control systems without tactile backups is a stupid idea?
FireBeyond 6y ago
A recall requires actively informing owners (whether they do anything about it or not is up to them). A warranty extension does not. 15% is a HUGE recall.

by zaroth 6y ago

matt-attack 6y ago

Neat that software can detect the failure. Anyone know how that works?

Zhenya 6y ago
Probably an access / write counter.
dvdbloc 6y ago
eMMC storage devices can provide a plethora of usage information to the eMMC controller such as read/write counters but also number of blocks of flash that have failed so far. After you hit a number of failed blocks the device could then send the notification to the user that failure is nearing. If you are curious this link expands a bit more on how this could work https://media-www.micron.com/-/media/client/global/documents/products/technical-note/sd-cards/tnsd02_enable_sd_health_monitor_system.pdf?rev=1fee627f3c974c139b3533bdd47a635f https://media-www.micron.com/-/media/client/global/documents...

gibolt 6y ago

There are a lot of owners who previously changed it themselves out of warranty. I assume they could get a refund now? One complication is that there were various reasons to upgrade, not just eMMC failure.

snoshy 6y ago

As someone who believes that Tesla will come to strongly dominate this industry, I'm happy that the regulators in charge have done their job, and worry that conceding to this kind of pressure would lead to lax controls on automotive product lifetimes. Sure, today, it's a generous 8 yr / 100k mile warranty voluntarily extended, but I can easily imagine a scenario where Tesla (or whoever else is large) has bean counters that figure out most of these parts will fail 2 years and a day from now, so throw 2 years as a cheap means to appease owners. In fact, many auto manufacturers today (and historically) have not covered technical defects in electronics as well as they should, in my opinion. I would argue for greater regulatory enforcement on this front. "Bumper-to-bumper" is not the same as "bumper-to-bumper-but-not-the-silicon-bits", and it can be a meaningful and large difference in the total cost of ownership of a vehicle that is increasingly focused on "the-silicon-bits". If this stays a purely proactive measure that adds to the Tesla experience, I'm all for it, but I really hope regulators continue to hold their ground without ceding to the industry pressure of "we'll self-regulate because we have the best data on individual component failures and can provide a better customer experience around it than recalls."

yudlejoza 6y ago

Proactively recall to replace with what? It's not like the regs and/or Tesla have fixed the discovered flaw in a new design, and will be replacing the old part with the newly designed part. In that case proactive recall would make sense. But that's not the case here. Here if you've only used 0.5 of 8Gb, and Tesla is required to make a recall, all Tesla is doing is replacing your old unit with the exact same model but now 8Gb free space instead of 7.5Gb free. Instead, if a new design is not developed, shouldn't it be treated like a recurring maintenance? like when the memory is 6 or 7Gb full, the user gets a warning to take it to the repair to have the unit replaced, or something. Also why isn't the memory emptied from time to time? old data should be of no use and should be backed up to Tesla cloud, or user's cloud storage outside the vehicle or something? In which case the whole exercise is moot.

iancarroll 6y ago
I think the article uses "capacity" a bit confusingly; the NAND chip is not at its storage limit, it is at its write cycle limit. Presumably there are NAND chips with much higher limits that they swapped it for, as this doesn't affect units after 2018 (according to the article).
reitzensteinm 6y ago
Surely Tesla has reduced the log write frequency in updates after this was discovered. My understanding is that the parts have decent endurance, it was just that a ton was being written there. If that's true, replacing the hardware is a long term fix. Edit: elsewhere in this thread points to 6000 cycle endurance, which means a best case of 42 TB lifetime writes, although write amplification will lower that. That's enough for 6gb of logs a day over a 20 year lifetime which seems plenty. Although that's also predicated on a controller that wear levels well.
- StillBored 6y ago
  The 3k writes in the article sound like a single page lifecycle number, and the computation indicates it fails after that many vehicle starts. Meaning they are either rewriting the entire flash on every start (8G) or it simply doesn't have a FTL. Which means its not even to the level of needing to worry about write amplification. Pretty rookie mistake there.

octorian 6y ago

> Their software now detects the issue before it occurs and adds a notification alerting the driver. I've never seen this notification on my 2015 Model S, whose MCU (the center console display referred to here) has become increasingly unreliable over the past year. Its gotten so bad that there's almost a 50/50 chance of needing to reboot it every time I drive. (its actually even worse than that now, as the car now gets stuck installing a firmware update every night and needs a reboot to get that bit working again) I honestly can't tell if the issue is eMMC partial failure, corruption, or simply a lack of proper regression testing on Tesla's part. (After all, if all new cars use the new MCU2 then they probably don't care about my MCU1 car unless they have to.) That being said, I personally care a bit more about long term reliability and responsiveness than being annoying and making them pay. So the moment I qualified for an upgrade to their newer MCU, I just went ahead and scheduled that. Sure, it actually costs me money, but in exchange I get a faster UI, better software support, and hopefully fewer issues. (I plan to keep the car for a while still, and MCU quirks are really my only complaint.)

capableweb 6y ago
> Its gotten so bad that there's almost a 50/50 chance of needing to reboot it every time I drive Holy. Shit. If this is true (I no reason to doubt you, yet at least), the market cap of Tesla makes even less sense. Who in their right mind would invest in a car company that can't even build a car that work half of the time you're using it? Especially since all controls are depending on the console as well.
- washadjeffmad 6y ago
  Honda's HondaLink panels in their Civics since 2013/14 can occasionally have poor or no responsiveness or display. The UI is also poorly designed enough that accomplishing anything with it is a distraction (eg- does not separate parked and in-motion UIs, allows navigating 4 menus deep for a feature before throwing up a verbose text warning about why interacting with an option the 5th deep menu would be dangerous). Honda's credibility and market didn't receive any scrutiny for it. Maybe touchpanels for any major control systems without tactile backups is a stupid idea?

FireBeyond 6y ago

A recall requires actively informing owners (whether they do anything about it or not is up to them). A warranty extension does not. 15% is a HUGE recall.