The US Office of Defects Investigation (ODI), a unit of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), requested Tesla electric vehicles manufacturer to recall about 158,000 Model S and Model X vehicles produced before early 2018 to fix safety-related defects of the media control unit (MCU), according to ODI director Stephen Ridella
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th January, 2021) The US Office of Defects Investigation (ODI), a unit of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), requested Tesla electric vehicles manufacturer to recall about 158,000 Model S and Model X vehicles produced before early 2018 to fix safety-related defects of the media control unit (MCU), according to ODI director Stephen Ridella.
"The tentatively-determined safety defect in the MY 2012-2018 Tesla Model S and MY 2016-2018 Model X is a clear, identified failure mode that leads to an unrecoverable status for the media control unit (MCU) and adversely affects vehicle safety functions. ODI requests that Tesla recall each of the subject vehicles," Ridella wrote in a letter addressed to Tesla on Wednesday.
The director stressed that the failure of the vehicles' media control unit (MCU) might disable safety-related functions, including a rearview camera and a driver assistance system.
"ODI has tentatively concluded that the failure of the media control unit (MCU) constitutes a defect related to motor vehicle safety," the letter said, adding that "failure of the MCU results in loss of the rearview/backup camera and ... has an adverse impact on the Autopilot advanced driver assistance system."
According to ODI, the failure of the MCU mounted in Tesla vehicles was caused by a short service life of the unit's flash memory device usage which is limited to five-six years.
"ODI learned that the expected usage life rating for the 8GB eMMC NAND flash memory device is approximately 3,000 "P/E" or Program-Erase cycles," the letter said, adding that "at a daily cycle usage rate of 1.4 per block, accumulation of 3,000 P/E cycles would take only 5-6 years."
ODI added that Tesla mounted the respective MCU on roughly 158,000 vehicles manufactured through early 2018.
Tesla was founded in 2003 by US entrepreneur Elon Musk and has since gone on to become the poster-child of electric cars, producing accessible and practical battery-powered vehicles. The company's innovations have forced car producers around the world to begin shifting towards sustainable transport. Tesla vehicles were involved in a number of incidents, including fires caused by their battery packs and crashes provoked by Tesla's advanced driver assistance system. In 2018, the company recalled 123,000 Model S vehicles due to corroding bolts of the steering system.
