A Single Component Can Brick Older Teslas • Hacker News Board

Re: A Single Component Can Brick Older Teslas

#31

Post by mannykannot » Tue, May 14, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

vajrabum wrote: post #9

wil421 wrote: post #2

Any other examples of the big 3 US, German, or Japanese car makers having a similar issue? Where a media center issue causes the car to not run and the manufacturer refuses to fix the issue or even provide a part for it?

The article is misleading. The manufacturer does fix this. They just don't fix the bad chip. The replace the card instead.

According to [1], Tesla will not replace the minimum removable unit, but only the entire assembly, at a cost of around $2.7k. And, as with other parts replacement issues at Tesla, it is apparently not a quick turnaround.

The article is wrong to say these cars are bricked, but it is not a small issue, either.

[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=o-7b1waoj9Q&t=525

Re: A Single Component Can Brick Older Teslas

#32

Post by EpicEng » Tue, May 14, 2019, 7:28 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #29

pfortuny wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right but at the same time one does not expect a component of the dashboard to actually brick a car. I guess.

“Bricked” is supposed to mean “permanently and unfixably ceasing to function”. That’s absolutely not what is happening here. The article is completely and inexcusably wrong on this point. The car won’t run when the eMMC chip fails, and Tesla solution is a new MCU board which costs $2,700 out of warranty. Not surprisingly Tesla is not desoldering and reworking just the eMMC chip. There are any number of components tha…

Yet those things are crucial to the fundamental operation of the vehicle. We're talking about logs no user cares about here. It's just sloppy and a silly failure mode.

Re: A Single Component Can Brick Older Teslas

#33

Post by nm2259 » Tue, May 14, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

pfortuny wrote: post #10

BluSyn wrote: post #7

This issue is best explained on Rich Rebuilds' recent video here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=o-7b1waoj9Q&t=525 This has been a known issue for some time, and it's amazing Tesla hasn't fixed it yet. As explained in the video, the issue is simply the base linux OS has full syslog's still enabled, which over time burn own the eMMC chip used for storage. Currently Tesla just replaces the entire media unit when this happ…

It is a bit baffling that a company which enables “autopilot” OTA does not do this as well...

If this anonymous coward's characterization of Tesla is true and accurate, it's not surprising https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/99sbwa/form...

Re: A Single Component Can Brick Older Teslas

#34

Post by wil421 » Tue, May 14, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

zrobotics wrote: post #22

wil421 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait. Do they have a fix but the fix is replacing the board and not the bad chip? Is Telsa not fixing things or did they just use something that had a short life span? Not sure why I read this article.

Tesla screwed up by using eMMC memory (flash memory with an integrated controller) and not disabling system logging. The additional writes cause the flash memory to wear rapidly, which should have been mitigated as this is not a new issue in embedded devices. As the chip is soldered and not socketed, the solution is to swap the entire (expensive) board, and Tesla won't do this for out-of-warranty vehicles and hasn't…

Perfect. Thank you.

Re: A Single Component Can Brick Older Teslas

#35

Post by CalChris » Tue, May 14, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

This affects pre-facelift MCU1 car, which is before about April 2016. So I suppose a solution now is to upgrade the MCU to MCU2. Elon says that will be possible.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1105549053696327680?s=12

Re: A Single Component Can Brick Older Teslas

#36

Post by zaroth » Tue, May 14, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

EpicEng wrote: post #32

zaroth wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Bricked” is supposed to mean “permanently and unfixably ceasing to function”. That’s absolutely not what is happening here. The article is completely and inexcusably wrong on this point. The car won’t run when the eMMC chip fails, and Tesla solution is a new MCU board which costs $2,700 out of warranty. Not surprisingly Tesla is not desoldering and reworking just the eMMC chip. There are any number of components tha…

Yet those things are crucial to the fundamental operation of the vehicle. We're talking about logs no user cares about here. It's just sloppy and a silly failure mode.

Anti-theft is not crucial to the operation of the vehicle, and that had certainly immobilized plenty of vehicles, sometimes in expensive to fix manors.

Now if the article was that Tesla Model S has a chip which wears out and the board holding the chip is expensive to replace, and maybe even getting into why don’t they push a software update to lower the writes to that chip — I would not disagree.

The article falsely claimed the cars are “bricked”. As it’s the main thrust of the article, it should be retracted.

> However, until the company starts stocking parts like the eMMC chip, as well as release detailed service manuals to the public, Tesla is going to be looking at a number of newish cars dead in a junkyard real soon.

They should stock a chip which is soldered to the board, and what, do reworks? That’s asinine.

Newish cars dead in a junkyard? Totally false. It’s an expensive repair for a problem that could have been avoided, and hopefully Tesla will remedy with a firmware update.

Re: A Single Component Can Brick Older Teslas

#37

Post by fucking_tragedy » Tue, May 14, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #25

nemosaltat wrote: post #18

Model 3 owner here. Having same issue as back in March. No AP, no FSD and most frustratingly, no cruise control. Multiple TS steps over phone with no resolution. The earliest appointment was months out so I drove into a service center. A frazzled, yet personable, tech assured me that the issue was NOT from the recent FW update but rather a hardware malfunction with the left repeater. I pressed for details- is it wiri…

This report is both impressive and frustrating. I’m sorry your AP is not functioning and their fix was not permanent, that must be incredibly frustrating as a huge benefit of the car is the AP system. At the same time, it is pretty amazing they are remotely logging into your car to review system logs and diagnose the issue, and then pushing firmware updates to try to remedy the problem. There may be no choice but to…

> At the same time, it is pretty amazing they are remotely logging into your car to review system logs and diagnose the issue, and then pushing firmware updates to try to remedy the problem.

It really isn't if it didn't fix the problem and they used it as an excuse to not follow up with their scheduled appointment.

This would be like if I was fixing a bug, SSH'd into a live instance, didn't fix anything, then filed the ticket as "fixed" and refused to follow up on it. That's not amazing, that's pretty sketchy.

Re: A Single Component Can Brick Older Teslas

#38

Post by gatherhunterer » Tue, May 14, 2019, 7:38 PM UTC

nemosaltat wrote: post #18

Model 3 owner here. Having same issue as back in March. No AP, no FSD and most frustratingly, no cruise control. Multiple TS steps over phone with no resolution. The earliest appointment was months out so I drove into a service center. A frazzled, yet personable, tech assured me that the issue was NOT from the recent FW update but rather a hardware malfunction with the left repeater. I pressed for details- is it wiri…

I think the basic pattern of how customer service is handled, along with Tesla's selling points, can explain this.

Call centers and customer service departments in general report statistics that are used to measure their performance. Individual employees are instructed to "resolve" tickets and to make sure that no single ticket take more than a certain amount of time to be resolved. This creates an incentive to look at the tickets in a first-in first-out order and find a way to close them. An explanation was selected from a list because that explanation has gone unchallenged when addressing similar tickets. The appointment was cancelled and the ticket was recorded as having been resolved by customer service and software. This is a win for Tesla's internal reporting on the number of tickets that require a technician to physically interact with the vehicle. They can brag about most issues being resolved by software because they're a cutting edge company and are above crude hardware fixes like those other boring car companies. If you show up in person for repairs that means, in their view, that customer service has failed.

In short, this isn't Tesla being exceptionally bad or exceptional at all. It is an example of Tesla doing the same old thing that all the other companies have been doing.

My worst car ownership experience was yelling at the people at JiffyLube for replacing filters that were in perfectly good condition and trying to charge me for it even though I only asked for an oil change (they then made a big show of shoving them back in as violently as possible). As awful as mechanics tend to be, a component being too easy to repair or replace by anyone who can read a manual is better than begging a single entity for repairs.

Re: A Single Component Can Brick Older Teslas

#39

Post by whamlastxmas » Tue, May 14, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

vajrabum wrote: post #13

As is so often the case with articles about Tesla the headline is completely misleading. No cars are getting bricked. Tesla fixes that problem by replacing the bad board but they won't replace the bad chip on the board and they won't sell the chip separately. Other manufacturers don't generally do that either.

And as always anyone defending them is flagged like you despite this being pretty clear

Re: A Single Component Can Brick Older Teslas

#40

Post by atonse » Tue, May 14, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #24

zrobotics wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla screwed up by using eMMC memory (flash memory with an integrated controller) and not disabling system logging. The additional writes cause the flash memory to wear rapidly, which should have been mitigated as this is not a new issue in embedded devices. As the chip is soldered and not socketed, the solution is to swap the entire (expensive) board, and Tesla won't do this for out-of-warranty vehicles and hasn't…

Tesla won’t do this for free for out-of-warranty vehicles. Replacement cost of the entire board is unfortunately high at around $2,700. [1] - https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/2700-to-fix-mcu-migh...

Ok but why not fix the engineering flaw so so it isn't a $2,700 fix? This seems like doing a software fix, where you add buffering to your logging writes, would go a long way to fixing this.