with October being such a slow news month I thought why not dip into the
viewer questions banging so we have a question from Keith he said he says am i
slurring my words I should have had more coffee this morning Christopher you put
a lot of miles on your 2013 Model S and just about everything was fixed at some
point quite true did you ever have an MCU failure there seems to be a lot of
confusion about whether time on or age or temperature or something else
determines the failure rate of your MCU memory curious to hear your experiences
Keith well Keith and everybody else out there fear Oh
instead of writing one email at I and respond to everybody at the same time so
here we go number one yes just about everything on my old car was repaired at
some point it was kind of the running joke that the only thing that didn't
outright fail were my seats and my MCU on my old car that being said my MCU
actually was repaired once ish basically what happened on mine was and this was
on my old 2013 doesn't matter where I touch to happen just one day driving
didn't matter where I touch it wouldn't register where I touched it would have
it all over now given that these are capacitive touchscreens ESD electric
electric static discharge you know static anywhere poor grounding can cause
that and very much so that's what fixed it was Tesla put on a new grounding
strap on my MCU and that took care of the of the problem now in terms of in
general what's causing the MCU failures what my observations have been so far is
it's happening in warmer climates and as we all know electronics really don't
like high temperatures that being said the temperature inside a
car can get very very hot now what are some things that Tesla's done to
mitigate these temperatures and what are some things that you can do to help
mitigate the temperatures well number one and this has been on the cars for a
very long time even before they announced cabin
overheat protection if the cabin of the car gets too hot it will actually turn
on the vent and draw in outside air in to help push out the hot air that's the
hotter air that's inside the car this is probably one of the best defenses
against it that they have that that's just completely automatic next the MCU
actually does have cooling fans on it if you've ever entered a really hot
model S or X and you heard just a little coming from somewhere under your dash
all on its own and I'm not talking about the sound from the climate control
system that is the actually it's more like a kinda noise real high pitch
because it's their small fan so they gotta go up high rpm that's the cooling
fan trying to circulate some fresh air in through the center console to cool it
down now another thing that you can do if you're in a very hot climate if it's
if it's in the cards for you that's not for everybody is cabin overheat
protection mode the problem with cabin overheat protection and that uses the
air conditioner of the car to actually cool the car down to a safer temperature
is it draws a lot of power from your main pack so you could be out you know
car could be parked out in the Sun all day while you're working and you come
back and you lost 30% of your charge because it's all been blown through your
air conditioner and you might not have enough to get home that's why I don't
use cabin overheat protection in the summer here although it might be for you
if especially if you can plug in at work then it's just gonna draw
your power for that but when it comes down to it the best thing you can do to
assist in keeping the not just the center console cool
but your entire car cooler and also produces fade UV damage to any of your
interior of your vehicle the leather the vinyl is to get a window sunscreen
they're cheap if you're a cheap person like me you can even go to the Dollar
Tree and get one Walmart's got very nice collapsible ones
own that you just twist and they go down flat and I just shove it between the
seat and the armrest here and that will reflect out a lot of that sunlight
coming in that then that big windshield that we have on on the mollusc and I
guess the Model X 2 is even bigger on the Model X and trust me if you got
leather seats especially black leather seats you will thank me I have leather
black vinyl seats which aren't quite as bad as leather but they sure get hot
another thing that you can do to help mitigate the heat inside of the car is
get window tint of course follow your state's laws and if you don't follow
your state's laws maybe consider getting a doctor's prescription some states have
have little loopholes where if you get a eye doctors prescription for window tint
due to a light sensitivity you will be able to go down to a darker level I
don't quite have that I my eye doctor won't give it to me and though I do have
a light sensitivity that all aside I have 15% on my front windows 10% on my
back windows and 6% on my truck window and holy crap I went through last summer
without the tint I got it towards the end of the summer as I got a excellent
deal in tint I had that about 120 to do everything but my windshield and that
quite as good as the guys that charged over 500 but
it's pretty damn good I'd say and this year was a hotter drier summer and just
getting in and out of my car considerably cooler inside I am
considering getting a very mild tint on my windshield
and even a very mild mild tint can block a lot of UV and a lot of infrared
radiation it's the infrared radiation that's
really warm in your car so even if I get something like a 90% tint on the front
windshield or a 85 it's really not gonna affect the visibility out the windshield
at all but it is going to significantly drop
the temperatures so I am considering and weighing my options I'm doing that I can
cost about 80 bucks to get my front windshield done by the same guys that
did the rest of the car so that's what you can do cold really isn't going to
cause a failure of your MCU or computer systems in the car there they are built
to handle that cold believe it or not these are very robust automotive grade
systems and it takes a lot to kill them but it's really the heat the cold can
make the touchscreen and the actual LCD panels sluggish I have seen it and
experienced it when we had negative 32 degrees Fahrenheit one night where the
center screen would not turn on the electronics everything was active I mean
I could even adjust the temperatures and everything by the physical controls and
it actually did register touches on the screen like I you know where the climate
control and off spot is you touch that even though you can't see anything on
the screen I touch that and it did respond but it was just so cold the
actual screen did not turn on after about three minutes with the heat on in
the car then it came on it brought off the temperature enough so while the cold
isn't really gonna cause a failure it can cause delayed
displays now cold plus high moisture that's when you get condensing moisture
odd things and Tesla's are pretty bad when it comes to keeping the interior
moisture free even if you select outside air coming in
it's like these computers they they have a program where they just don't want you
again outside air in these damn cars unless you got the defroster zon but
it's not so much pronounced on the inside interior as it except for the
windows so it's really not too much of an issue and that's pretty much it I
haven't had a outright failure of a screen and I doubt unless there's actual
manufacturing defect in the screens of course like everything it keeps getting
improved upon and approved and approved so it is becoming less of an issue now
some of the early ones did have defects in them but if you if you think back
monoliths came out in the end of 2012 so 20 13 14 15 16 17 the very first model
us is our 5 years old already can you believe it five years so if it is gonna
be an age-related thing we'll be seen that more so now but pretty much
everybody I know that has an older model s signature founders Edition early
production they're really not having any MCU issues another thing that can fail
on the MCU due to heat and it's it's it's rare but it does happen is it's
called the bubbling and it looks like there's little water droplets or air but
air bubbles between the layers of the center screen and that can stem from
both heat and/or impact so if it gets a too many hard impacts and it should in
terms of impacts they'll take a lot but in terms of heat more likely to happen
you'll get these little bubbles on all over the screen wall it looks bad it
will still work but if your car's under warranty they will replace your screen
for that and that covers it thanks Keith for the question and on to the next one
any questions please post them in the description box below don't forget to
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