with October being such a slow news month I thought why not dip into the
viewer questions Bay so we have a question from Keith he say it 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 Michael s in it 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
in terms the failure rate of your MCU memory curious to hear your experiences
Keith well Keith and everybody else out there fear Oh
so writing one email at a time respond to everybody at the same time so here we
go number one yes just about everything in 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 I am Cu actually was
repaired once ish basically what happened on mine was and this was on my
old 2013 didn't matter where I touched it happened just one day you driving the
matter where I touch it what 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 rounding strap on
my MCU and that took care of the of the problem now
it turns up 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 a
hotter air that's inside the car this is probably one of the best defenses
against a vent that 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 that kinda noise real high pitch
because it's just a 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 call 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
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 cab and 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 short 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 1 zone 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 Model S and I guess the Model X to an 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 to do 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 even though I do have a light sensitivity that all side 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 tint they
got it towards the end of the summer as I got a excellent deal on 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 going to affect the visibility out the
windshield at all but it is going to significantly drop the temperatures so I
am considering weighing my options of doing that I can cost about 80 bucks to
get my front windshield done by the same guys that did the brush affair so that's
what you can do cold really isn't going to cause a failure of your MCA or
computer systems in the car they are built to the 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 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 didn't 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 didn't 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 out 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 on 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 they have a program where they just don't
want you to get outside air in these damn cars unless you got the defroster
zhan but it's not so much pronounced on the inside interior is 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 think back the
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 seeing 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 it
should in terms of impacts it'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 Like and subscribe and I'm gonna try and do more of these question
and answer sessions
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