Tesla electric cars were among the first to receive the everyday definition of “gadgets on wheels,” since their functionality was highly dependent on the capabilities of on-board computers and the software installed on them. Cars of fresh batches, as Electrek notes, citing its own sources, began to suffer from serious breakdowns of on-board computers.
Image source: Tesla
As the source explains, Tesla electric cars of recent months of production, equipped with an on-board computer version AI4.1, often experience their failure due to a short circuit. What causes it has not yet been reliably established, but the suspect is the low-voltage battery of the electric vehicle, which leads to a short circuit during the calibration of one of the on-board cameras. The fault may occur on new electric vehicles with a range of several tens to several hundred miles.
Failure of the on-board computer deprives a Tesla electric car of not only such advanced functions as active driver assistance or “controlled autopilot” (FSD), but also quite banal functions such as GPS navigation and estimation of the power reserve on the remaining charge. For an electric vehicle, however, the latter is very important when operating in regions with a not very developed charging infrastructure.
A Tesla service bulletin regarding this malfunction has not yet been released, although the number of customer requests on this issue is growing, and branded services are already forced to sign up for people who want to replace the on-board computer under warranty for January 2025. At the same time, Tesla employees were instructed not to create panic among customers, convincing the latter that the car could still be driven in such a condition.
A separate nuance is Tesla’s willingness to declare this defect in a report to the NHTSA agency, which is responsible for road safety in the United States. A malfunction of the rear view camera, which is caused by the failure of the on-board computer, according to NHTSA requirements, is already sufficient grounds for declaring a recall campaign. Tesla, which is now desperately competing with BYD for the right to remain the largest manufacturer of electric vehicles, is not currently interested in publicizing such defects.