Tesla has updated its warranty for its already troublesome media unit and touchscreen with a ridiculously shorter limit of 2 years or 25,000 miles.
As previously reported, Tesla had a problem with the built-in media card (eMMC) memory in its original MCU (the touchscreen media head unit).
It is being overwritten to the point of failure and many early Tesla owners have to replace it.
If it failed during Tesla’s 4-year limited warranty, Tesla would replace it with a new or refurbished unit, which also had a 4-year warranty or 50,000-mile warranty.
This week, Tesla updated the warranty on replacement MCUs and cut the length of coverage in half, according to an update on its website:
“Touchscreen and Media Control Unit: 2 years or 25,000 miles, whichever comes first”
The updated warranty comes just a few weeks after it was announced that Tesla is being investigated by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for the MCU issue.
Earlier this year, Tesla also began offering MCU2 updates for $ 2,500. Based on the language on the Tesla website, it appears that this new MCU is also included in the new 2-year warranty.
The taking of Electrek
This is one of those situations where Tesla disappoints.
We all know that there is a serious problem with the original MCU. Tesla promoted an update that fixed the bug last year, but the issue is likely to still shorten the life of the original units before being repaired.
Of course, Tesla suffered from a lack of communication throughout the situation.
Now if you get a replacement for your faulty MCU it will only be under warranty for only 2 years or 25,000 miles. It doesn’t seem right to me as it had to be replaced due to delay defect and not actual normal wear.
Also, Tesla is updating the warranty just as it is starting to make updates from the FSD computer to MCU1 vehicles and those owners are reporting issues with the MCU after updating the autopilot computer.
This will probably push many of them to try to get a replacement MCU.
Moving to the pre-sale FSD with computer updates may seem smart at first, but now it seems like it’s working a bit and Tesla expects to be overwhelmed by MCU updates, leading to a change of warranty.
Hopefully, the NHTSA investigation can make sense of this whole mess.
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