Tesla’s Issue With Repeater Cameras Reminds Me of MCUs and Lemon Laundering

The first recollection comes from the fact that the internal service documents CNBC reviewed state that the repairs on the defective cameras must be done as goodwill. Tesla has the bad habit of labeling anything as goodwill because it means that it is not something covered under warranty nor a recall. Tesla would be fixing it just to play nice with its customers.

I’ve written about this practice when I worked for InsideEVs, and, apart from a lawyer that makes YouTube videos, all the others I spoke with told me that Tesla would probably do that to prevent NHTSA from learning about the defects. Without reporting them as warranty repairs, Tesla could also repurchase them without saying they are lemons. That means Tesla can resell them without a lemon title. The company has done so in the U.S. and Norway.

Tesla’s strategy of avoiding to name the faulty PCBs as warranty issues also invoked something it did with the MCUv1 infotainment computers in Model S and Model X units. Consumers complained that these computers failed after three to four years, and the diagnostic was always the same: the eMMC flashcard failed due to excessive overwriting.

NHTSA eventually demanded Tesla to replace these computers under warranty. To try to escape that obligation, Al Prescott, then Tesla’s vice president of legal affairs, argued that the issue was not a defect: the computer just wore out as “brakes, lights, tires.” We would not doubt if Tesla said the same about the repeater cameras and their defective PCBs. Why? Because it already had the nerve to do that once, and the similarities show that Tesla just has not given up some shady procedures even after they were publicly disclosed.

To make matters worse, Tesla replaced these computers and just threw them in garbage bins. Some of these computers got back to the market and were bought by the white hacker GreenTheOnly, who helped me write an article about the data leak this procedure caused.

Tesla has not addressed the issue and has not changed its strategy of just throwing these computers in the trash. If you ever had a computer replaced in your Tesla, your data could be in the hands of people with much worse intentions than just warning the public about the problem, as GreenTheOnly had.

Back to the repeater cameras, CNBC did not mention if the affected vehicles are already out of warranty. However, it reminded us that DriveTeslaCanada wrote about the issue on December 4, 2020. The Canadian website even recorded a video showing what the defect causes: a blinking or black screen related to the defective camera and PCB. The problem would affect 2021 Model 3 units, which indicates even recent vehicles can present the issue.

Apart from the internal service documents, CNBC also spoke to former or current Tesla employees about the defect. Asking not to disclose their names out of retaliation concerns, they said that the service documents provided by Tesla eventually result in voluntary recalls but that they usually just authorize goodwill repairs.

Tesla has not responded to CNBC about the issue. We got in touch with NHTSA to ask if the safety agency received any communication from Tesla about the defect. We also want to know if NHTSA plans to investigate the matter or is already doing that. The safety agency has not responded so far.

Tesla investors like to say that remembering these stories is spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) and that only short-sellers or people willing to see Tesla fail would attack “the mission.” Although they like to say it consists of saving the world, it is really about selling electric cars instead of combustion-engined vehicles, spending precious natural resources in the same way.

The truth is that those guys prefer to ignore that customers are having those issues with their cars and that Tesla is failing to address them as it should: admitting that these parts are defective and replacing them under warranty, with all legal safeguards that this involves.

Thanks to this story of replacing repeater cameras, I have the bad feeling that Tesla insists on doing some things in a way that protects only its own interests instead of those of its customers. While it does this, Tesla generates a negative string of news that reporters have an obligation to warn the public about. Some will choose to shoot the messenger. Most may take benefit and become aware that goodwill may not always be what it seems: it depends on who is claiming to use it and with which intentions.