IEVS: UPDATE: Tesla Cars Have A Memory Problem That May Cost You A Lot To Repair

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I expect that Tesla-oriented aftermarket shops will start offering to just replace the flash memory chip for half the $1800 price or less. The chip itself is probably worth about $50.
 
LeftieBiker said:
I expect that Tesla-oriented aftermarket shops will start offering to just replace the flash memory chip for half the $1800 price or less. The chip itself is probably worth about $50.
The chip is not even worse a few dollars currently. It just shows fundamental stupidity of designers not making it replaceable flash card. You can get 2TB high speed multi-stream flash microSD for $300 today. I doubt there will be many takers in US though, folks just not going to take a risk.
 
Leaf15 said:
LeftieBiker said:
I expect that Tesla-oriented aftermarket shops will start offering to just replace the flash memory chip for half the $1800 price or less. The chip itself is probably worth about $50.
The chip is not even worse a few dollars currently. It just shows fundamental stupidity of designers not making it replaceable flash card. You can get 2TB high speed multi-stream flash microSD for $300 today. I doubt there will be many takers in US though, folks just not going to take a risk.


I wasn't clear. I meant the better chip they are now using, not the Radio Shack OEM version.
 
GRA said:

Tesla should be fixing these failures for free, warranty or not. They should not expect their customers to pay for such a glaring design flaw. Turn off the verbose logging and put a function in the service menu to toggle it, or if it's essential then write to a non-degradeable media that is separate from the firmware.
 
Good summary in the IEVs article. It's interesting the press just picked up on this now. Worn out eMMC from the excessive logging to flash has been known on TMC for awhile.

This guy posted the supposed symptoms, as well: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/widespread-bricked-cars-after-4-years.170317/#post-4116332.
Leaf15 said:
The chip is not even worse a few dollars currently. It just shows fundamental stupidity of designers not making it replaceable flash card.
Agreed along w/nobody in charge caring about the excessive needless writing to flash.
 
LeftieBiker said:
This is why SSD drives have yet to replace traditional hard disk drives in most computers: they trade speed for a relatively short "write-span."
They're not that short. Good SSDs have many dies and the writes can be spread out across them. Also, if you don't completely fill the drive and leave some room as buffer, that can help.

The Intel X25-M G2 160 gig SSD (as my boot and programs drive) I got in mid-2010 and that was on my main PC, an old Intel i7-860 based PC still works fine. It's not close to worn out. I just checked and Intel's tool said only a bit over 30 TB has been written to it. Media wearout indicator SMART stat is at 92. Sector re-allocated count is at 9. This has grown a bit over the years. Their tool has a graph "estimated life remaining". I'd guesstimate it's somewhere past 90%.

The above drive is MLC. https://www.anandtech.com/show/2808/2 has some pics inside.

I've switched over to a newer PC I built in mid-2018 w/a different SSD (Samsung 960 Evo 500 GIG). 8.9 TB has been written to it so far. Per https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/960evo/, they warrant it for 3 years or 200 TBW. Per https://www.anandtech.com/show/10833/the-samsung-960-evo-1tb-review, it's TLC. This PC will likely be retired before the drive hits 200 TB of writes.

Some folks have done insane torture tests on SSD to see when they'd die. Quality ones can last quite awhile.
https://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead/ - last 2 drives died after 2.5 PB of writes
https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/endurance-test-of-samsung-850-pro-comes-to-an-end-after-9100tb-of-writes.html - best one died at 9100 TB of writes (9.1 PB)

That said, TLC and QLC drives have less endurance than MLC and SLC. SLC is too expensive for consumer applications. See example ratings for these QLCs guys: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13078/the-intel-ssd-660p-ssd-review-qlc-nand-arrives. https://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/storage-hardware/slc-vs-mlc-vs-tlc-nand-flash.html has a table of SLC to TLC.

Some machines cannot be had with hard drives any longer. Apple no longer sells a single laptop with a hard drive. That ended at least a few years ago.
 
Most laptops, of course, have shorter lives than expensive desktops. I'm not arguing with you, though. I guess that this is another example of the world moving on while I wasn't looking.
 
LeftieBiker said:
I expect that Tesla-oriented aftermarket shops will start offering to just replace the flash memory chip for half the $1800 price or less. The chip itself is probably worth about $50.
The shop near me (Electrified Garage) roots the car and lowers the logging level to reduce the number of writes. They also replace the part for much less than that.
 
jlv said:
LeftieBiker said:
I expect that Tesla-oriented aftermarket shops will start offering to just replace the flash memory chip for half the $1800 price or less. The chip itself is probably worth about $50.
The shop near me (Electrified Garage) roots the car and lowers the logging level to reduce the number of writes. They also replace the part for much less than that.
They replace it, but with used one from salvaged one, so the issue would come back.
 
LeftieBiker said:
I expect that Tesla-oriented aftermarket shops will start offering to just replace the flash memory chip for half the $1800 price or less. The chip itself is probably worth about $50.

16 GB? Maybe $5. Probably less. The chip isn't the problem. Its the fact its soldered to the board.
 
Leaf15 said:
They replace it, but with used one from salvaged one, so the issue would come back.
When I spoke to Chris (the owner there), he told me they turn the Linux logging off, which avoids the problem.
 
cwerdna said:
I've switched over to a newer PC I built in mid-2018 w/a different SSD (Samsung 960 Evo 500 GIG). 8.9 TB has been written to it so far. Per https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/960evo/, they warrant it for 3 years or 200 TBW. Per https://www.anandtech.com/show/10833/the-samsung-960-evo-1tb-review, it's TLC. This PC will likely be retired before the drive hits 200 TB of writes.

I've been sticking 500GB 860 EVO V-NANDs into our laptops for a while now, and everyone loves the performance upgrade over mechanical drives, especially when I also take them from 8GB to 16GB DIMM memory and configure Windows to use a user defined (large) amount of VM instead of automatically adjusted. Most people say it's like they got a new machine!

Warranty on the 500GB 860 EVO V-NAND is 5 years or 300TBW. IMHO, they can't be beat for just $80 with tax.

We predominantly use 2016-2017 model Dell Latitude E5470s for field guys and lower-level office people, on account of almost every desk having a legacy docking station that it would be too costly to replace. And with the E5470 being the last laptop Dell made with a compatible connector, keeping these babies humming and having people be happy with continuing to use them is a real high priority for me!
 
“The main issue is that this excessive log file writing causes eMMC flash wear. Flash memory is generally only rated for some tens of thousands of write cycles. What happens is that the flash memory starts to fail when writings can no longer be completed. When one block fails, parts of the firmware may also become unreadable, leading to poor operation or failure of the MCU completely.”

https://insideevs.com/news/376037/tesla-mcu-emmc-memory-issue/

Some have inferred that Tesla systems designs are leading edge. Really?

Why would a systems designer utilize the same non-volatile memory (flash) chip for both critical system settings, i.e. key firmware of
operational parameters, and basic logging functions requiring very frequent memory writes? The MCU system should have had two separate
flash memories. Surely the Tesla systems designers are aware of flash memory technical limitations, right? The other approach would
have been to write logging data to RAM and then write that data eventually to flash memory based on a much lower write frequency.
 
And, to add some more data points re: SSDs, I've got Samsung 830 SATA SSDs in 2 laptops (not used much, will have to check the dates, but they were installed sometime before 2013) + 1 more in my dad's main machine (i5-2500 I put together for him in 2012). The all still work fine and he still uses that PC actively.
 
I have an old 80 gig SSD sitting in a box that I never used - I'll bet it's in fine shape. ;) Maybe I'll put it in an enclosure and use it with my antenna box so I can "TiVo" live TV...see how long it lasts.
 
lorenfb said:
Why would a systems designer utilize the same non-volatile memory (flash) chip for both critical system settings, i.e. key firmware of
operational parameters, and basic logging functions requiring very frequent memory writes? The MCU system should have had two separate
flash memories.
.
Surprise !
 
Remember that these are early cars with different technology and software than what is currently being used... Bleeding edge and all that.

lorenfb said:
Why would a systems designer utilize the same non-volatile memory (flash) chip for both critical system settings
 
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