If four-year-old Chevys, Fords or Toyotas were bricking – going inert, not moving – and needed thousands of dollars of repairs to get going moving again – the people who owned them would demand a recall and other people would never buy a Chevy or a Ford or a Toyota, for the obvious reasons.
The government might even get involved!
But when it comes to electric cars, there’s a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. No matter how outrageous the defect or inherent the flaw, EVs remain the object of doe-eyed reverence and limitless apologia. They can do no wrong. Or rather there is – apparently – no amount of wrong they can do that the people who own them aren’t willing to abide.
The latest being as above. Teslas less than four years old (which is almost all of them, as the company didn’t sell – offload – more than a handful of them until about four years ago) are going inert because of a burned-out chip, basically.
Amazon.com Gift Card i...
Buy New $10.00
(as of 08:25 UTC - Details)
But it’s a critical chip. One of many such that determine whether these 4,000-plus pound cell phones work – or don’t.
Something called the eMMC, which is soldered onto a motherboard called the MCU, or Media Control Unit (there are two iterations of the eMMC – MCUv1 and MCUv2, depending on your Tesla). The chip’s job is memory retention – “flash storage” – of data accumulated about various operating parameters. The memory is overwritten as it fills up, to make way for new data. Over time, the chip becomes Alzheimerian – it loses its capacity to remember.
And then the car forgets things – like how to recharge.
The telescreen display inside the cabin through which everything is displayed (and via which the driver can be monitored) goes dark and with it, everything else. The owner can no longer access the functions whose icons no longer appear.
There is nothing to tap or swipe.
Teslas – and a rapidly increasing number of new cars, including non-electric cars – use telescreens (LCD touchscreens) to both display information about the car’s workings and to work the car’s systems, including the stereo, AC and so on. When you lose the screen, you lose control over those functions.
TUPARKA 30 Pack Hallow...
Buy New $8.99
(as of 10:10 UTC - Details)
Not just one.
No screen, no anything.
So – effectively – no car
To get those functions back, you’ll have to replace the fritzed out telescreen/touchscreen – and/or whatever else is wrong with the car’s electronic guts.
The Teslas also won’t recharge when the screen goes dark – which is like having an IC car with a fuel door that won’t unlock.
You ain’t a’ goin’ nowhere, city boy.
