The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced on Friday that they have finished looking into a problem with the rear-view cameras in nearly 160,000 Tesla Model X and Model S vehicles.
NHTSA said that Tesla’s recall of almost 135,000 vehicles in 2021 seems to fix the issue with the media control unit, which caused the problem with the rear-view cameras. They will keep checking to see if the recall is working well.
Tesla agreed to do the recall because NHTSA asked them to, after sending them a letter. Usually, car companies agree to fix things without being asked officially by the safety agency.
NHTSA said that having problems with the touchscreen could be dangerous. It could make the rearview camera, turn signal lights, and windshield defogging systems stop working, which could make it hard for the driver to see in bad weather.
They also said that the problems could affect the Autopilot system, which helps with driving, by making the alerts and signals not work properly.
Last week, NHTSA started another investigation into Tesla’s recall of 2 million vehicles in December to improve the safety of the Autopilot system.
NHTSA first started looking into complaints in June 2020 when people said that their touchscreen displays weren’t working because of problems with the media control unit (MCU).
They wanted Tesla to recall 158,000 vehicles, but some newer vehicles with better processors weren’t included in the recall.
NHTSA thinks that the media control unit doesn’t last long enough. They say that expecting it to work for only 5 or 6 years isn’t good enough when it’s such an important part of the safety systems in the car.
Tesla thinks that all the media control units will eventually stop working because they can only store so much data. In February, Tesla said they had fixed about 104,000 of the 135,000 cars they recalled.
Last month, the company also recalled 3,878 Cybertrucks because there was a problem with the accelerator pedal pad that could come loose and get stuck inside the car.
