Tesla’s Full Self-Driving computer failure is leaving customers in bad situations

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving computer failure leaves customers in bad situations without many important features and depletes battery packs faster for months.

Last month, Electrek released an exclusive report about Tesla having a major issue with a new version of its onboard “Full Self-Driving computer,” AI4.1, failing due to a short circuit, and Tesla must replace the computers.

We found examples of the issue arising as far back as July. The problem can start quickly, within a few miles on a brand-new car or after a few hundred to a few thousand miles.

When the computer fails, many vehicle features stop working, like active safety features, auto wipers, auto high beams, cameras, and even GPS, navigation, and range estimations.

Tesla’s fix was to replace the computer completely, but sources also mentioned a temporary software fix to enable some of the features in the meantime.

It’s hard to estimate precisely the affected population. At the time of the article, we had received dozens of customer complaints and had sources inside Tesla estimating that, based on service requests, thousands of new Tesla owners are experiencing this issue.

We reported that this should lead to a recall since features like backup cameras are now considered a safety feature and required on new vehicles by NHTSA, but Tesla hasn’t released a service bulletin nor has a notice been posted with NHTSA.

Electrek contacted NHTSA to ask if they were aware of this issue. We will update if we get an answer.

There are now dozens of customer complaints about this specific issue on NHTSA’s Tesla Model Y and Model 3 pages.

Since publishing our original report on this issue last month, dozens of other customers reached out about the problem. They are reporting long wait times to get a new computer as Tesla tells them that it needs more parts, presumably the new computers.

Some showed documents to Electrek that showed they didn’t have an appointment to replace their computers until into February. For some customers, that would mean more than two months with severely handicapped vehicles.

On top of the previously mentioned disabled features, customers have voiced other problems living with their brand-new vehicles without a working computer. The computer appears to get stuck in an “auto-update loop”, which drains the battery faster.

A customer with this issue estimated that his Model 3 is consuming about 5 kWh per day when parked, doing nothing with this computer issue.

Some owners expressed concerns about faster battery degradation and wear on other components because of this issue. It’s also a major issue for people who don’t have home charging yet, and their vehicles are stuck discharging faster with this issue.

Electrek has seen documents showing that Tesla acknowledges that the computer issue is an “internal short.”