Tesla recalling 135,000 vehicles to fix touch screens

Tesla will recall thousands of its sedans and SUVs over an issue with touch screens in the vehicles that cause them to fail after a set amount of time, a federal regulator announced Tuesday.

A recall notice posted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) indicated that the company will recall “certain 2012-2018 Tesla Model S and 2016-2018 Model X vehicles” due to an issue with processors that wear out after a certain amount of use, causing the screen including the vehicle’s backup camera feature to go dark.

“When the 8GB eMMC NAND flash memory device for the center display reaches lifetime wear, the eMMC controller will no longer be able to maintain the integrity of the filesystem, causing a failure in some of the center display functions,” reads the recall notice.

An Associated Press report indicated that roughly 135,000 vehicles would be affected.

“During our review of the data, Tesla provided confirmation that all units will inevitably fail given the memory device’s finite storage capacity,” an NHSTA official said last month. 

A request for comment from Tesla’s press office was not immediately returned.

The Associated Press reported that the company disagreed with the NHTSA’s finding that the backup camera failure was a safety issue, and said in a statement that it had issued the recall “in the interest of bringing administrative closure to the investigation and to ensure the best ownership experience for our customers.”

Vehicles manufactured in 2018 or later are required to have backup cameras as part of a law passed under the Obama administration. Tesla had originally planned to address the issue with software updates, according to the AP, but relented after the NHTSA indicated that it planned to sue the company over the recall dispute.

The company previously issued a recall of roughly 53,000 vehicles in 2017 over a parking brake issue.