Tesla IS going to recall cars over dodgy memory chips — and throw in 64GB upgrades

Tesla’s ongoing defective screen recall saga has taken yet another turn.

According to an email sent to an owner of an affected Tesla vehicle, seen by Electrek, the EV maker is voluntarily recalling Model S and Model X vehicles with potentially defective infotainment systems and screens. I say voluntarily, but in reality it had no other option.

The email declares that Tesla is recalling Model S and Model X vehicles made before 2018 that use the 8GB eMMC memory chip. These chips are used by critical vehicle systems, and because of heavy use are prone to wearing out as the flash memory reaches its maximum number of read/write cycles.

[Read: How much does it cost to buy, own, and run an EV? It’s not as much as you think]

But there is good news!

For drivers of affected vehicles, Tesla is going to fix the affected component, and in addition it’s going to upgrade the eMMC system to a 64GB chip. That should be enough to future-proof the vehicle for a good while.

Previous estimates from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration suggest there are around 158,000 vehicles that could be affected by the recall, making it one of Tesla’s biggest and potentially most costly recalls ever.

Back in January, the NHTSA sent an official letter to Tesla telling them to recall the affected vehicles. This came after reports surfaced at the end of last year that infotainment systems in a number of old Tesla Model S’ and Model X’ were failing due to worn out memory chips.

It might sound like Tesla is doing the right thing and being the nice guy, but the reality is that if it didn’t follow the NHTSA’s advice it would have had to face a lengthy and complex legal battle, and probably would have lost anyway.

It’s good news for affected Tesla drivers, as it the company is actually taking the recommended action rather than leaving its customers in the lurch.