The worldwide Automotive Industry, namely the Tier 2, Tier 1 and OEMs, they have very high standards concerning reliability, safety and defects liability, either being safety or simply functionally relevant.
All HW and SW components are designed, manufactured, verified and validated (tested) to the commonly accepted Automotive industry standards to secure that all components and systems are safe and operate w/o defects over the
whole span of the cars life, i.e. at least 10 years, for some OEMs even up to 20 years.
The relevant documents for this philosophy (on components) can be found here:
http://www.aecouncil.com/AECDocuments.html'Wear and Tear parts' like the brake are obviously not included, but an eMMC, in interaction with its SW driver and the whole SW application, is of course not regarded as such a wear and tear component. See especially the AEC - Q100-005 - REV-D1
An official recall by the Traffic Safety Administrations (in U.S. or elsewhere) is done only on safety issues.
Anyhow, a long-established OEM will also recall cars with systematic functional defects, even after many years, as the Tier 1 will have to defray the cost of such a recall.
This statement, taken from CNBC:
Tesla vice president of legal Al Prescott:
“Tesla recognizes that even when a component is not designed to last the life of the vehicle, a defect may still be found if it wears prematurely. However, that is not the case here”
“NHTSA’s anachronistic regulations are unfit for situations where there is no safety defect, but nevertheless the manufacturer immediately can improve vehicle performance, including safety performance, without the cumbersome need for physical repair.”
unveils, that TESLA is not a regular Automotive grade car maker.
Their company philosophy seems to be to produce Consumer grade cars only, as Mr. Prescott evidently admits, that the used component(s) won't last the whole cars life.
I see this very critical, as such an attitude probably affects also the complete design and manufacturing processes.
This TESLA representative obviously also neglects all commonly agreed Automotive safety standards.
Technically speaking: Even optical and acoustic indicators like a simple LED, an LCD icon, or a buzzer / speaker is by convention regarded as safety relevant, as they reflect the status of other safety relevant components or functions. This circumstance is also clearly pointed out by the National Highway Traffic Administration.
This story for me is simply disillusioning, as TESLA is hyped in many publications as THE new innovative car maker, being superior to all the established OEMs.
Nope, they still have to learn about and improve in the real Automotive business.
Frank
Home
Help
Search
Login
Register
