In one of its largest-ever safety moves, Tesla is recalling nearly 135,000 Model S and Model X cars because problems with their touchscreen displays may cause malfunctions in the rear-view and backup cameras and windshield defogging systems.
The voluntary recall comes after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said last month that a chip storage capacity problem could cause the touch-screen issues and posed a safety risk. The recall effects certain 2012-2018 Tesla Model S and 2016-2018 Model X vehicles with a center display equipped with a NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor, according to the NHTSA notice.
In a letter to federal regulators, Tesla said that it disagreed that a safety recall was necessary because components like the chip in question could not be expected to always last the useful lifetime of the car.