Questions about MCU

I often get questions from customers wanting to upgrade their Tesla Model S and X to MCU2 for faster navigation, reduce start up times, eliminate random rebooting, and just upgrade from a laggy experience. Well……Tesla does not allow any Third Party Shop to upgrade your car to MCU2. I was recently offered a free flight and stay in Curaçao to fix a customer car who does not have a Tesla Service Center on the island, and as much as I would of loved that trip, I had to tell him it wouldn’t work. If your MCU1 is just lagging, it could be the EMMC (embedded multi-media card), Tesla will replace your existing 8GB card with a 64GB card as part of a NHTSA recall, you can check to see if your car has had it done here: Recall

Another question is, if we upgrade to MCU2, will we get cameras in the B-pillars, side repeaters and front? Yes and no, if your car doesn’t currently have them, then no. If the car does have them, then it was built with FSD and the cameras may just need to be upgraded by Tesla for free. A message

Some things you get when you upgrade to MCU2 are:

Performance More responsive and smoother touchscreen and instrument cluster
Faster browser with video playback and 3D rendering support*

Audio & Music Displays Bluetooth® media album art
Your vehicle will still have access to internet radio and music streaming*
Note: Removes AM, FM and DAB radio

Gaming Includes graphics-intensive Tesla Arcade games like Beach Buggy Racing 2, Cuphead and Stardew Valley
Enables gamepad compatibility

Entertainment Enables video streaming and access to YouTube and Netflix through the Tesla Theater*
Adds Caraoke* and TRAX

Driver Assistance Enhanced Driving Visualization for owners with the Full Self-Driving Capability Computer

Security For vehicles with the Full Self-Driving Computer, recording is enabled from the front, rear and side cameras for Sentry Mode and DashCam, which also includes the DashCam viewer
Recordings may vary in color or tone based on your camera suite

Cellular & Wi-Fi Supports 5GHz Wi-Fi networks
LTE capable modem

*Available only on Wi-Fi for Standard Connectivity

MCU1 uses an NVIDIA Tegra 3 CPU and an 8GB eMMC (the NHTSA recall replaced to a 64GB eMMC)

MCU2 uses an Intel Atom E8000 series CPU and a 64GB eMMC and is generally faster and smoother in every way when compared to the MCU1