Tech

Tesla Model 3: autonomy decreases due to the new AMD Ryzen on-board computer

The Tesla Model 3 now benefit in Europe from a new on-board computer for the infotainment system. The latter becomes more powerful, being powered by an AMD Ryzen chip, but this does not only bring improvements to the vehicle.

tesla model 3 autopilot euro ncap
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Last summer, Tesla began rolling out a new infotainment computer called MCU3 in its high-end Model S and Model X vehicles. Not only the new computer has a faster AMD Ryzen processor, allowing for smoother navigation through the car’s menus, but it also packs a dedicated graphics processing unit that hits 10 teraflops, almost as much as a PS5. This offers you the possibility of play video games such as The Witcher 3 right in your Tesla.

The Tesla Model 3 and Model Y, which until now had to make do with the old Intel Atom A3950 chip, finally received the new components when they were updated to their 2022 version. This new AMD Ryzen chip offers a a real boost to dashboard performance, and allows in particular toopen apps much faster. For example, it would only take 4 seconds to open a Chinese video-on-demand application on the main screen, compared to 17 seconds with the Intel chip.

AMD Ryzen is more powerful, but lowers vehicle range

Although the new processor improves many aspects of the car’s infotainment system, it has a negative impact on the vehicles range. Indeed, the AMD chip uses more power to increase computing power, resulting in higher battery power consumption and a slight decrease in vehicle range.

As Teslascope reports on Twitter, the new Model 3s are all equipped with the new MCU3 computer. A notification specifies that the new Long Autonomy 2022 version now offers a range of 602 km according to the WLTP cycle, 22 km or 3.5% less than what was announced by Tesla. However, the Tesla Model Y had seen its autonomy increase.

The loss of autonomy is therefore not enormous, but could pose problems on certain journeys. And you, what do you think of this change? Are you ready to sacrifice a few kilometers of autonomy for an on-board computer as powerful as a PS5?

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