sunlight (heat?) causing cockpit panel to turn off

Just got off the phone with customer service and this will almost certainly result in a service visit, but thought I'd share...

Four times now I've had the car, on bright, hot sunny days have the cockpit panel just turn off, this last time was a nice comparison because the reverse trip was through storms and the car worked fine throughout. The panel will usually turn off/on for a bit and then just give up and stay off. The touchscreen doesn't work even when the panel turns back on. The car also turns the lights on, I assume this is a safety backup of some sort since the touchscreen has stopped working.

Throughout the flickering and cockpit panel turning off, the pilot panel and HUD continue to work normally, the HUD actually keeps the car drivable as you can still see speed and blindspot warnings. It usually takes 60-120 minutes for this to happen, but once it does, it takes awhile to get back, basically sitting in shade for hours. Reboot only restores it for a few minutes at best, if at all. It's also not practical to reboot in the I-95 express lanes

I only really noticed once we started doing road trips on sunny days this spring/summer, but I suspect the issue has been there all along as I saw it once in the Spring when I was driving around for over an hour and I wrote that off to software bugs. But now, because of the long timeframe I assume this is a hardware, and not a software issue since it's been across multiple software updates.

Will update the thread when I know more / get some resolution The car has otherwise been pretty great since the last few software updates.

This is something I worry about in my Air. My glass cockpit gets quite hot pretty regularly, to the point where it's painful to keep my finger depressed on the glass for any period of time (when disabling climate hold, for example).

knewman said:

This is something I worry about in my Air. My glass cockpit gets quite hot pretty regularly, to the point where it's painful to keep my finger depressed on the glass for any period of time (when disabling climate hold, for example).

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Ah, this is a good clarification, at least for my case: Both the front and back of the panel are *not* hot to the touch. At best, they are warm.

ejesse said:

Just got off the phone with customer service and this will almost certainly result in a service visit, but thought I'd share...

Four times now I've had the car, on bright, hot sunny days have the cockpit panel just turn off, this last time was a nice comparison because the reverse trip was through storms and the car worked fine throughout. The panel will usually turn off/on for a bit and then just give up and stay off....

Click to expand...

Sounds like a defective pilot panel. A bad solder joint, wirebond, or a bad component somewhere inside.

DeaneG said:

Sounds like a defective pilot panel. A bad solder joint, wirebond, or a bad component somewhere inside.

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Cockpit panel, but yeah, it definitely seems like a defective part somewhere in the panel's overall system that shows itself in sun/heat.

ejesse said:

Cockpit panel, but yeah, it definitely seems like a defective part somewhere in the panel's overall system that shows itself in sun/heat.

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I can never keep the names straight. I go with driver's display and center display.

When troubleshooting an intermittent electronics failure, after you've wiggled all the cables, you try to reproduce the failure by selectively heating and/or cooling suspect components.

DeaneG said:

I can never keep the names straight. I go with driver's display and center display.

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Yeah it's "pilot" that throws me off, since cockpit/pilot both imply "for the driver" to me. If they'd just called the pilot panel "center" or "side" it would be more obvious, albeit a much more mundane name.

knewman said:

This is something I worry about in my Air. My glass cockpit gets quite hot pretty regularly, to the point where it's painful to keep my finger depressed on the glass for any period of time (when disabling climate hold, for example).

Click to expand...

Mine does too, but it’s never had an issue; I suspect this is a defective part.

Ok while it’s on and functional, like at home, use a hair dryer to gently warm up the panel.
Does it stop?
When it isn’t working can you cool it off with a fan? Eg does it come back faster?

Aka-none said:

Ok while it’s on and functional, like at home, use a hair dryer to gently warm up the panel.
Does it stop?
When it isn’t working can you cool it off with a fan? Eg does it come back faster?

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Yeah, I'll just let the service center deal with it