So bottom line. Is there anyone out there that I can pay to replace my emmc that has experience with this and knows what they are doing?
Bottom line is that there doesn't appear to be anyone that is providing this service right now. Phil (ingineer) is likely the closest you will find to someone able to do this commercially. However, it seams that he is working on a few other projects. A few of us have been unable to contact him.
I personally have the knowledge and ability to do it. However, I have not done it yet. I am currently 7000 miles away from my car and shop. Once I get back I will start working on the problem. I'm likely a few months away from having any major contributions. (Sorry)
My goals / process in order:
1. Replace the MCU processing board with a known working one and see what results I get. Then see if Tesla service is able to reprogram. This is the safest and should allow the car to not be in exile from future dealer services.
2. Develop a cradle / docking station that you can place the MCU processing board into. I'm sure I can get it to allow read access for backing up the eMMC. My hope is that I can get it to allow me to also write to the eMMC. This will allow us to backup the data and transfer it to another (good) processing board.
3. Work on the replacement of faulty eMMC chips. This requires some delicate/microscope soldering work. Most good cell phone shops are able to do the work. The chips are identical to ones used in major cell phone brands.
My goal is the reduce the cost of repair on an issue that is becoming common. As some are aware, once you get into this level of linux system recovery you are walking a fine line with any person that supports said system (Tesla or others). The information can be used to gain root/administrator access to the system. I believe most people that own these cars are not interested in gaining that access. However, most people are interested in paying $500 vs $3000+ to repair their car.
The 3G to 4G upgrade was $500 and required very similar effort. There is a little more OS/Data that needs to be done in this effort but even then it won't be out of the wheel house of the Tesla service centers. Ideally, we can raise the issue and show a working process that can be pushed to corporate and supported. At one point the reduction of service / repair costs was a priority. I'm hoping it will still be so.