Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

12 month intermittent fault with: reverse cameras, day/night detection, GPS location, ecall emergency - resolved!

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
Since I got my SR+ a year ago it's had an intermittent fault (about 20% of the time, 80% more recently) with all of the following not working for the first 5-10 minutes of the drive:
- reverse cameras (all 3) with a spinning logo. Actually I now believe all cameras were failing!
- Day/night detection. I would get in the car at night and the screen in "Auto" would be blindingly bright.
- GPS location. I would be driving for 5-10minutes and the car would think I was when I left home, or worse, at the previous location!
- ecall emergency. Constant "ecall requires service" popups!
- failed Dashcam recordings (nothing there for that day despite saves/ horn presses).
I'm in the UK. Car was a Nov2010 refresh California build that was shipped to the UK - one of the last. I put it down to software for the first 5 months.
But then one time I did an emergency stop, and unlike other times the car had not warned me. I noticed the reverse cameras had the spinning logo. I suddenly realised it's not just those 3 cameras failing! It's ALL of them! All the active safety was failing when this problem was occurring. This was more serious!!!
Service App 1. So Jan2020 I thought I'm going to chase this properly! Tesla Reading, UK service looked at it for 3 hours while I drank their coffee and ate their biscuits. They ran logs. Downloaded all the firmware. Their logs showed it was a software issue and my USB memory stick had bad sectors (I play music off USB in the centre console - no premium audio). Bought a new 32gb stick. Copied 100 songs to it instead of 1000. But no difference. Problem was still there.
Service App 2. This time Guildford. They taxi'd me home and back so I was without the car for 5 days!)
This time they thought it was hardware. A rusted joint on a wire behind the mirror. That the GPS antenna and eCall antenna were there. They replaced it. At one point service even said "we've spent more hours on this than the allocation". Anyway, went to pick up the car. Sat in it. Pressed the back-up camera. Nothing, spinning logos. Called a service guy over, he sat in the car, coincidentally after 30 seconds the cameras came on! But it had been 7 minutes since I got in the car. He agreed problem was not fixed! I was not impressed!!
Service App 3. Guildford, UK, Feb-Mar2022. They knew they'd screwed up before. Were apologetic. Went full courtesy. Lent me a Tesla M3 performance!!! I actually had it 2-3 weeks while they ran tests - so very happy few weeks!! After 2 weeks messages of no solution there was one indicating next step was a full computer swap. But then a breakthrough! Service was 100% (given this was trip 3 I was less than convinced). But when I arrived the guy showed me a photo of a wiring loom that runs to the main computer. Apparently the cable was twisted, shortening it's length by about 7cm (2 inches). Probably an issue since like it since it left California!!! He explained when the car was cold (ie overnight) the cable would likely be even tighter and this caused the intermittent loose connection! He reassured me that it had not damaged the computers connections. Since then the car's been perfect - cameras coming on in 1 second or so! Just like the performance one I borrowed.
IF you ever have any of the above act-up get service to look at it!!! The service guy said it'd be added to their resolution documentation. But I do expect, like me, many will put it down to a "software glitch"! Now I think others have had this same problem. EV Man - biggest UK EV channel has spoken about "similar" problems with his car.
FYI - the chat thread runs to about 100 messages! There was other temporary issue and screw-ups in service, including where they even rewired the glovebox backwards (quickly fixed next day with a mobile service visit!) - but unrelated to the main issue, and service have been very good generally - especially with the taxis and Performance loaner!
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot_2022-03-30.jpg
    Screenshot_2022-03-30.jpg
    92.8 KB · Views: 196
Last edited:
Since I got my SR+ a year ago it's had an intermittent fault (about 20% of the time, 80% more recently) with all of the following not working for the first 5-10 minutes of the drive:
- reverse cameras (all 3) with a spinning logo. Actually I now believe all cameras were failing!
- Day/night detection. I would get in the car at night and the screen in "Auto" would be blindingly bright.
- GPS location. I would be driving for 5-10minutes and the car would think I was when I left home, or worse, at the previous location!
- ecall emergency. Constant "ecall requires service" popups!
- failed Dashcam recordings (nothing there for that day despite saves/ horn presses).
I'm in the UK. Car was a Nov2010 refresh California build that was shipped to the UK - one of the last. I put it down to software for the first 5 months.
But then one time I did an emergency stop, and unlike other times the car had not warned me. I noticed the reverse cameras had the spinning logo. I suddenly realised it's not just those 3 cameras failing! It's ALL of them! All the active safety was failing when this problem was occurring. This was more serious!!!
Service App 1. So Jan2020 I thought I'm going to chase this properly! Tesla Reading, UK service looked at it for 3 hours while I drank their coffee and ate their biscuits. They ran logs. Downloaded all the firmware. Their logs showed it was a software issue and my USB memory stick had bad sectors (I play music off USB in the centre console - no premium audio). Bought a new 32gb stick. Copied 100 songs to it instead of 1000. But no difference. Problem was still there.
Service App 2. This time Guildford. They taxi'd me home and back so I was without the car for 5 days!)
This time they thought it was hardware. A rusted joint on a wire behind the mirror. That the GPS antenna and eCall antenna were there. They replaced it. At one point service even said "we've spent more hours on this than the allocation". Anyway, went to pick up the car. Sat in it. Pressed the back-up camera. Nothing, spinning logos. Called a service guy over, he sat in the car, coincidentally after 30 seconds the cameras came on! But it had been 7 minutes since I got in the car. He agreed problem was not fixed! I was not impressed!!
Service App 3. Guildford, UK, Feb-Mar2022. They knew they'd screwed up before. Were apologetic. Went full courtesy. Lent me a Tesla M3 performance!!! I actually had it 2-3 weeks while they ran tests - so very happy few weeks!! After 2 weeks messages of no solution there was one indicating next step was a full computer swap. But then a breakthrough! Service was 100% (given this was trip 3 I was less than convinced). But when I arrived the guy showed me a photo of a wiring loom that runs to the main computer. Apparently the cable was twisted, shortening it's length by about 7cm (2 inches). Probably an issue since like it since it left California!!! He explained when the car was cold (ie overnight) the cable would likely be even tighter and this caused the intermittent loose connection! He reassured me that it had not damaged the computers connections. Since then the car's been perfect - cameras coming on in 1 second or so! Just like the performance one I borrowed.
IF you ever have any of the above act-up get service to look at it!!! The service guy said it'd be added to their resolution documentation. But I do expect, like me, many will put it down to a "software glitch"! Now I think others have had this same problem. EV Man - biggest UK EV channel has spoken about "similar" problems with his car.
FYI - the chat thread runs to about 100 messages! There was other temporary issue and screw-ups in service, including where they even rewired the glovebox backwards (quickly fixed next day with a mobile service visit!) - but unrelated to the main issue, and service have been very good generally - especially with the taxis and Performance loaner!
Tesla must have spent maybe 30-50 hours fault diagnosing and repairing my car! + a Model 3 Performance loaner out for nearly 3 weeks + 2x Tesla taxi's to get me to-from the service location (for one of these, the guy "on-call" lived 30 miles away, so he'd had to round-trip about 90 miles to drive me 15 miles to the service centre). Tesla "nearly" wasted a whole computer. Wasted a GPS antenna that worked (ok, maybe that's a $5 item), but thousands of dollars of "person-hours" due to a non-faulty item just slightly, incorrectly installed. And that's just my car! How many other wiring looms got twisted a bit in install? Incurred costs for warranty repairs must be astronomical.

Interestingly Tesla Service here have a contract with a company called "GoZero"
A 100% Tesla taxi company they use to ferry customers to and from the service centre for people who are dropping cars off and have no other way to get home. One of their cars a Model S has done around 200k miles. The guy said it's only dropped about 8%. The car looked in very good condition.