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200 mile SR+ dead.. BMS_a059 VCFRONT_a192 HVP_w028 BMS_a158

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J

john94si

Member
Dec 16, 2020
126
314
Florida
#1
2021 SR+

200 miles and 2 days old. It drove great until this happened. It was parked and plugged in inside the garage and I heard a bang from the rear of the car. Everything worked except would not go into FWD to Reverse.

Had it towed. Service says it needs an entirely new RDU (rear drive unit) Parts should be here tomorrow, this happened 6 days ago. They gave me a 3 loaner (locked in chill).

Hope this isn't going to be a lemon car.
2021-01-02 16.47.34.jpg
2021-01-02 17.45.47-1.jpg
2021-01-03 09.26.26.jpg


Its the same that Car and Driver magazine experienced 2 years ago Our Tesla Model 3 Suffered a Catastrophic Failure While Parked (caranddriver.com)
 
  • Informative
Reactions: cwerdna and KenC
#2
Interesting that both yours and the Car & Driver one failed like this during winter. Failures while parked are weird, but the car could've been using the rear motor as a heater (to heat the battery) since it's winter. I wonder if this is part of what led to the failure.

Anyways, hope it works out for you. Better to have it fail early and within warranty than later, but it sucks at the time for sure.
 
#12
TLLMRRJ said:
There are going to be some very sad people that buy used Teslas outside of warranty thinking there's nothing to break on them and they are so inexpensive to maintain when they get hit with motor and battery replacement scenarios.
Click to expand...

Thats no different than anyone else who buys a used car having an issue with the motor, though. These motors are less likely to fail, but that doesnt mean they never will.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Gasaraki and Matsayz
#13
I'd hope that one day soon the minimum field replaceable unit size would decrease for this sort of failure. I get it, there's a lot of power back there and connections have to be perfect, but to replace the entire rear drive unit(including motor, inverter, differential, and so on) to replace just the inverter seems completely nuts.
 
  • Like
Reactions: XPsionic
#15
camalaio said:
Interesting that both yours and the Car & Driver one failed like this during winter. Failures while parked are weird, but the car could've been using the rear motor as a heater (to heat the battery) since it's winter. I wonder if this is part of what led to the failure.

Anyways, hope it works out for you. Better to have it fail early and within warranty than later, but it sucks at the time for sure.
Click to expand...

No. While parked the Model 3 mainly uses the front motors to heat the battery because the front motors are the less efficient motors meaning they naturally generate more heat. Preheating while driving would use both motors to preheat.
 
#18
That "bang" was likely an electrical component failure, so it makes sense that MOSFET was on the replacement list. Electrical components follow a bathtub curve for Mean-Time Between Failure (MTBF). Higher initially, lower steady-state level throughout their rated life, and then increasing as the part reaches end of life. You would hope that most early failures can be caught through screening but not always the case.
 
#19
leonar40 said:
That "bang" was likely an electrical component failure, so it makes sense that MOSFET was on the replacement list. Electrical components follow a bathtub curve for Mean-Time Between Failure (MTBF). Higher initially, lower steady-state level throughout their rated life, and then increasing as the part reaches end of life. You would hope that most early failures can be caught through screening but not always the case.
Click to expand...
That's not just a single MOSFET on the part description. Tesla does not (nor does any other modern car company) do component-level repair on the customer-facing side. Let's break it down.

"ASY,M3,REAR,MOSFET-LC,GLOBAL"
  • ASY: Assembly. As in, whole assembled unit. In this case, a drive unit motor/inverter combo with some other bits.
  • M3: Model 3 (wait, where are the people mad about the BMW/Tesla M3 thing? even Tesla's done it! :p)
  • REAR: Well, rear.
  • MOSFET-LC: Assuming this is referring to the inverter/VFD portion of the assembly being a MOSFET-based one that is liquid-cooled (LC)
  • GLOBAL: Part is suitable for all countries, not specific to any particular one.
As for the bang, it's heard a lot. It could be the pyro fuse (which goes off with a bang intentionally), but I don't think it is in this case (you'd get 12V support warnings since the main battery would be disconnected). People generally report the car jerking suddenly along with the bang on rear motor failures, indicating the noise may be mechanical in nature (but electrical in failure).
 
#20
camalaio said:
That's not just a single MOSFET on the part description. Tesla does not (nor does any other modern car company) do component-level repair on the customer-facing side. Let's break it down.

"ASY,M3,REAR,MOSFET-LC,GLOBAL"
  • ASY: Assembly. As in, whole assembled unit. In this case, a drive unit motor/inverter combo with some other bits.
  • M3: Model 3 (wait, where are the people mad about the BMW/Tesla M3 thing? even Tesla's done it! :p)
  • REAR: Well, rear.
  • MOSFET-LC: Assuming this is referring to the inverter/VFD portion of the assembly being a MOSFET-based one that is liquid-cooled (LC)
  • GLOBAL: Part is suitable for all countries, not specific to any particular one.
As for the bang, it's heard a lot. It could be the pyro fuse (which goes off with a bang intentionally), but I don't think it is in this case (you'd get 12V support warnings since the main battery would be disconnected). People generally report the car jerking suddenly along with the bang on rear motor failures, indicating the noise may be mechanical in nature (but electrical in failure).
Click to expand...

Thanks.. for the details.. the order actually has this part twice listed but yes i am only RWD.. maybe they ordered 2 just in case.
 
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