2021 M3 LR failed @ 168 miles [rear drive unit inverter failure]

[Tom La tes]

Hi , I’ve had my M3 LR 2021 for 1 week. (168 miles) Pulled off my driveway today after 50 ft car juddered and message “Rear motor disabled pull over. “ car stopped and would not move . It is getting recovered today but sounds like problem with rear drive unit . Anyone familiar with this ?

 

[mjwh]

Hi , I’ve had my M3 LR 2021 Made in China for 1 week. (168 miles) Pulled off my driveway today after 50 ft car juddered and message “Rear motor disabled pull over. “ car stopped and would not move . It is getting recovered today but sounds like problem with rear drive unit . Anyone familiar with this ?

I’ve heard of a couple of these… I would not call it coming, but not unheard of. Should be warranty work, just a matter of parts availability.

 

[The_Observer]

You are one of the few people that has experienced early failures of the car... happens with US made cars as well over here in the states with a few forum members have stated here.

Tesla should fix this 100% free for sure, and it's probably a good thing that it fails early rather than later. Hopefully parts availability for warranty wouldn't take that long, given the shortages nowadays.

 

[alloverx]

I thought Tesla's could run on one motor?
-Can they only run on the rear motor? i.e. if front motor fails it can still work.

 

[holmgang]

hard reboot might just work

 

[Tom La tes]

It seems that it cannot run on one motor if it is the rear that fails . Tried reboots but no joy . Will keep posted when I get diagnosed . Gutted !

 

[Tom La tes]

Collected my M3 today 4 days after failure . They replaced the rear drive unit inverter due to electrical malfunction. Let’s just hope it never happens again .

 

[jjrandorin]

Collected my M3 today 4 days after failure . They replaced the rear drive unit inverter due to electrical malfunction. Let’s just hope it never happens again .

Appreciate you closing the loop on this. Thanks for following up and letting us know the end result.

 

[john5520]

Collected my M3 today 4 days after failure . They replaced the rear drive unit inverter due to electrical malfunction. Let’s just hope it never happens again .

Sorry for the bad luck but glad you got it back. Can you post the part number(s) they used for the repair? Block out any personal info if posting a pic. No big deal if you don't have it or it's too much of a hassle. Thanks

 

[MikeyC]

Happy you are back on the road. One thing that gives me peace of mind with owning a Tesla is that when I need a repair like this, I'm confident the repair will be as good or better than "factory" because the people who work on it know how to work on Teslas. Even if there is some wait time, at least it gets done right. I always worried about that when I owned a Chevy Bolt: is there anyone at the dealer who actually knows how to work on them? Other than potential wait time, Tesla seems to do really good work.

Mike

 

[Mahamilto]

Early failures are unfortunately a reality of mechanical and electrical parts. Something was off during manufacturing or installation. It does happen. Usually things fail very early or after heavy use/abuse. The nature of things.
Hope the new replacement gives you excellent results for a long time moving forward.

 

[Brian Lange]

The same happened to our tesla 2020 Lr 2 days ago. 7000 km, spend 2 dates in a hotel, before they cut fix it. They had trouble with the software talking to the hardware.

 

[TLTesler]

Happened to our brand new 2022 M3 last week. We had it for 5 days. My wife was driving on the HW when the car told her to pull over. It let her start it and she tried to drive to the service center and it went turtle mode with nowhere to pull over.
My wife called me in a panic the first time she got told to pull over. She called me again in the midst of a full blown panic attack when she was pulled over on a busy road with cars honking and trying to drive around her while she was stuck on the side of the road.
At first, they said rear inverter issue and we are getting the latest inverter revision since the older one had known issues. Our brand new car was apparently built during the transition period so we got unlucky with ours having the old inverter.
We told them we want a new car; why do we want a 5 day old car that already has work done to it.
They replaced the inverter and tried doing some FW/Diagnostics stuff to the car and were having issues. Next thing you know, the whole rear drive train has to get replaced.
We told them we want a new car; why do we want a 5 day old car that already needs it’s rear drive train replaced and needs any form of work done. Let’s see what happens.

The strangest part is that the service person mentioned seeing a TON of these issues; thousands were his words. If there were a ton of these issues seen in a single service center; there should be a ton at all the service centers. I don’t see anything really mentioning these faulty inverters anywhere on the internet.

If y’all are getting Model 3s soon or already have a model three, ask which revision your inverter is and make sure it’s the latest. There is no sense driving around with faulty hardware as a safety risk.

 

[Keninblaine]

What revision number was your faulty inverter?

 

[TLTesler]

Good question! I’m still waiting to find out from the rep.

 

[SpriteM3]

If y’all are getting Model 3s soon or already have a model three, ask which revision your inverter is and make sure it’s the latest. There is no sense driving around with faulty hardware as a safety risk.

During the ordering process I could barely get anyone on the phone, I can only imagine trying to ask for the revision of the inverter.

 

[Jwright798]

I get my M3LR delivered on Tuesday, and I’m taking it in a 200 mile trip to visit family on Thursday. I hope I’m not in this “transition”….

 

[john5520]

Good question! I’m still waiting to find out from the rep

If you got your car back or when you do, can you post the repair ticket info? It should have a list of part(s) replaced on it. Hide your name / address etc. Thanks.

 

[TLTesler]

I'm still waiting to get the repair ticket info.

After over a week of back and forth, Tesla is doing a full buyback of our 5-day old car. They cannot directly replace it due to the backorders, so we'll be without the car until we get a new one.
Tesla has agreed to honor the original price of the car since the price has gone up since we purchased it.

Overall, I don't feel great about the experience so far.

 

[TLTesler]

Ahh, it's benign the app the whole time. Smart.