Hi folks. Long time listener, first time caller, with a 2020 Model 3 Performance.
I put 1000km on my new car in its first month, doing everyday duties in Norway. It worked well.
Then I took it 2000km+ into Europe over 2 days, where I learned lots.
To skip further preamble and to the summary: the car failed me on the road. and the process of roadside assistance/emergency contact was left for wanting.
To skip the drama of this story, just skip to the next post.
Day 2, 10 hours driven, 2000km elapsed trip distance, 3000km total car life, we are in motoring through Slovakia:
Car was chugging down the highway when a series of dings accompanied the messages "power reduced...", and then "rear motor failure...*", and then something basically about catastrophic inoperability. It stuttered and shook itself to a stop, depositing me on the shoulder just outside of Bratislava with 18 wheelers whizzing by.
I hit the car's SOS button hoping to reach a Tesla operator. A Slovakian lady picked up and repeated the some gibberish over and over again. She didn't respond to single word of English or German, which was unusual for an emergency operator, and the 2 overwhelmingly most prominent language on the continent.
We hung in stalemate for 5 minute, so I gave up and Ctrl+Alt-Del'ed the car. It allowed me back into gear and limp gingerly to an exit.
After booting, the screen is showing residual error messages, telling me to contact Tesla. Except not anywhere in this damn tablet is a direct link or instruction to actually contact Tesla**. I rifle through the emergency booklet and start dialing the 24/7/365 numbers. My wife and I are working our 2 phones dialing Ireland, UK, Norway, Netherlands, etc. Some numbers are unreachable, others trap us in menu-hell, and the rest puts us in a 10+ minute hold.
[**Later found a number listed after hitting the T icon. That number also kept me on hold....]
I rebooted the car a few more times. It's lost all connectivity, but gained instead these error messages.
After a 10 hour day, we're stranded 2 hours from our final destination. It's 10pm and near freezing. Heating is off because I'm reluctant to draw the apparent remaining 25% of battery. We gambled on driving it to the next charging station 1 hour away, and then powering home. BUT (1) with the car not connecting back to mothership, there's a chance it won't be allowed to charge and (2) I needed assurance car was driveable.
I caught a technician on the US hotline. He politely informed me that according to the logs, he did see the car "performed a 'graceful shutdown'", but afterwards no evidence of reboots or irregularities. (Of course, he couldn't, because the car refused to reconnect). He gave me numbers to some more europe numbers to call and wished me well.
Long story short we made it to a nearby SC. It miraculously charged. 20 minutes into the charging section it also regained cellular connectivity, and we felt confident enough to complete the remaining 200km. It zapped our confidence in the thing though, and I'm skeptical about using it on the 2000km trip home. There's no service center in this country....
I put 1000km on my new car in its first month, doing everyday duties in Norway. It worked well.
Then I took it 2000km+ into Europe over 2 days, where I learned lots.
To skip further preamble and to the summary: the car failed me on the road. and the process of roadside assistance/emergency contact was left for wanting.
To skip the drama of this story, just skip to the next post.
Day 2, 10 hours driven, 2000km elapsed trip distance, 3000km total car life, we are in motoring through Slovakia:
Car was chugging down the highway when a series of dings accompanied the messages "power reduced...", and then "rear motor failure...*", and then something basically about catastrophic inoperability. It stuttered and shook itself to a stop, depositing me on the shoulder just outside of Bratislava with 18 wheelers whizzing by.
I hit the car's SOS button hoping to reach a Tesla operator. A Slovakian lady picked up and repeated the some gibberish over and over again. She didn't respond to single word of English or German, which was unusual for an emergency operator, and the 2 overwhelmingly most prominent language on the continent.
We hung in stalemate for 5 minute, so I gave up and Ctrl+Alt-Del'ed the car. It allowed me back into gear and limp gingerly to an exit.
After booting, the screen is showing residual error messages, telling me to contact Tesla. Except not anywhere in this damn tablet is a direct link or instruction to actually contact Tesla**. I rifle through the emergency booklet and start dialing the 24/7/365 numbers. My wife and I are working our 2 phones dialing Ireland, UK, Norway, Netherlands, etc. Some numbers are unreachable, others trap us in menu-hell, and the rest puts us in a 10+ minute hold.
[**Later found a number listed after hitting the T icon. That number also kept me on hold....]
I rebooted the car a few more times. It's lost all connectivity, but gained instead these error messages.
After a 10 hour day, we're stranded 2 hours from our final destination. It's 10pm and near freezing. Heating is off because I'm reluctant to draw the apparent remaining 25% of battery. We gambled on driving it to the next charging station 1 hour away, and then powering home. BUT (1) with the car not connecting back to mothership, there's a chance it won't be allowed to charge and (2) I needed assurance car was driveable.
I caught a technician on the US hotline. He politely informed me that according to the logs, he did see the car "performed a 'graceful shutdown'", but afterwards no evidence of reboots or irregularities. (Of course, he couldn't, because the car refused to reconnect). He gave me numbers to some more europe numbers to call and wished me well.
Long story short we made it to a nearby SC. It miraculously charged. 20 minutes into the charging section it also regained cellular connectivity, and we felt confident enough to complete the remaining 200km. It zapped our confidence in the thing though, and I'm skeptical about using it on the 2000km trip home. There's no service center in this country....
