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Another NHSTA Unintended Acceleration Complaint

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No, the first and last are almost certainly real. The first was posted here or on Telsa's forums quite some time ago and perfectly legit. The last, excessive tire wear, is an extremely common problem and something Tesla has apparently told some folks is by design (a local member was basically told by service that Tesla engineering says do not adjust camber to stop excessive tire wear). If Tesla has designed a car that causes much more wear than typical, it's certainly something that should be called out somewhere, though whether that's NHTSA, I don't know.

ckessel,
I'm going just a tad off topic here as you bring up a point that is starting to really chafe my arse.
I am aware of three published toe out (both rear wheels so not the driver's fault) conditions causing premature rear tire wear on the inner shoulder; one was Edmonds. Service Centers telling people this is normal is ludicrous on its face (given they just fixed toe out).

Tesla has its head in the sand at the SC level while (hopefully) someone at corporate is trying to figure this out. I am 99.99% certain they are rolling out of the factory with both rear wheels correctly pointing inwards. They are probably being pulled out during transport (a common problem) or they have a rear toe link adjuster torque issue. No matter what the cause, all deliveries should be checked using a $100 (retail quantity one) toe bar during the PDI process. This takes two people three minutes. It is a brain dead stupid way to rule out delivering cars with toe out then having your name tarnished when tires are trashed in 4-5K miles (and further tarnished when you are caught fibbing to owners when you say this is normal.... Actually, let me back off that one as 4-5k miles would be normal for high negative camber and toe out!).

Lastly, I've got to call BS on this "do not adjust your camber" comment by the SC. This is why I take issue with what the Service Center is saying (not what the customer passed along)-

Tesla certified the S85 on coil springs which carries roughly -1 degree of camber in the rear. Changing the camber links on a P85 to reduce camber in the rear from -2.2 to -1 is simply putting the car to the low end of Tesla approved camber levels in a effort to save rear tire wear. If -1 is good for the S goose it is perfectly acceptable for the P+ gander.

Rant over.... Thanks for listening.
 
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Lastly, I've got to call BS on this "do not adjust your camber" comment by the SC.
Well, here's what a local Portland member mentioend in an email to the Portland Tesla mailing list after his visit to the SC.

Quoting a small bit of his email without permission:
When I questioned Tesla service about the abnormal wear and whether wheel alignment was the issue I was told no the alignment is probably not off BUT the car does come with negative camber ( in my mind would explain the even wear on all 4 tires) and that is the standard factory setting due to the extreme torque the chassis and drivetrain has to deal with. they (the SC) have not been able to convince the engineers differently.
 
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I miss wrote. I was calling BS on the sc's "do not change camber" not on a customer passing the word along

Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Fair enough. The end result is folks with uneven wear are going to Tesla (via the SC), asking about it, and being told that's according to Tesla's engineering specs. If that's the case, then we're back to Tesla needs to come clean about their design causing abnormal wear. Maybe not via NHTSA, but it certainly has a significant impact on Tesla's cost of ownership claims. Tires are expensive, particularly the 21s.
 
The issue is nuanced.

Tesla designed the coil spring cars to ride at a certain ride height and have a certain negative camber setting in the rear. This allows the car to pass federal testing standards for emergency maneuvers (FMVSS 126).

Tesla chose to produce the air cars with lower Standard ride height further allowing the car to move to Low ride height at highway speeds. Camber gain is built into suspensions such that you get more negative camber when you lower the car.

Tesla chose not to produce different length upper camber links for the air suspension cars so air cars can have as much as -2.4 degrees of camber at Standard ride height and I have seen -2.8 to -3.0 at highway speeds.

ANY toe out with anywhere near -2.0 degrees of rear camber will result in dramatically accelerated inner should wear. I consider 4 to 5K life as dramatic wear.

Others more knowledgeable than I have pointed out that "camber is not a wear angle" but it has been my experience with several other street cars that properly managing rear camber can dramatically improve rear tire life. An example is my Maranello where I could expect 12K miles with stock camber settings and 20K+ with -1.0 without a dramatic degradation in street handling.

So, back to the point about Tesla's guidance. Yes, the high negative camber is in the air suspension cars by design. However, that design decision was based on production convenience so as to have all suspensions based on the same parts and not necessarily chassis performance. The cost for that decision is higher than normal tire wear for properly aligned cars.
 
The issue is nuanced.

Tesla designed the coil spring cars to ride at a certain ride height and have a certain negative camber setting in the rear. This allows the car to pass federal testing standards for emergency maneuvers (FMVSS 126).

Tesla chose to produce the air cars with lower Standard ride height further allowing the car to move to Low ride height at highway speeds. Camber gain is built into suspensions such that you get more negative camber when you lower the car.

Tesla chose not to produce different length upper camber links for the air suspension cars so air cars can have as much as -2.4 degrees of camber at Standard ride height and I have seen -2.8 to -3.0 at highway speeds.

ANY toe out with anywhere near -2.0 degrees of rear camber will result in dramatically accelerated inner should wear. I consider 4 to 5K life as dramatic wear.

Others more knowledgeable than I have pointed out that "camber is not a wear angle" but it has been my experience with several other street cars that properly managing rear camber can dramatically improve rear tire life. An example is my Maranello where I could expect 12K miles with stock camber settings and 20K+ with -1.0 without a dramatic degradation in street handling.

So, back to the point about Tesla's guidance. Yes, the high negative camber is in the air suspension cars by design. However, that design decision was based on production convenience so as to have all suspensions based on the same parts and not necessarily chassis performance. The cost for that decision is higher than normal tire wear for properly aligned cars.

Have you been discussing this with anyone at Tesla? I hope your feedback is making its way up the ladder. Jerome has given out his e-mail address in the past asking people with issues to notify him.
 
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I put a note into William in Ownership as we have discussed other customer quality related issues in the past. I try not to inject things at such a high level unless absolutely necessary. I'm hoping the comments find their way to the right people through the normal course at Tesla.
 
I put a note into William in Ownership as we have discussed other customer quality related issues in the past. I try not to inject things at such a high level unless absolutely necessary. I'm hoping the comments find their way to the right people through the normal course at Tesla.

I agree bugging people at the top is not normally necessary but if your idea of a simple 3 min procedure that isn't expensive would help them catch many of these issues before the car is handed over for delivery works, it might be worth asking him to forward this to Jerome or one of his assistants.
 
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I received a reply from William today indicating he would take it to the head of service. I'll give it a couple of days and then follow up with J if I do not hear anything back. I've got to believe they are way more aware of the toe out issue than I would be and have much better access to possible causes.
 
I received a reply from William today indicating he would take it to the head of service. I'll give it a couple of days and then follow up with J if I do not hear anything back. I've got to believe they are way more aware of the toe out issue than I would be and have much better access to possible causes.
In your communications with Tesla on this, please let them know that you can probably find some willing Tesla owners for "testing things out" in this area if Tesla will "take care of them" in the process. By "take care of them" I mean stuff like "we want to try out some things with your daily driver but if our testing does weird stuff like burning through tires every 700 miles, we'll make it right". Assuming the language in the paperwork was acceptable, I'd sign up for this in a heartbeat.

My first 21s burned through in 8500 mi. and my second set are at about the same rate (I'm currently running on my 19s after putting about 7,500 on round 2 of the 21s). I think my wear is "normal" given my usage, but I'm definitely interested in helping Tesla improve here (even if my car is just a "control" in the experiments).
 
I received a reply from William today indicating he would take it to the head of service. I'll give it a couple of days and then follow up with J if I do not hear anything back. I've got to believe they are way more aware of the toe out issue than I would be and have much better access to possible causes.

In your communications with Tesla on this, please let them know that you can probably find some willing Tesla owners for "testing things out" in this area if Tesla will "take care of them" in the process. By "take care of them" I mean stuff like "we want to try out some things with your daily driver but if our testing does weird stuff like burning through tires every 700 miles, we'll make it right". Assuming the language in the paperwork was acceptable, I'd sign up for this in a heartbeat.

My first 21s burned through in 8500 mi. and my second set are at about the same rate (I'm currently running on my 19s after putting about 7,500 on round 2 of the 21s). I think my wear is "normal" given my usage, but I'm definitely interested in helping Tesla improve here (even if my car is just a "control" in the experiments).

Random thought - seriously a stretch here but always worthwhile asking questions like this: is the regen braking tied to all 4 wheels or just the rear 2 wheels? Assuming the rear two (because doesn't this spin the inverter in the opposite direction?), is there any chance the regen is causing this inner wear by somehow knocking the toe out of alignment on the rear wheels?
 
Random thought - seriously a stretch here but always worthwhile asking questions like this: is the regen braking tied to all 4 wheels or just the rear 2 wheels? Assuming the rear two (because doesn't this spin the inverter in the opposite direction?), is there any chance the regen is causing this inner wear by somehow knocking the toe out of alignment on the rear wheels?

Yes the regen is applied only through the rear wheels. However I really doubt this has any effect on alignment.