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

Car Unable to Charge

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
It sounds like you got it replaced for a much more reasonable $380 rather than the initial $2500. Did anything change?
I actually ended up having the service center pull my primary charger and re-configure the slave charger to be a single charger configuration. I had rarely charged at >40A, so that was the best compromise for me.

I realize that's not clear from my post above, apologies, it's been a long week...
 
I apologize in advance for my rant, but....

It's very disappointing to me that the charger is not covered under the same 8 year infinite mile warranty as the battery and drive motor. It's such a core part of the drivetrain that should not wear out quickly and it shouldn't be possible for you to abuse.

When Elon announced that the drive units were going to be covered, he said "If we truly believe that electric motors are fundamentally more reliable than gasoline engines, with far fewer moving parts and no oily residue or combustion byproducts to gum up the works, then our warranty policy should reflect that." Well, who's ever had to pay over $2k to fix the equipment used to fill a gasoline tank? If this type of cost is regularly incurred every 70k miles, I'd say that's a pretty big expense owners aren't anticipating.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Cyclone
I don't disagree.

If this were a fuel pump, I'd replace it for a couple of hundred bucks. A charger is 10X that.

I wrote some very specific comments in my service survey I was sent asking to be contacted. We'll see what happens.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Cyclone
I apologize in advance for my rant, but....

It's very disappointing to me that the charger is not covered under the same 8 year infinite mile warranty as the battery and drive motor. It's such a core part of the drivetrain that should not wear out quickly and it shouldn't be possible for you to abuse.

When Elon announced that the drive units were going to be covered, he said "If we truly believe that electric motors are fundamentally more reliable than gasoline engines, with far fewer moving parts and no oily residue or combustion byproducts to gum up the works, then our warranty policy should reflect that." Well, who's ever had to pay over $2k to fix the equipment used to fill a gasoline tank? If this type of cost is regularly incurred every 70k miles, I'd say that's a pretty big expense owners aren't anticipating.


I'm shocked that it is not covered. I have better coverage on my Chevy Volt. I'm hoping to keep my P85 a while, but not if I feel I'm getting charged for every little thing.
 
Ok, so if you did the swap yourself, how did the SvC come into possession of your master charger?

Can you also briefly detail what you did to install the charger? Isolating HV, dealing with coolant contained within the charger itself, reprogramming the unit from slave to master, etc.

I watched a charger being replaced. The hardest parts are replacing the seat, and the programming. The Tesla service program and a connection to Tesla Corporate are both necessary to do the programming. The connections take care of the coolant without the installer having to do anything.
 
  • Like
Reactions: apacheguy
I watched a charger being replaced. The hardest parts are replacing the seat, and the programming. The Tesla service program and a connection to Tesla Corporate are both necessary to do the programming. The connections take care of the coolant without the installer having to do anything.

Is a coolant recharge required once the new one is in place? I assume the old master charger contained some coolant within the unit that then has to be replaced to fill the void inside the new unit.
 
Is a coolant recharge required once the new one is in place? I assume the old master charger contained some coolant within the unit that then has to be replaced to fill the void inside the new unit.
No. My replacement was done in the parking lot of a B&B. No possibility of a recharge. The charger is already filled when shipped.
 
Interesting. My service invoice lists coolant top-off and system bleed as part of the process. Of course, I wasn't just adding a charger or replacing an existing one with a new unit, I was removing one charger, and swapping locations with the remaining unit.
 
Interesting. My service invoice lists coolant top-off and system bleed as part of the process. Of course, I wasn't just adding a charger or replacing an existing one with a new unit, I was removing one charger, and swapping locations with the remaining unit.
I suspect they would always do that in the Service Centre where they have the equipment just for sanity's sake. It's been almost three years since mine was changed (very early failure). At the last annual service (Feb) a complete flush was done as a standard maintenance item.
 
I also suspect it may have been due to the fact that when they removed one charger and had to install the coolant bypass plumbing, and de-installed the other to move it in to the primary position, that they lost fluid in the process.

I saw a post above that states new chargers come "pre-primed" with coolant, so it may not be as much (if any) of a coolant loss in the factory-supplied replacement part scenario.
 
Still concerned. the actual cost to fix this would be more than the transmission rebuild at a reputable place (with all those dirty oily parts).
FWIW, my experience with transmission rebuilds is that they fail quickly. You're unlikely to ever require another charger replacement.
 
FWIW, my experience with transmission rebuilds is that they fail quickly. You're unlikely to ever require another charger replacement.
Given that I'm a relatively early adopter (early 2013 car, w/ a 10,xxx VIN) and my failure, I'm not sure we have enough data to know that.

For all we know, we could start seeing lots of charger failures as cars approach 3-4. Especially if the failure mode is based on charge-cycles, and a person has a 2-charger car and a >50A HPWC installation, That means the second charger will be getting nearly as many as the primary...

I hope not, but I don't know that we can state that it's unlikely that a person could have ever have another.
 
  • Like
Reactions: brkaus
Yes, too difficult to judge without a lot of data. I'm just thinking there are a lot of mechanical parts on my three cars (with 135k miles each) that cost a lot less than $2500. It makes me question the less moving parts means fewer and cheaper repairs.

Of course the class of car is quite different. A transmission on a Mercedes is probably a good deal more.

Now if they were refurbing the Chargers that might save a good bit of money. Can't be many parts. but some of the high voltage pieces are probably pricy.
 
Had a present delivered to me today:
2016-05-11_142716005_A2426_iOS.jpg
2016-05-11_142748335_5EF4E_iOS.jpg
2016-05-11_142804802_75C4C_iOS.jpg

These suckers are heavy... gotta be nearly 50 lbs...
 
I'm going to crack it open and take a look myself... although I suspect the issue may be hard to troubleshoot without knowing how to talk to the logic board in the unit, as it feels like it's failing some sort off internal check as charging starts.

I say this because the failure mode was such that when charging started, the voltage on the dash was displayed correctly, and the current would start to ramp up towards 40A, and then would drop back to 0 and the contactors would click open. It would then try to charge again 5 seconds later, and fail in the same way. After 3 tries of this it would give up and display an error on the IC display.

So I'd guess the analog circuitry is not performing up to some threshold, and the brains are shutting it down.

Failing any obvious way to fix it myself, I may see if I can have it repaired... or consider selling it to someone who wants to take a crack at it.

Those are indeed coolant pipes. The bottom if the unit is one giant heat sink/coolant manifold. I suspect that accounts for a good portion of the weight.
 
  • Like
Reactions: apacheguy
I'm responding to my own previous post (and bolded the relevant item) below to remind folks of context regarding my latest development:

Inspecting the charger that was returned to me, it is evident that the cover had been removed... the "tick marks" inked on to the fasteners during assembly were no longer in their correct positions. This recalled he conversation where I was told they wanted to remove a part of the charger.

Before doing anything further I called the Service Center. They admit it was opened, but said nothing was removed, it was in order to:

- Identify the failed charger

- Keep straight which of the two it was during re-installation

The first reason seems slightly odd to me. Only the master charger is utilized during <40A charging (which was the failure scenario), so it would seem that was the obvious failure. I'd also expect that the error codes thrown, diagnostic quereies via CAN, etc... would identify this. But OK, perhaps they have to crack the lid to get to a diagnostic port or something.

The second reason makes no sense at all. As you can see in the pics I posted they affixed a big red piece of tape to the unit with my VIN identifer on it. How hard is it to write "BAD" on a piece of tape so you don't get the two mixed up?

Seems odd.


@apacheguy yes I did. The grand total was ~$382. This was a few plumbing parts to connect the coolant loop in place of the second charger, and the shunts necessary to me installed in the HVJB. Most of it was labor to perform the swap and reprogram the unit.

Interestingly, when they were to return the car to me, I told them i wanted the faulty charger returned as well, originally the front desk woman thought the charger was was still installed, but simply disconnected, and thus it would still be in my car.

The next day i got a call from one of the folks at the service center, telling me that the scheduling person was incorrect, and that he had my charger, but was being told that corporate policy did not allow the return of the failed unit to me, as it is a "restricted item". I explained that I was not asking to purchase said "restricted item", but that it was already mine, and that they had retained it contrary to my instruction.

Upon my insistence I receive my own property back, I was told the unit would have to be opened, and a part removed first, and/or the unit defaced to remove the serial #. I made it clear he was authorized to do no such thing.

They have since agreed to return it, and would have done so today if logistics hadn't gotten in the way.

I am going to see about either having the unit repaired, or selling it to someone who may care to do so.