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Charge port door not opening?

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rhino2627

rhino2627

Member
Mar 31, 2016
38
9
Elmhurst, IL
#1
Since my car was about a week old I've noticed that the charge door was not opening smoothly. It would slow down midway through opening. No issues when closing.

Then a couple of days ago the door began stopping completely when halfway open, I have to manually open it the rest of the way. Today the charge port light turned red.

I already have a mobile service appointment for Friday for an unrelated issue and I'll have them take a look at it then. Has anyone else had this issue?
 
#2
Super old thread but the only one i could find. OP has not been online in quite some time. But, I’m having the issue where the charge port door now cannot open at all or close at all. No clue what happened, and when I manually close it, it won’t close all the way flush.

I put in for service, but it’s a month out :O. Was wondering if maybe it is something i can possibly tweak to get it working again. Anyone have ideas?
 
#3
Do you hear the motor trying to open/close the door? Before service replaced our charge port, very slightly tugging on the door while triggering the motor would get it to catch and open the rest of the way.

One trick we did was press on the brake to get the car to try to close the door and get it into a state where it believes the door is closed. This makes it so that when you toggle the door (via app or charger button or on screen), it'll be ready to open. Try to avoid opening by pressing on the charge port door sensor as it'll be tricky to slightly tug and press at the same time.
 
#6
andrew1039 said:
that sucks, sry to hear that
There is a manual cable release in the trunk that will release a stuck charging wand, might want to try that if it doesn’t want to unlock to put the wand in for charging
Hopefully it can get you some charging while you wait or go into the service centre
Click to expand...
It’s actually just the plastic door. The locking mechanism is fine. It does suck. It’s easy to manually open and close but I feel like I’m going to break it.
 
#9
M109Rider said:
I’ve had this happen before. It corrected itself the next day.
Not sure what the problem was, but it never came back.
Click to expand...

I had a similar issue, mine was when I clicked the charging wand button it wouldn’t open so I put my finger at the bottom and tried to open manually, as doing that the motor responded and it opened the rest of the way
But with your situation sounds a thought it’s different and may need replacement, hopefully a fix by itself would be nice
 
#16
My charge door needed to be replaced because it wouldn't open on an intermittent basis that became more frequent. Mobile service replaced it under warranty. To prove my case, I took screen shots of my mobile app showing the message "charge door failed to open", each time it happened. Three times within a 2 month period was good enough for them.
 
#17
I had a service request in because on Sat. 9/26 I couldn't get my charge port door to open so I could start charging at home. Tried car screen, app, cable button, neither approach worked. Even did a reboot. My husband also tried everything and had the same result. Requested service appointment which was like a week out. Received the automated kind of message back for a mobile appt shortly after requesting it. Figured with it being a Saturday I wouldn't get a response until Monday and was happy when a tech texted me back on Sunday afternoon.

The tech was very good about communicating by text during that week with me and I had sent him the timing of when it happened and asked what the logs showed. He said based on the timestamps I provided he was able to see that a firmware update was in the process of installing then and it led to unexpected behavior. Said it was a map update. I know when installing firmware version updates you don't want to interrupt it but when I went to charge I hadn't seen any indication that an update of any kind was happening. He said the map update does show on the software page but doesn't present the same prompts as a typical firmware update...more or less occurs in the background when updating maps.

Anyway later that same night we went out to try it again and the charge door opened so I was able to charge. Tesla tech kept in touch via text during the week as my service appt. wasn't until a week after it happened. I charged the car several times before the scheduled appt and what ever the issue was it resolved itself so I was able to have him cancel my appt. Charged a few times since and hasn't repeated.
 
Last edited:
#19
I too have been suffering from this issue, on occasion, over the last year on my 2018 Model 3. Over the last week I have had to manually open and close the charge port while waiting for Tesla service that is still a week out. This morning the charge port decided to work again. I'm going to wait another few days to see if it returns before canceling my mobile service appointment. Sigh.
 
#20
It's kind of a dinky plastic mechanism. There are probably several
different failure modes. There's very likely a couple of limit sensors
in there and some plastic gears. I wonder if vacuuming the heck out
of wherever you can get at would clear any crap out of the (optical?)
sensors and anything else in there. Worth a try?
.
 
Last edited:
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