Contactors opening/closing repeatedly

[Gizmotoy]

My 2013 P85 has, in the past few days, started exhibiting an unusual behavior: when plugged in, but not charging, I can hear the contactors cycling over and over again. It does the characteristic "clack-clack", then about 4 minutes later the single clunk of them opening, a few second pause, then the process repeats. Has anyone observed anything like this before?

Once it starts charging they'll stay closed, and similarly they stay open if the car is unplugged. This only happens when the car is plugged in and waiting to charge.

I tried powering off the vehicle and waiting a few minutes, and I also reset both displays. Anything else I should try?

 

[beatle]

Sounds like this is a firmware problem / feature unless we just happen to have the same kind of fault:

Very active HV contacts

In the past couple weeks, I've noticed the HV battery contacts clicking a lot more than before while my car is plugged in and sitting in the garage - like every few minutes. Before I'd only hear them when starting to charge, or if the 12v battery needed to be topped off. My 12v is only 3...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[GtiMart]

That does sound like the recent software bug that was reported a few versions back. Not everyone was affected however, just a few people. Some have had this problem fixed by the software. For others, I think they had to change the charge port controller, something like that. You might want to look into that. The workaround in the meantime would be to unplug when your car has finished charging.

 

[Lewis88]

Same here, but I believe it's also when uplugged, but not sure.

 

[Gizmotoy]

Darn, thanks for the insights. I was able to schedule a shockingly-fast mobile service for tomorrow, so I'll try to get the latest on this. These devices have a very limited number of open/close cycles (usually in the mid tens of thousands), so it's a lot of wear for our vehicles if it's cycling 100+ times a day.

@GtiMart : Do you know how I can find the discussion of that issue? I searched for "contactors" but didn't really find much.

 

[GtiMart]

The discussion was around the fact that the car could not fall asleep. In fact, it fell asleep and would wake back up a few minutes later. The contactors click when the system disconnects, or reconnects, the high voltage, like when it falls asleep or wakes up.

EDIT: Here: No longer sleeping after 2021.4.11

 

[Gizmotoy]

The discussion was around the fact that the car could not fall asleep. In fact, it fell asleep and would wake back up a few minutes later. The contactors click when the system disconnects, or reconnects, the high voltage, like when it falls asleep or wakes up.

EDIT: Here: No longer sleeping after 2021.4.11

Thank you. I'm reading through this now. We actually had "Energy Saving" Off and "Stay Connected" On, so the vehicle would never sleep anyway. Even in that configuration it would only cycle them after many hours. As part of debugging I changed those settings and the behavior continued, though.

It looks like Tesla hasn't pushed the car an update in a very long time and apparently it's running the latest (no updates pending): 2020.48.37.

 

[Gizmotoy]

2020.48.37 is the newest release available for my vehicle. They see the behavior in the logs and think there might be a software fix, but needed more time to figure it out so they pushed my appointment back a couple days. We'll see.

 

[Lukez]

2020.48.37 is the newest release available for my vehicle. They see the behavior in the logs and think there might be a software fix, but needed more time to figure it out so they pushed my appointment back a couple days. We'll see.

Hey
Did you get a resolution to this? My vehicle is doing the same thing after recently being forced to do a software update from a really only version I was holding onto!

 

[Gizmotoy]

Hey
Did you get a resolution to this? My vehicle is doing the same thing after recently being forced to do a software update from a really only version I was holding onto!

No clear resolution. Tesla leaned heavily on the "are you now or have you ever used a third-party app with the vehicle?" I have used several over the years, so they wanted to try removing those first. I had TeslaFi connected, so I cancelled my account and the problem went away immediately... or so I thought. Several weeks later it started doing it again.

So I changed my account password, which had been Tesla's suggestion if the problem returned. Again, it seemed like there was instant relief for awhile. But I just noticed this weekend that it's doing it again.

So it does seem somehow related to the API given the behavior, but I'm thinking blaming it on a third party was perhaps premature and I probably need to start a new support visit.

 

[Lukez]

No clear resolution. Tesla leaned heavily on the "are you now or have you ever used a third-party app with the vehicle?" I have used several over the years, so they wanted to try removing those first. I had TeslaFi connected, so I cancelled my account and the problem went away immediately... or so I thought. Several weeks later it started doing it again.

So I changed my account password, which had been Tesla's suggestion if the problem returned. Again, it seemed like there was instant relief for awhile. But I just noticed this weekend that it's doing it again.

So it does seem somehow related to the API given the behavior, but I'm thinking blaming it on a third party was perhaps premature and I probably need to start a new support visit.

Thanks for the info. I also have teslafi, it did not happen on my really old version at all. All of last week and this past weekend every time I went in the garage I heard the contactors double click. Finally I decided to hang around the car for awhile and it cycled every few minutes.
Yesterday, I turn hvac off before getting out of the car and it stopped doing it. Today I put the hvac on auto again before closing door and I cannot get it to start doing it again so probably coincidence.
Very strange.

 

[tga]

Blame TeslaFi - 12V battery dying but no warning? and Why are my HV battery contactors cycling every 2 minutes? / General / TeslaFi

 

[Gizmotoy]

Blame TeslaFi - 12V battery dying but no warning? and Why are my HV battery contactors cycling every 2 minutes? / General / TeslaFi

There does seem to be some correlation, but there’s something else at work here too. As mentioned above, I closed my TeslaFi account and then also changed my password. No other third party apps. The contractors are out there cycling right now.