Drive train replacements (results/share_impact)?

[Zythryn]

The only reason the drivetrain seems loud is because the car is just so quiet! In an ICE car, the engine noise would block out the drivetrain noise. This is a very small problem as it is just a noise, not "failure" of any part of the car.

No. Well, yes, in general, but no in this particular case.
The "milling noise" referred to in Edmunds and by others (Drive Unit IV: The Milling - 2013 Tesla Model S Long-Term Road Test), is loudest in the 22-27mph range. It can be heard 50 feet away and is very loud if the windows are open.

It has gotten to the point where I am embarrassed to drive through our neighborhood.
However, just because it has happened to one of my cars twice (replaced at 18,500 miles and scheduled to be swapped out a second time around 38,000 miles.

Our other.car has not had the issue as of 15,500 miles.

I do agree, it is not a failure. It won't strand me somewhere and Tesla is swapping them out due to an annoyance factor.
I also very very very much appreciate hearing from people that are NOT experiencing this and are over 15-20k miles.

As an owner, reservation holder, and investor, I need to hear from Tesla:
What the frequency of this is?
If they have a solution complete, or in the works?
What will be the cost to the end user out of warrantee?
Can we expect the same frequency with the Model X?

This is a cost and image issue for Tesla and it is critical they get this under control.

 

[dsm363]

Actually this one started with a picture of a slide from tmc connect posted on this site without explanation or mention of extremely small sample size. Had to search for that piece of info. I believe it was irresponsible of moderators to leave that one while they remove so many posts to snipiness. I feel like putting a slide on here of 100 %satisfaction without mention that it's based on a survey of one, myself

Your first post in this thread simply said

Saw picture of slide tesla live and posts here and MF article now with 14.8% failure rate. Wondered where this came from and found a post that it is from voluntary survey of 256 cars. Not significant number in a voluntary survey age of cars not indicated, was a fix put in place on subsequent cars? Hope tesla will comment on this in official way, maybe on forum. Obviously they know the number. My own car 22000 miles no issue

and didn't link to or post that picture. I assume by 'tesla live' you meant TMC Connect and the Plug In America survey. I don't think it was irresponsible for the mods to leave that up without mentioning the survey. We don't go around and edit people's posts for typos, bad grammar or issues that might lead to confusion normally. You could have sent a PM to whoever posted that asking them where they got that picture or to clarify it.

 

[Hogfighter]

I believe that what is important to understand from an investor's standpoint is that 'drivetrain replacement' does not mean that Tesla throws the old ones away. They get sent back to the factory, tested, the defective part replaced, then put back in service on another car.

The figure '$10-15K for replacement' infers TSLA takes a $10-15k hit on every swap, which is simply not the case. Additionally, they make modifications to the drivetrain parts all the time, and quietly replace the defective parts as the old drivetrains come through the factory.

Although conceivably a small hit on the bottom line, considering this is the first car they've built from the ground up I'd say they've done an outstanding job from a reliability standpoint.

 

[vgrinshpun]

I believe that issues associated with drivetrain replacements might be moderately chalenging to resolve, and that the owners should have an explanation from TM on what are the root cause and the fix, when both are finalized.

I also believe that this issue will have negligible impact on the TM financilas. The recent Motley Fool article with the caricaturistically overblown, screaming title "Will a Major Drive Unit Problem Decimate Tesla Motors, Itc.?" reminded me similar piece of FUD published at Seeking Alfa by another author, John Petersen. It also had crescendo level screaming title: "Why Tesla's 'Not A Recall' Victory Will Crush Q1 Earnings." In that article the esteemed author, who is an accountant by trade, proclaimed that retrofit of the underbody titanium shields for existing fleet will cost TM $20-60M. The total cost, of course, turned out 10 to 30 times less, approximately $2M. The only things that were crushed were assortment of road concrete blocks, loose alternators and trailer hitch adapters.

I predict that similar to the undercarriage protection, the drivetrain issue is moderately challenging to solve from the engineering and R&D perspective, but once optimal solution is found, the cost of the materials/labor for a fix is likely to be trivial. We just need to be patient to let this thing run its course. It is simply preposterous to suggest (MF article) that cost for the fix will be around $15K per car; I am willing to bet that it will be in low hundreds of dollars or less, and when applied to cars exibiting the problem (even assuming very high 10% of the fleet) will be very small.

While as an owner I am not entirely happy that my drive unit was replaced at around 7,500 miles, as an investor I am not worried a bit.

 

[pairtrader]

I just had my drive train replaced yesterday. It was making a high pitched noise at low speed when accelerating, as others have noted. My mileage was 12,000km (7,500 miles). I agree on all points about those articles being misleading. It's my understanding that if this happened beyond the warranty period, they would fix the noise rather than replacing the entire unit. The engineers want these units to run tests and eliminate the problem. Also, the noise had no impact whatsoever on the performance of my car. It was just annoying. I took my car in Monday afternoon and picked it up Tuesday afternoon. Another great customer service experience.

 

[glhs272]

My personal experience with this issue on my car leads me to believe that Tesla does in fact now have a solution/fix to the noise (milling sound) issue(s). The latest refurbished units have had the fix applied to them. I would expect that cars built today and in the last few months have the fix/upgrade applied to them and will not be an issue going forward. I am basing this on the refurbished unit that was installed in April of this year. The differences between this new unit versus the original unit and the fact that the new unit has been operating problem free for almost twice as many miles as the original unit when it first started showing symptoms of the noise. Time will tell... but so far so good.

 

[JRP3]

The "milling noise" referred to in Edmunds and by others (Drive Unit IV: The Milling - 2013 Tesla Model S Long-Term Road Test), is loudest in the 22-27mph range. It can be heard 50 feet away and is very loud if the windows are open.

I just had my drive train replaced yesterday. It was making a high pitched noise at low speed when accelerating, as others have noted.

Are these the same noises, and is there a good recording of them anywhere? I'm talking to a guy who designs and builds high power motor controllers and a good recording of the sound may help to figure out if it's a mechanical problem in the gear reduction or motor, or an electrical problem in the inverter or motor.

 

[mknox]

I am basing this on the refurbished unit that was installed in April of this year. The differences between this new unit versus the original unit and the fact that the new unit has been operating problem free for almost twice as many miles as the original unit when it first started showing symptoms of the noise. Time will tell... but so far so good.

I had a drive unit replacement last October with about 14,000 miles on the car. This was for the loud inverter "hum" noise whenever power or regen was being applied. I now have about 31,000 miles and it is still as silent as can be except that I now have a little bit of a "clunk" going from power to regen and back. It is not really of much concern to me, but Service did look at it earlier this week and said it is normal. I never did have the "clunk" with the first drive unit.

 

[Todd Burch]

I had a drive unit replacement last October with about 14,000 miles on the car. This was for the loud inverter "hum" noise whenever power or regen was being applied. I now have about 31,000 miles and it is still as silent as can be except that I now have a little bit of a "clunk" going from power to regen and back. It is not really of much concern to me, but Service did look at it earlier this week and said it is normal. I never did have the "clunk" with the first drive unit.

Assuming by "clunk" you mean more a feeling than a sound, then that's gear slop, and yes it's normal.

 

[JRP3]

To sum up from the conference call there are at least two separate drive train noise issues, a loose cable that vibrates against the housing, and a tolerance issue in the gear reduction that needs to be shimmed. The misdiagnosed cable problem is what caused multiple drive train replacements in some cars, including Edmunds.

 

[EarlyAdopter]

Deepak, Elon, and JB just confirmed on the earnings call a few minutes ago that the part that is failing is very inexpensive, basically a shim inside the drivetrain, but in order to expedite getting affected owners back on the road quickly they've been swapping out the whole unit. New cars have had a fix in place for a while. They are developing a repair-in-place procedure to fix remaining cars that develop the problem at the Service Center as quickly as swapping out the drivetrain, but without having to ship the whole unit back.

The analogy Elon gave is "Imagine if every time you had a gasket go bad on an internal combustion engine you replaced the whole engine. That's what we're doing now. In the future, we'll just replace the gasket."

Deepak mentioned because the part is so inexpensive, their warranty reserves remain unaffected.

Tempest, meet teapot.

 

[lolachampcar]

My favorite quote from that whole exchange was
"We are at it hard core until MS failures/quality are 10X better than ICE"

 

[yobigd20]

I had a drive unit replacement last October with about 14,000 miles on the car. This was for the loud inverter "hum" noise whenever power or regen was being applied. I now have about 31,000 miles and it is still as silent as can be except that I now have a little bit of a "clunk" going from power to regen and back. It is not really of much concern to me, but Service did look at it earlier this week and said it is normal. I never did have the "clunk" with the first drive unit.

Ditto. Mine was replaced to for same exact reason. The new drive unit also has a clunk when going back and forth between power and regen. At least that whirring hum is gone though.

 

[mknox]

Assuming by "clunk" you mean more a feeling than a sound, then that's gear slop, and yes it's normal.

Yes, exactly. Although interestingly, the P85 loaner I had with about 7,000 miles on it had the "clunk" much worse than mine. You could not only feel it, but hear it "click" as you went form accel to decel and vice versa.

 

[yobigd20]

Yes, exactly. Although interestingly, the P85 loaner I had with about 7,000 miles on it had the "clunk" much worse than mine. You could not only feel it, but hear it "click" as you went form accel to decel and vice versa.

Opposite. I don't feel it at all. But it's VERY audible.

 

[Khaihon]

Are these the same noises, and is there a good recording of them anywhere? I'm talking to a guy who designs and builds high power motor controllers and a good recording of the sound may help to figure out if it's a mechanical problem in the gear reduction or motor, or an electrical problem in the inverter or motor.

Hi everyone,

I have a RAV4EV and I post over on the myrav4ev.com forum. My motor was making some wacky noises and I had it replaced in April. Not sure if this is the same noise characterized as the "Milling" noise, but here it is below:

RAV4EV WTF Sound - YouTube

Has anyone experienced this noise in their Model S? Mine might be an exaggerated sound since I strapped the digital recorder under the hood and dampened out the road noise with some dense form. From the description of some others here (most audible with windows rolled down, loudest between 22-27mph), it sounds like it might be the same. Can anyone else chime in?

 

[Matias]

Deepak, Elon, and JB just confirmed on the earnings call a few minutes ago that the part that is failing is very inexpensive, basically a shim inside the drivetrain, but in order to expedite getting affected owners back on the road quickly they've been swapping out the whole unit. New cars have had a fix in place for a while. They are developing a repair-in-place procedure to fix remaining cars that develop the problem at the Service Center as quickly as swapping out the drivetrain, but without having to ship the whole unit back.

The analogy Elon gave is "Imagine if every time you had a gasket go bad on an internal combustion engine you replaced the whole engine. That's what we're doing now. In the future, we'll just replace the gasket."

Deepak mentioned because the part is so inexpensive, their warranty reserves remain unaffected.

Tempest, meet teapot.

To my understanding, there are different type of noises on different speeds. Are they all caused by this same problem?

 

[JRP3]

Hi everyone,

I have a RAV4EV and I post over on the myrav4ev.com forum. My motor was making some wacky noises and I had it replaced in April. Not sure if this is the same noise characterized as the "Milling" noise, but here it is below:

RAV4EV WTF Sound - YouTube

Has anyone experienced this noise in their Model S? Mine might be an exaggerated sound since I strapped the digital recorder under the hood and dampened out the road noise with some dense form. From the description of some others here (most audible with windows rolled down, loudest between 22-27mph), it sounds like it might be the same. Can anyone else chime in?

Thanks for posting that. To me it sounds very much like an inverter noise, and I ran it by my inverter building friend and he agrees, though he can't be 100% sure of course. He thinks it might be torque ripples when the inverter oscillates between current values, or it could be a failure to properly estimate the rotor resistance. Both conditions should cause reduced torque to some degree, so comparison dyno runs of a car with and without the noise would help pinpoint the problem as being inverter related. Of course neither of those issues is what Elon described as the drive train problem so the noise in that recording may be an unrelated issue.

 

[Al Sherman]

I have had the humming for a few months. If the drivetrain isn't going to fail; can I just wait a bit and live with it 'til they come up with a fix that doesn't include the regen clunking?