Driver's door suddenly working intermittently.

[bcsteeve]

Last night I went to get into the car and it didn't open on the first try. It worked on the 2nd and I didn't give it much thought.

But today it happened several times, and at one point I thought I was locked out because it failed 6 or 7 pulls in a row. Eventually it opened. When I got home I gave it a few tests and it failed once then worked half a dozen times in a row, although with a longer lag than normal (ie. I have to pull, pa.use for a half second, and then pull open).

I am 4-5 hours from a service centre so I thought I'd post here and see if there's some easy fix that others have come up with.

 

[speedy]

Search for 'door microswitch'...

Or look at this

 

[bcsteeve]

Thanks! Not sure it is the same thing though. A severed wire will never work. Mine works intermittently. Also, I can always hear the mechanism, it just doesn't always allow the door to open. I suspect it is mechanical rather than electrical.

 

[Skotty]

The Model S door handles are poorly engineered and prone to failure. Tesla needs to either assign some top engineering talent to rework the design for reliability or they need to scrap the extending door handles altogether for a simpler design. If the latter, the Tesla design teams should have to drive up to Detroit for a day and let the CEO's of the Big 3 personally give them spankings.

 

[bcsteeve]

Because the "big 3" ( you may notice that the term ha really not been accurate for quite some time) always get designs right? There's a few tens of thousands of Neons with both head gaskets that might take exception to that.

 

[speedy]

Thanks! Not sure it is the same thing though. A severed wire will never work. Mine works intermittently.

It could be your wire is hanging by a thread and not fully severed yet. But if you say you hear the solenoid each time and the door just doesn't open, then I would agree it's probably more mechanical...

 

[bcsteeve]

Yes, definately hear an actuator of some sort every time. The door physically doesn't open every time. Come to think of it, this may have happened on a rear door too. A friend's kid was back there and couldn't get out. Assumed it was child locks but those weren't on. A few days ago my kid had the same problem but got it after a couple of tries. I dismissed it as something they were doing weird.