Exploding Passenger Side Mirror

[billadoff@comc]

On Wednesday, November 30, 2022, the passenger side mirror on our Tesla 3 exploded.

We were driving 25 mph in a residential neighborhood and heard a loud explosion. We stopped and looked around and no one was around us. My wife said “the mirror’s gone!” We got our and the mirror was completely destroyed and dangling from the wires. The glass of the mirror was completely shattered into little cracked pieces and the covering was scattered around in a ten-foot radius. There were no marks or scratches on the white cover and no indication of anything hitting us. we took pictures when we got home and brought it to Cherry Hill, NJ Tesla for repair. They replaced the mirror and charged us $600. They said we had to take it up with Customer Service, but we have had no luck with the phone number they gave us or with trying to contact you on the website.

We looked up exploding mirrors and found a number of reports online of this happening. It has to be a defect in the glass or with the wiring, but this wasn’t our fault and could have been a dangerous situation. If my wife’s window had been opened, she could have been hit with the flying parts (which hit the car so hard it made two dents) and it could have hit some one walking by if there had been anyone out at the time.

The situation needs to be addressed, and we need to be reimbursed.

This is our second Tesla in three years and I am so dissatisfied with the service and lack of ability to talk to Customer Service that it will probably be our last Tesla.

I have not found a way to contact customer service to register my complaint. Has anyone had this issue and do you have any suggestions

 

[nate704]

Do you see the big dent on the black door/window trim?
Something may have hit the mirror and hit the trim? or force the mirror to hit the trim?

 

[billadoff@comc]

Yes, there are also to dings on the door as well. They were caused the the mirror swinging and hitting the door and the window when the mirror exploded. I can only tell you they were not there before this occurred.

 

[Gauss Guzzler]

You crashed into something. Sorry to be so blunt.

It doesn't matter if you didn't see what you crashed into. You crashed into something with 100% certainty. Maybe it was a dog, a deer, a truck, a building, an alien spaceship or...? But whatever it was, you crashed into it.

 

[nate704]

You crashed into something. Sorry to be so blunt.

It doesn't matter if you didn't see what you crashed into. You crashed into something with 100% certainty. Maybe it was a dog, a deer, a truck, a building, an alien spaceship or...? But whatever it was, you crashed into it.

I agree with this.
If this was explosion from inside, the internal parts and wires will look damaged/burnt, and there is nothing inside the mirror assembly to explode to make the damage like this.
something hit the mirror that forced the mirror folding and hitting the black window trim.

 

[billadoff@comc]

I did not hit anything to hit. The housing did not have a scratch on it. The tempered glass shattered. You can look at these two posts that this can happen - exploding side mirror and

Exploding passenger side mirror

Today my girlfriend and I were driving down a residential street and all of a sudden the passenger side mirror exploded. There were no other cars, motorcycles, no mail boxes or birds. I immediately pulled over and inspected the broken side mirror the mirror was hanging on by the wiring with...

community.cartalk.com

 

[KenC]

That's totally wild. Can't even imagine how that could happen without an impact. Even the mirror cup being cracked like that is totally weird. Is there any evidence of an explosion on the inside? Impact evidence on the outside? Ice buildup? Weird. Good luck figuring out what happened.

 

[Soul Surfer]

Looking at these photos (thank you for that), it really appears as though the mirror had been struck by an object. Do you recall how fast you were traveling at? Bear in mind that if the object was travelling towards you at a high rate of speed, this is further magnified by your speed as well and possibly appearing as though it happened on its own. Just my 2¢.

 

[jjrandorin]

Yes, there are also to dings on the door as well. They were caused the the mirror swinging and hitting the door and the window when the mirror exploded. I can only tell you they were not there before this occurred.

You seem to be using the fact that you dont see a dent on the housing as definitive proof that nothing hit the mirror housing, and sorry I dont agree with that at all.

We can either believe that the mirror spontaneously exploded with no other sign of explosion, or we can follow occams razor ( the simplest answer is usually correct) and say that something hit the mirror housing causing it to swing into the window frame hard enough to cause a dent.

 

[Gauss Guzzler]

Look, it's 100% certain that you crashed into something. 100%

The TMC thread you linked to refers to someone whose mirror glass was not fully snapped into the ball socket by the factory. It popped out and banged against the door as it dangled from the defroster wire. Nothing broke or "exploded".

The Cartalk thread you linked to includes people writing that they thought their mirror had somehow "exploded" but then they realized that they had crashed into a parked car or something.

Yes, tempered glass can crumble with seeming spontaneity, but it does not "explode". It can expand ever so slightly in the process of cracking and could conceivably produce a hairline fracture in some very tightly surrounding structure, but there is no such structure tightly constraining the glass here. And if there were, it would only have a microscopic fracture in the most extreme case imaginable.

 

[The_Observer]

I do not reasonably believe your side mirror damage would be caused by an explosion from the mirror itself. It's most likely an impact with some sort of object.

I don't see any sort of burning damage to the wiring and the plastic housing of the internals, and if an explosion were to cause that much damage to the mirror housing, I would expect the shockwaves to cause some sort of damage to the passenger door glass as well.

 

[BigT3x]

The situation needs to be addressed and you need to be reimbursed... lmao no.

Look, sometimes *sugar* happens. Maybe it was a meteorite? Who knows. But you aren't getting reimbursed by anyone. Move on.

 

[Vines]

On Wednesday, November 30, 2022, the passenger side mirror on our Tesla 3 exploded.

We were driving 25 mph in a residential neighborhood and heard a loud explosion. We stopped and looked around and no one was around us. My wife said “the mirror’s gone!” We got our and the mirror was completely destroyed and dangling from the wires. The glass of the mirror was completely shattered into little cracked pieces and the covering was scattered around in a ten-foot radius. There were no marks or scratches on the white cover and no indication of anything hitting us. we took pictures when we got home and brought it to Cherry Hill, NJ Tesla for repair. They replaced the mirror and charged us $600. They said we had to take it up with Customer Service, but we have had no luck with the phone number they gave us or with trying to contact you on the website.

We looked up exploding mirrors and found a number of reports online of this happening. It has to be a defect in the glass or with the wiring, but this wasn’t our fault and could have been a dangerous situation. If my wife’s window had been opened, she could have been hit with the flying parts (which hit the car so hard it made two dents) and it could have hit some one walking by if there had been anyone out at the time.

The situation needs to be addressed, and we need to be reimbursed.

This is our second Tesla in three years and I am so dissatisfied with the service and lack of ability to talk to Customer Service that it will probably be our last Tesla.

I have not found a way to contact customer service to register my complaint. Has anyone had this issue and do you have any suggestions

Likely there are some 10 year olds in that neighborhood who have fun throwing rocks at cars.

I agree with others 100% this was caused by an exterior force hitting the mirror from the front of the car. If there was any kind of internal explosion, there would be combustion residue, burned parts and the internals would be broken. The internal plastic parts seemed to sustain only secondary damage.

Notice that you don't have all the pieces of the housing, and the plastic fracture pattern most prevalent on the leading edge, right where it would be if you hit something (or if it hit you while you were traveling)

Move on and take a different road home perhaps, this one seemed to have unknown dangers. Look at the size of the dent in your trim! This is a clear result of impact from the front area pushing things backwards.

 

[ThomasD]

Maybe someone was pissing around with a pellet gun in the neighborhood

 

[Xenoilphobe]

Maybe this guy did it..

 

[dusty22]

That dent in the trim could have been caused by a bullet that had spent most of its energy penetrating the mirror assembly. I would report the incident to the police department that covers that area. They may have reports from other motorists if someone was firing random shots at passing autos. It would have been better if you had shown the damage to the police before the repair though.

 

[WyoDude]

Wouldn’t the side cams catch a video of this with the bottom of the side mirror in frame?

 

[nstig8]

Wouldn’t the side cams catch a video of this with the bottom of the side mirror in frame?

Yeah, but they'd also show whatever this person hit that caused the damage so that video was not included.

 

[techzelle]

There are no explosives in the mirror. That's just impact damage.
Could have been a rock, golf ball, or any other reasonably hard object.

Just pay to fix it and move on.

There is no conspiracy.

 

[karkrazy]

Agree with others - golf ball or similarly hard objects. There is nothing in a side mirror that can cause it to “explode” (the physics and chemistry don’t add up).