First day problems cost me a garage door and sheet metal damage

[outermagnolian]

Pulled my brand new Model X into the garage, shaking my head at the warning message already on the dashboard saying that "Autopilot cameras not available" but offering the tepid encouragement that they "Features may be restored on a later drive." Happy day one.

I decided, after some encouragement from other owners, that the cameras might need 100 miles of highway driving to "calibrate" before being ready. Argh, but OK. Went to buy groceries, trying not to look at the little yellow warning triangle again.

Coming home, I prepared to back into my garage but hey - the backup camera didn't come onto the screen. I flicked from one screen to the next hoping it was somehow my fault, but nothing worked. I put the vehicle in "Park" and re-started it, hoping the problem would go away. No such luck. Now I was faced with backing into my garage without the camera, and with the side-view mirrors insisting on tilting downward for safety. Blind, apart from over-the-shoulder 1950's style driving, I backed slowly into the same space I've backed into for the past 22 years.

As I edged into the garage, BAM. I saw in the rear-view mirror that my garage door had been activated by the Tesla HomeLink connection and had begun closing while I was pulling in. It got halfway down before smashing into the top of the little spoiler on the deck lid, creasing the new sheet metal and bending the garage door far enough that it would neither open or close. The tires had not quite crossed the line of the garage door so they couldn't trip the usual safety sensor that would have stopped the door on its own. The door just dropped into place to meet the car, nice and not-so-neat.

My garage remotes were not in the car. I was sure as hell not using the touch screen, looking over my shoulder at half a mile an hour. I did have HomeLink set up in the car to close the door automatically once I was 70 feet away.

I don't have 50 miles on the car yet and it's trashed the garage door while hurting itself. Backup camera would not have even helped in this instance but it's out of service on its second attempt to help me reverse. Going through the car for my belongings I found two of the plastic chrome coverings still in place, one hanging pretty loose from the falcon wing door. Clearly this was rushed at every stage of its brief life.

The best part? The car is a gift for my wife who gets home in an hour. Surprise!!!

I'm asking them to take it back and fix my *sugar*. Day two would not be an exercise in trust and after crushing itself with a door, I sure as HELL am not going to play with autopilot on the highway...

Lesson learned.

 

[CyberGus]

I really don't understand why 2020 isn't circled in red on the Mayan calendar.

Sorry for your troubles, but hey it can only get better from here, right?

 

[gaswalla]

there are SO many horror stories with the automatic garage function. Even folks that have owned the car for years. If it's any consolation, this would have happened eventually to you - just bad luck to happen on day one
Anyways, turn that silly function off... or spend some time reading the stories and make an informed decision otherwise

 

[Soey22]

Wow sorry to hear. I learned the hard way not have have my trailer hitch connected when I have home link to auto summon out of the detached garage. First the car try’s to backup thinking the garage is open. Once it detects it isn’t then it activates the garage to open. But when you have the hitch the car doesn’t know and that extra bit sticking out made a dent in my garage.

 

[rush6410]

"Autopilot cameras not available" but offering the tepid encouragement that they "Features may be restored on a later drive."

This can occur if the vehicle cannot validate the calibration of your cameras. Little known fact, if the condition persists within the same day with multiple drives, it will take a deep sleep action at night for it to fully reset. The thumbwheel reset or any other normal reset will not resolve it.

the backup camera didn't come onto the screen

This is not normal behavior. The reverse camera should initiate immediately upon placing X in reverse. While in reverse if you exit the screen, you have to manually bring it back up through the camera selection from the Entertainment menu. Once in the camera mode, you have to select the orange cone icon for the reverse function to display again. Or, it is easier to just toggle between park and reverse again. If none of those actions do not work, than you have a more serious firmware issue and should report it immediately. Especially if you tried the thumbwheel reset and was still occurring. Tesla in that situation would diagnose and recommend actions to resolve. They can diagnose those issue remotely.

side-view mirrors insisting on tilting downward

This is a selection to tilt or not. Your choice would save to your profile for all future drives. If the reverse sensors and camera is working, the tilt downward is nice to have. But, I could see where not having the reverse functions working, the tilt would be detrimental. You can turn it off with a menu selection if you find yourself in the same situation.

I did have HomeLink set up in the car to close the door automatically once I was 70 feet away

Homelink does not work with an auto open or close when you back into the garage. If that is your norm, then turn the auto open and close option off. You can still manually initiate via the display when needed. In your situation, where your X considers your exact location is critical for the auto function. Typically the location resets at home while you are in park. It will consider that spot as your garage for the next drive. If for some reason it thought your garage location was outside of the garage, in front by x amount of feet, it thought you were backing out of the non existent garage initiating the door close command when in fact you were backing into the garage and shouldn't have initiated any command at all. So, it was completely confused in your scenario. I have been using homelink auto open and close functions for the last 3.5 years without a single issue. But, I pull in nose first and back out. If you only back into your garage as the norm, my recommendation is to turn the auto setting off.

It does take a bit of time to learn all of the behaviors and settings. Your X is a computer on wheels. I would recommend spending some time in park going through all the settings and understanding how they all function.

 

[Twiglett]

You were braver than me. I didn't enable auto garage door for a week or two.
I figured I had enough to learn.
Now I recognize the sound it makes before closing the door so can hit the button - or know to look for the alert and cancel it before it even tries, especially when I see the door is already open.
Also had to train the family. With my old car they would see me coming down the road and helpfully open the garage door for me. Now they don't bother because it isn't helpful

 

[FatherTo1]

You were braver than me. I didn't enable auto garage door for a week or two.
I figured I had enough to learn.
Now I recognize the sound it makes before closing the door so can hit the button - or know to look for the alert and cancel it before it even tries, especially when I see the door is already open.
Also had to train the family. With my old car they would see me coming down the road and helpfully open the garage door for me. Now they don't bother because it isn't helpful

Sad day one story. Sorry to hear about the mishap. What did the wife have to say about it?

I wondered too if OP heard the chime that signals the Homelink countdown. I've used Homelink for a year without any issues but have not backed into the garage.

 

[mswlogo]

I knew on day one the automatic HomeLink was asking for trouble.

Tip for day 2: Don’t even think of playing with summon.

 

[Mustangfld]

I seen this problem with my Model 3 before as well. I recommend adding a second set of sensors higher up to prevent this from happening. Not that expensive or hard to wire in and do.

 

[ThomasD]

Can you move the sensors up to about12 inches

 

[Singularity]

Not totally related, but on my first day home with the X I had the garage remote in my pocket. I parked, hit the trunk open button on screen, and as I went to get out of the car I accidentally triggered the garage door close. The rising spoiler and garage door crashed together with a sickening crunch. Now I had a choice - try to drive forward? Open or close the garage? I ended up opening the garage door while putting pressure on the trunk hatch to get things separated. The gouged spoiler remains a painful reminder to this day, though the sting has lessened over the years. And yes, it was my wife’s new car. I feel your pain, and hope she is as forgiving as mine was!

More related, I have had a phantom close (nose in) on our other Tesla once. I reversed it with the onscreen button before it hit the glass roof. I reset the home location and it never happened again.

 

[mxnym]

Can you move the sensors up to about12 inches

Except that is a safety and liability nightmare. The sensors are not for detecting cars, they are for detecting children. If a child were to easily crawl/lay under your improperly installed sensor and be crushed, you could be sued for not having the safety systems installed properly. You COULD buy a second set that you install to detect the car, but there's another problem here...

It got halfway down before smashing into the top of the little spoiler on the deck lid, creasing the new sheet metal and bending the garage door far enough that it would neither open or close.

The opener should NOT have bent the door. The garage door opener safety sensor that backs off based on torque is not correctly calibrated (it should bounce back up without bending the door even if it hits a 2x4 laying flat on the ground through the opening, and that would be far less contact surface). If it had been correctly calibrated, then you would not have experienced significant damage. In fact, Tesla just recently changed the software to where it hides the HomeLink button when you go in reverse under some circumstances, and while trying to work around this with a foggy mind, I accidentally went ahead and hit close before I started backing out of my garage. The door hit the spoiler and went back up because of the torque sensor. The only damage sustained here was minor scratches (so minor they would likely buff out) in the spoiler's paint.

Those are only the problems with the door opener. Then there is this:

and with the side-view mirrors insisting on tilting downward for safety.

I'm sorry you had a bad day, I really am, but who on earth manages to program homelink but doesn't manage to find the setting to disable the automatic tilting of the mirrors? Maybe you wanted them to tilt by default when you went through all of the settings initially, and that's all well and good, but I don't think you subsequently forgot the setting exists on day 1. I'm guessing that the real problem was that you got flustered. I get flustered all the time. Almost always a bad plan.

 

[AlexF1]

The auto garage function is quite flaky. I had a similar incidence when it opened my garage as I was driving off from home. When I came back, found a police notice saying they found my garage door open and helped to close it. Turned the functionality off ever since.

 

[zecar]

Damn. Does this mean I will need to open my garage manually when I send my car out to earn sweet robotaxi dollars?

 

[rush6410]

Unless you fully understand how homelink works, do not put it in auto open/close. Your car does not communicate with your home/garage. It uses a point location based on where you parked last when at home location. It assumes, when at home location, you are parked in your garage if you are in "park" for a bit of time. When you start to reverse, it starts to count down then sends the command. The command is singular. It does not know if the door is open or closed. Always monitor the homelink icon and indications as it transitions through the process. In addition, commands are not sent if you back in to or pull nose first out of your garage.
Assuming my statements are correct, if you park in a location other than your garage at home, It zeros that location as your garage and start the count from there. Consider this scenario:
You back into your driveway and park short of your garage. The X resets your garage location based on point location. Some time later, you get in your X with garage open and back into your garage. Since you are looking at the mirrors or behind you, you do not notice the X start to count down then sends the command. Bam! Cussing starts. Garage and X damaged. I'll never use that thing ever again. Must be a fault of the X and obviously if I can't trust that, I'll never use auto pilot.

 

[outermagnolian]

The verdict is in. They know that the same signal can either close or open the door - there is no known “state” as programmers call it. The system just hopes that the door is closed when you get home, and It sends a signal that might open it. It might also drop the door onto somebody’s head if they’ve opened it to play, or clean, or just move in and out.

Great engineers anticipate all the possibilities. Good ones overlook one sometimes, then rush back in to correct it. The rest blame the user.

Today they blamed me.

 

[brkaus]

The verdict is in. They know that the same signal can either close or open the door - there is no known “state” as programmers call it. The system just hopes that the door is closed when you get home, and It sends a signal that might open it. It might also drop the door onto somebody’s head if they’ve opened it to play, or clean, or just move in and out.

Great engineers anticipate all the possibilities. Good ones overlook one sometimes, then rush back in to correct it. The rest blame the user.

Today they blamed me.

yes. HomeLink sucks. Lots of people here suggest not using the auto function. Yet, many people here do continue to use it and find it quite useful. So... personal choice I guess.

For what it’s worth, I scratched the back of my S with the garage door my 2nd day of ownership. And I was not using the auto function. Ugh.

 

[brkaus]

I seen this problem with my Model 3 before as well. I recommend adding a second set of sensors higher up to prevent this from happening. Not that expensive or hard to wire in and do.

how did you do this? The door will not accept a second set of sensors per chamberlain.

Can you move the sensors up to about12 inches

code requires 6” or less. I’d have to look up the exact range. Would not be good if they were moved up and someone is injured. Yes, unlikely... but...

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

This is an excellent reminder to people not to use the automatic garage door opener when you have a single code garage door.

There is too big of a risk of things getting reversed from what you want. ​

 

[zecar]

It's strange that garage doors are not installed with double safety eyes. The current low set for small children and small dogs. A higher set to see a car. I suspect the garage door industry is not interested in preventing car to door damage.

All good home automation system implementations know garage door status. I have a tilt sensor on my door.