How to get home?

[Klm2klm2]

I am on vacation with my family, 600 miles from home, in my 2020 model X, which is only six months old. I received a message saying “vehicle may not restart; services required“. Took it to the nearest service center. After diagnosing, they ordered the following part.

ASY, DRIVE UNIT, RAVEN, MX
Part #: 1478000-01-D

They say it will be a week or so before the part arrives. I need to be home long before that to go back to work. They offered me a rental car to drive back home. But I’d then drive back to the service center and then drive my repaired car home. That will cost me two days of driving ( a full day of driving each way). That is a heavy price!

Does anyone know if Tesla can offer something better than that? Seems like they could trailer the to my house after it’s repaired. It’s virtually a brand new car and very expensive. Seems like they would want to make me happy. This is my 3rd Tesla I’ve purchase. I think I’m a really good customer and deserving of a little TLC.

Any thoughts?

 

[DCGOO]

I am on vacation with my family, 600 miles from home, in my 2020 model X, which is only six months old. I received a message saying “vehicle may not restart; services required“. Took it to the nearest service center. After diagnosing, they ordered the following part.

ASY, DRIVE UNIT, RAVEN, MX
Part #: 1478000-01-D

They say it will be a week or so before the part arrives. I need to be home long before that to go back to work. They offered me a rental car to drive back home. But I’d then drive back to the service center and then drive my repaired car home. That will cost me two days of driving ( a full day of driving each way). That is a heavy price!

Does anyone know if Tesla can offer something better than that? Seems like they could trailer the to my house after it’s repaired. It’s virtually a brand new car and very expensive. Seems like they would want to make me happy. This is my 3rd Tesla I’ve purchase. I think I’m a really good customer and deserving of a little TLC.

Any thoughts?

Did you ask them if they thought you could make it home in your car (fix it at home)?

 

[roblab]

Sorry for you with your messed up vacation! Being retired, nothing planned, I know that I could spend the two days, but I'm nowhere near where you are. I wonder if some other Tesla dude would mind a mini vacation bringing your car back.

Also, I'm wondering if you're vacationing alone. A second person could stay with the car while you fly home. But it would be a lot of problems for a Tesla employee to drive your car 600 miles and then take a plane back -- or even a bus. I wouldn't wish that on them. Any way you slice it, it's a lot of discomfort and inconvenience.

My daughter had part of her drive unit start grinding on a vacation, and she drove it home. I told her to not turn it off for the same reason, "may not restart", and she made it, but unlike you, she didn't have to recharge anywhere. I figured that if it died on her completely, Tesla could come pick it up, and who knows, you might make it, too. If nothing else, you'd be closer. But I don't know. We do what we have to. I wish you luck and wish I were closer.

 

[ckoval7]

I had the exact same thing happen to me when I was in Virginia Beach back in February. They bumped me to the top of the list and they had a drive unit on hand which was slotted for another car. I apologize to whomever I made wait longer! If they don't already have a DU then you're stuck waiting on shipping from California.

 

[mgdurand]

I am on vacation with my family, 600 miles from home, in my 2020 model X, which is only six months old. I received a message saying “vehicle may not restart; services required“. Took it to the nearest service center. After diagnosing, they ordered the following part.

ASY, DRIVE UNIT, RAVEN, MX
Part #: 1478000-01-D

They say it will be a week or so before the part arrives. I need to be home long before that to go back to work. They offered me a rental car to drive back home. But I’d then drive back to the service center and then drive my repaired car home. That will cost me two days of driving ( a full day of driving each way). That is a heavy price!

Does anyone know if Tesla can offer something better than that? Seems like they could trailer the to my house after it’s repaired. It’s virtually a brand new car and very expensive. Seems like they would want to make me happy. This is my 3rd Tesla I’ve purchase. I think I’m a really good customer and deserving of a little TLC.

Any thoughts?

Welcome to Tesla! They are quirky like that.

 

[DCGOO]

Welcome to Tesla! They are quirky like that.

I am not sure I would call it quirky. If you have a catastrophic failure while traveling in any vehicle, you're plans are pretty much screwed. The nature of problems may be different, but the effect is the same.

Just yesterday, during local travel, I had an alarm explosion on my X. Multiple errors, no regeneration, all traction controls and safety features down. I could still move the vehicle. I stopped and opened a trouble ticket on my smart phone. Came up with a mobile visit about 10 days out. I replied to the text I received. "My car is down, any chance you could get to this earlier than next week?" A few minutes later, I got a text asking me if the alarms were still present. I said "yes they are still present." So they logged in to my car, and pulled down local log files, a few minutes later all the alarms cleared and the car returned to normal. Last evening, I was offered a software upgrade to 2020.24.6.1 (I was on 2020.20.12 before). I don't know for sure, that the update was due to my ticket. The mobile service is still scheduled.

Overall, I would submit, failures with our Teslas have been significantly less than any other vehicles we have owned. That is in addition to the dramatically reduced maintenance requirements. OTOH, there are far fewer Service Centers, than neighborhood garages, or even dealers. But at least Tesla is motivated by their "no dealer" model, to produce highly reliable vehicles.

I am sad the OP's vacation was torpedoed, but unfortunately stuff happens. Hopefully he has made it home by now.

 

[rush6410]

A drive unit is equivalent to an engine failure. So, I would expect this to be a major disruption. So, not unique to Tesla.

 

[SUP THO]

My 2020 MX LR+ had the front drive unit fail with less than 1k on the odometer. It was a pain but I was fairly close to a service center and had it towed directly there. The SC said they had another car a month earlier with an identical issue less than a month old.

Sorry to hear about your misfortune here but I’m beginning to think this drive unit issue is happening to more and more 2020 MXs.

 

[wasloan]

Seems the right way to do this is have Tesla "tow" (or ship, or whatever) your car back to your nearest service center and fix it there, on their dime. You'd have to read the warranty language but towing services should count as part of any warranty repairs. It's not your fault you happened to be far away from home when it happened.

 

[Megadashka]

It just happened with my car, fortunately I just left home. No messages, but I caught this behavior that something doesn’t wanna let me drive. First noice and rapid break like we hit a small object (when we clearly didn’t), then car was “breaking” sometimes while acceleration, then making “transmission grinding sounds”, that all was checked within 20 ft from garage and towed (waited for 3-4 hrs for their provider to pick my car up).
No loaner at it was weekend, no responses on calls, email, voicemails during Monday, in the evening I asked again sales team to connect me, then they said I can pick up loaned but on Tuesday as the close at 5 sharp.

I love my car and try to be very understanding to Tesla rapid scaling and related challenges