Model 3 - Feature Issues

[MDM13]

Just got my model 3, anyone else have any of these issues? Coming from a Mercedes and realize there are some trades... I like the car, but some of these things I would think would have beeen easy to have done right. It’s not like this is the first car ever to have a integrated phone system or auto wipers... come on, 60k car? I am not looking for the car to fly, these should be simple, inexpensive, expected things to be right.

- Car phone speaker is horrible. People can’t hear me, sounds like your in a wind tunnel, etc. I realize the speaker is next to the air vent. Any resolve here?

- “ Frunk “ is extremely hard to close

- Doors do not close effortlessly

- Windshield wipers, on auto, do not come on half the time even in heavy rain. They are not the best wipers even when they do come on.

- Home link opens and closes garage door about 3/5 times I use it.

 

[diamond.g]

Based on past readings of TMC homelink tends to do one or the other automatically very well. not so much on both. I only have it set to open the garage door after reading horror stories of folks having the door auto close on their car.

The autowipers are still meh in anything but "sunny" daytime.

For the speakerphone issue, what version FW is your car on? I heard that there were some weird BT issues that affected speakerphone in car. I have had the car once not transfer the call from phone to car when already on the phone. My wife hasn't ever complained about how I sound when talking to her though.

 

[Garlan Garner]

Just got my model 3, anyone else have any of these issues? Coming from a Mercedes and realize there are some trades... I like the car, but some of these things I would think would have beeen easy to have done right. It’s not like this is the first car ever to have a integrated phone system or auto wipers... come on, 60k car? I am not looking for the car to fly, these should be simple, inexpensive, expected things to be right.

- Car phone speaker is horrible. People can’t hear me, sounds like your in a wind tunnel, etc. I realize the speaker is next to the air vent. Any resolve here?

- “ Frunk “ is extremely hard to close

- Doors do not close effortlessly

- Windshield wipers, on auto, do not come on half the time even in heavy rain. They are not the best wipers even when they do come on.

- Home link opens and closes garage door about 3/5 times I use it.

I think.....you can return the car in the 1st 3 days.

Maybe you can let us know if it works.

 

[nicholb]

- Car phone speaker is horrible. People can’t hear me, sounds like your in a wind tunnel, etc. I realize the speaker is next to the air vent. Any resolve here?

- “ Frunk “ is extremely hard to close

- Doors do not close effortlessly

- Windshield wipers, on auto, do not come on half the time even in heavy rain. They are not the best wipers even when they do come on.

- Home link opens and closes garage door about 3/5 times I use it.

I have not had any complaints about the sound quality of the speaker phone. Do you have another phone available to rule out the BT on the phone? Otherwise this might be something to take to service.

Do you mean you have problems closing the frunk, or it is just a pain to follow the "two hand" recommended closing procedure? There's nothing to help the recommended procedure, but if you can't get it to close you should take it to service.

I've notice no difficulty closing my doors. Some very early cars did have some QA problems that made door closing difficult. This is also probably something to have service look at.

Yes the wipers leave something to be desired. Believe it or not, they have gotten better with the last few software updates. What version are you on? Hopefully they continue to improve with future updates.

With home link, are you getting the indication on the car screen that it is sending the open/close signal when you have problems? If you are not, then I would suggest you reset your closing position. You should have the car a few feet outside the garage (where you want the door close signal to be sent when backing out) and choose to reset the position in home link setup menu.

If you are seeing the indication it is sending the signal and the door is not opening it could be interference, do you have LED lights in the garage? Some can interfere with the signal and shorten your range. You could also have a bad transmitter in the car. It could also be transmitting too far away. Resetting the position and open distance might help if that is the case.

 

[jkcheng122]

The best way I've found to close the trunk is to put my palm or heel of my hand on the T logo and just slowly press down. There does not need to be a fast down push, just slowly push it downward and it latches.

 

[ewoodrick]

Just got my model 3, anyone else have any of these issues? Coming from a Mercedes and realize there are some trades... I like the car, but some of these things I would think would have beeen easy to have done right. It’s not like this is the first car ever to have a integrated phone system or auto wipers... come on, 60k car? I am not looking for the car to fly, these should be simple, inexpensive, expected things to be right.

- Car phone speaker is horrible. People can’t hear me, sounds like your in a wind tunnel, etc. I realize the speaker is next to the air vent. Any resolve here?
There seems to have been some issues recently, that's the good thing about the car, the behavior will probably change.

- “ Frunk “ is extremely hard to close
Make sure that you are following the explicit instructions for closing frunk with two hands. It's in the manual. If it still hard, it probably needs to be adjusted. But it is NOT a zero pressure thing.

- Doors do not close effortlessly
Nope, if that's what you wanted, then head to the S or X.

- Windshield wipers, on auto, do not come on half the time even in heavy rain. They are not the best wipers even when they do come on.
Lots of folks have issues with wipers. Supposedly a new neural net piece of software is pending. Again, the car will change. I haven't hear nor seen any issues with the basic wipers. You haven't used any special solution on the window have you?
To turn wiper on quickly, push the left button, that brings up the wiper panel.
Be careful with any coatings on window. Don't forget that the car also looks out of the window.
Honestly, when possible, during heavy rain, I just let the car drive.

- Home link opens and closes garage door about 3/5 times I use it.
That is often dependent on how well the door opener can hear the car. While mine has been working flawlessly for many months, just this week it has become problematic. I can easily see that in certain locations, the opener is just not hearing the car.

 

[chronopc]

- Car phone speaker is horrible. People can’t hear me, sounds like your in a wind tunnel, etc. I realize the speaker is next to the air vent. Any resolve here?

I haven't found that to be the case for me. I use it quite a bit on my road trips and traveling at 70mph, people have never had any complaints about being able to hear me. I do get a lot of issues with the car not automatically connecting to my phone though.

- “ Frunk “ is extremely hard to close

The manual tells you how to properly close the frunk. It definitely takes some getting used to.

- Windshield wipers, on auto, do not come on half the time even in heavy rain. They are not the best wipers even when they do come on.

I think everyone can agree with you on this point. Tesla knows and they are working on it. Hopefully it'll get fixed soon.

- Home link opens and closes garage door about 3/5 times I use it.

There are occasions where I've seen homelink not close the garage door. I think my success rate is higher than 3/5 times though. I'm probably getting 8/10, but I agree it should be more reliable.

 

[wcorey]

- “ Frunk “ is extremely hard to close

- Doors do not close effortlessly

- Windshield wipers, on auto, do not come on half the time even in heavy rain. They are not the best wipers even when they do come on.

- Home link opens and closes garage door about 3/5 times I use it.

Frunk and doors and trunk -

The woman who did my delivery of the physical car (not paperwork) did me a great service by demonstrating how to best close the trunk and frunk. Actually, I discovered it works perfectly with the side doors.

In prior cars, and I gather others do this too, give the door a swipe and let momentum do the rest. This works horribly with the model 3.

Trunk, when open, presents a surface at about a 45 deg angle. Place your hands fingers facing each other at maybe 20-35 deg angle and with reasonable force, close the trunk maintaining a constant velocity, not a swipe. That constant velocity will be far less than the swipe. For me and others I've heard from this works consistently and perfectly.

Frunk, pretty much identical. Hands at 35-45 deg fingers facing each other, apply constant velocity for the entire arch of the Frunk (or otherwise hood) travel. Again, this works great although I will admit I generally don't open the hood.

Side doors, closing from outside, same thing, firm pressure/velocity for range of travel. Again, this doesn't have to be fast, certainly slower than a slam/swipe.

Side doors, closing from inside, same thing. Hold the handle and with firm constant velocity, again, not fast or violent, bring the door to you. It'll surprise you how little force is needed but rather than the 'get it started and let go' provide a constant velocity/force from open until latch.

Windshield wipers - yeah, same here. On a day it never rained on auto the wipers came on in the garage. Go figure!. I don't use auto at all. If it's misting a quick push on the left stalk end button will do a single no-water swipe. Otherwise select wiper control, depress intermittent slow, intermittent fast, constant slow or fast.

Wipers are machine learning, I have full faith they will improve.

Home link - for me open on approach, to my recollection pretty much works flawlessly. Close on exit no almost never works. One thing I did when 'programming' it was the car itself was maybe two feet from garage door as I wanted to be between the car and garage so I could point door opener at the sensor to the passenger side of the front logo. The instructions said to bring the car right up to the door. I haven't redone the programming but depending on how you did yours you might consider redoing it. There's a icon on top right of screen in green, depress it and it will show the programmed garage doors, just press the correct one to manually close the door, or open it as it is a toggle not a state machine. In other words if you didn't realize you no longer need the opener that came with the garage opener to actuate the doors.
I hope that helps!

 

[Electric Chic]

Just got my model 3, anyone else have any of these issues? Coming from a Mercedes and realize there are some trades... I like the car, but some of these things I would think would have beeen easy to have done right. It’s not like this is the first car ever to have a integrated phone system or auto wipers... come on, 60k car? I am not looking for the car to fly, these should be simple, inexpensive, expected things to be right.

- Car phone speaker is horrible. People can’t hear me, sounds like your in a wind tunnel, etc. I realize the speaker is next to the air vent. Any resolve here?

- “ Frunk “ is extremely hard to close

- Doors do not close effortlessly

- Windshield wipers, on auto, do not come on half the time even in heavy rain. They are not the best wipers even when they do come on.

- Home link opens and closes garage door about 3/5 times I use it.

The auto setting for the wipers is worse than useless. Considering that you have to keep looking at the center of the screen every time you manually change the speed of the wipers without having a working auto setting, it's a class action suit waiting to happen. Auto wipers is old technology, except Tesla is using the camera to sense when it needs to activate the wipers, not windshield sensors; at least that's what I was told at Tesla Service. Also, they told me they don't have a fix for it yet.

 

[BluestarE3]

As for the frunk, pretend you're trying to smother it with a pillow rather than reviving it with CPR. In others words, with your hands placed correctly on the hood, press down firmly and hold it down until you hear and feel the latch click. Don't do a quick jerky motion as with a chest compression.

 

[BluestarE3]

The auto setting for the wipers is worse than useless. Considering that you have to keep looking at the center of the screen every time you manually change the speed of the wipers without having a working auto setting, it's a class action suit waiting to happen. Auto wipers is old technology, except Tesla is using the camera to sense when it needs to activate the wipers, not windshield sensors; at least that's what I was told at Tesla Service. Also, they told me they don't have a fix for it yet.

If this pans out, we may soon be able to control the wipers (along with Sentry Mode, climate and a few other things) via voice command:
Tesla is working on new voice command features in move towards AI assistant

 

[wcorey]

As for the frunk, pretend you're trying to smother it with a pillow rather than reviving it with CPR. In others words, with your hands placed correctly on the hood, press down firmly and hold it down until you hear and feel the latch click. Don't do a quick jerky motion as with a chest compression.

Precisely! That was one of the first things my delivery person taught me. Ditto on the rear trunk. I've never had issues with either.