I have had my M3 for about 18 months now. I still absolutely love driving it but I am becoming increasingly frustrated with multiple issues. I was not able to find similar threads so I have started a new one. I took it in to a service center once, which is 2 hours away from home, only to be told that there was nothing they could do about any of them at the time but that probably they would improve over time with over the air updates.
1. Phone Key - I had a 2016 Model S and never had any issues with it. My M3 constantly does not connect to my phone until I open the app. It would be easier to just carry the key card. I have had the same phone the whole time and this has started happening only this year.
2. Cruise Control random braking - From the beginning the TACC would jam on the brakes when facing an uphill road or when a vehicle would cross in front even though it would be well clear before TACC would jam on the brakes. I have learned to anticipate most of these events but it upsets my wife terribly, so much so that I use it much less that I used cruise control in ICE vehicles. It has improved somewhat after several over the air updates, but it remains an issue.
3. Homelink - The GPS based automatic activation is super convenient ... when it works. The point of activation moves around so much that I am constantly having to reset it and re-adjust how many feet ahead of time it activates. Also, the directionality of the signal is so narrow that it often requires one or more manual activations and/or moving the car closer. I have had many cars with built in Homelink and never had such a narrow or limited range of functionality.
4. Dashcam - It seems to only randomly record. Sentry Mode works fine and records every time we park the car. As I recall, Dashcam was working well when it was first activated. I have tried erasing the thumb drive but have seen no change.
5. Auto Wipers - This system is a joke. After all this time since the first camera equipped MS's, you would think Tesla would have perfected it. If it wasn't so tedious to adjust the wipers manually on the screen, I would leave it off. Sometimes I have used the voice activated system however it does not reliably interpret the commands so I cannot depend on it to work quickly.
6. Foglights - Activating these takes too many steps and jabs to the screen. On our rough roads every attempt is a crap shoot. Why can't we have an icon permanently on the home screen for one touch?
7. Glovebox - See above. Permanent icon please!
8. Supercharging pre-warming - This was a feature rolled out since I bought the car. It used to work and I could reliably expect 140 - 150KW initial charge rates. Now it almost never works even though I always program in the next Supercharger location. I typically get around 95KW charge rate, not slow but not nearly as fast as it used to be. Charging time has always been widely variable but now it is consistently long!
9. Noise - I knew the M3 would be somewhat noisier than the MS I was coming out of but I chose to ignore it at the time for all of the advantages of the newer car. I did install a set of extra weather strip seals around the doors and stuffed some sound foam in the large hole in the rear package shelf and these changes did make a noticeable improvement. Now the primary noise is tire drone. I have read on various forums that some people have installed sound dampening material on the rear fender wells, however the effort to do this and the inconsistent results reported have discouraged me from trying this. My Michelin tires are nearing the end of their life at 22,000 miles so I will try some Continental tires. But I do feel like these noise problems are exaggerated in an electric car because of the lack or engine noise, so the tolerance level for excess noise is much less. Surely some extra sound foam and/or resonance dampening would help. We should not have to experiment on home fixes.
10. Side Camera view on lane change - My daughter's 4 year old Honda shows her a side camera view when using the turn signal. Surely this is not a difficult software update. This is especially important since the view to the rear is poor due to a high trunk line.
11. Hold feature - Another feature rolled out with an OAU. It does work very well normally, however if you try feathering the throttle, especially on a hill it will often slam on the breaks with a notification the "brakes applied to prevent roll away" even though it wasn't rolling away! I have learned to "stab" at the throttle and be less smooth to avoid this. I know I can just turn it off, but really I just want it to work properly!
12. Supercharging target range - After all of these years, I am still having to calculate my own estimated miles range need to complete each leg of a trip. Why doesn't the system just look at the recent Wh/mi performance and use that for calculations? I have found that driving at 75 - 80 mph uses more energy than it normally accounts for so I cannot trust the estimated range required.
I still love driving this car for it's sportscar handling and muscle car acceleration. And I still love the looks of the exterior and interior. But I feel like I am driving one of those bad phone Apps that you downloaded without reading the reviews. I had hoped that original and new issues that cropped up would be fixed after 3 years of production. It's great that we get OAUs, new games to play (the fart control is a crowd favorite!) and new features. But how about fixing the stuff that doesn't work well as a priority?
If I have missed a "workaround" or if there is some fix out there, please let me know. And if anyone knows of a way to communicate directly to Tesla what improvements or fixes we would like to see, likewise let me know. With the service center 2 hours away, trying to work through customer service, waiting around all day and being told nothing is wrong is not encouraging.
1. Phone Key - I had a 2016 Model S and never had any issues with it. My M3 constantly does not connect to my phone until I open the app. It would be easier to just carry the key card. I have had the same phone the whole time and this has started happening only this year.
2. Cruise Control random braking - From the beginning the TACC would jam on the brakes when facing an uphill road or when a vehicle would cross in front even though it would be well clear before TACC would jam on the brakes. I have learned to anticipate most of these events but it upsets my wife terribly, so much so that I use it much less that I used cruise control in ICE vehicles. It has improved somewhat after several over the air updates, but it remains an issue.
3. Homelink - The GPS based automatic activation is super convenient ... when it works. The point of activation moves around so much that I am constantly having to reset it and re-adjust how many feet ahead of time it activates. Also, the directionality of the signal is so narrow that it often requires one or more manual activations and/or moving the car closer. I have had many cars with built in Homelink and never had such a narrow or limited range of functionality.
4. Dashcam - It seems to only randomly record. Sentry Mode works fine and records every time we park the car. As I recall, Dashcam was working well when it was first activated. I have tried erasing the thumb drive but have seen no change.
5. Auto Wipers - This system is a joke. After all this time since the first camera equipped MS's, you would think Tesla would have perfected it. If it wasn't so tedious to adjust the wipers manually on the screen, I would leave it off. Sometimes I have used the voice activated system however it does not reliably interpret the commands so I cannot depend on it to work quickly.
6. Foglights - Activating these takes too many steps and jabs to the screen. On our rough roads every attempt is a crap shoot. Why can't we have an icon permanently on the home screen for one touch?
7. Glovebox - See above. Permanent icon please!
8. Supercharging pre-warming - This was a feature rolled out since I bought the car. It used to work and I could reliably expect 140 - 150KW initial charge rates. Now it almost never works even though I always program in the next Supercharger location. I typically get around 95KW charge rate, not slow but not nearly as fast as it used to be. Charging time has always been widely variable but now it is consistently long!
9. Noise - I knew the M3 would be somewhat noisier than the MS I was coming out of but I chose to ignore it at the time for all of the advantages of the newer car. I did install a set of extra weather strip seals around the doors and stuffed some sound foam in the large hole in the rear package shelf and these changes did make a noticeable improvement. Now the primary noise is tire drone. I have read on various forums that some people have installed sound dampening material on the rear fender wells, however the effort to do this and the inconsistent results reported have discouraged me from trying this. My Michelin tires are nearing the end of their life at 22,000 miles so I will try some Continental tires. But I do feel like these noise problems are exaggerated in an electric car because of the lack or engine noise, so the tolerance level for excess noise is much less. Surely some extra sound foam and/or resonance dampening would help. We should not have to experiment on home fixes.
10. Side Camera view on lane change - My daughter's 4 year old Honda shows her a side camera view when using the turn signal. Surely this is not a difficult software update. This is especially important since the view to the rear is poor due to a high trunk line.
11. Hold feature - Another feature rolled out with an OAU. It does work very well normally, however if you try feathering the throttle, especially on a hill it will often slam on the breaks with a notification the "brakes applied to prevent roll away" even though it wasn't rolling away! I have learned to "stab" at the throttle and be less smooth to avoid this. I know I can just turn it off, but really I just want it to work properly!
12. Supercharging target range - After all of these years, I am still having to calculate my own estimated miles range need to complete each leg of a trip. Why doesn't the system just look at the recent Wh/mi performance and use that for calculations? I have found that driving at 75 - 80 mph uses more energy than it normally accounts for so I cannot trust the estimated range required.
I still love driving this car for it's sportscar handling and muscle car acceleration. And I still love the looks of the exterior and interior. But I feel like I am driving one of those bad phone Apps that you downloaded without reading the reviews. I had hoped that original and new issues that cropped up would be fixed after 3 years of production. It's great that we get OAUs, new games to play (the fart control is a crowd favorite!) and new features. But how about fixing the stuff that doesn't work well as a priority?
If I have missed a "workaround" or if there is some fix out there, please let me know. And if anyone knows of a way to communicate directly to Tesla what improvements or fixes we would like to see, likewise let me know. With the service center 2 hours away, trying to work through customer service, waiting around all day and being told nothing is wrong is not encouraging.
