Model 3 Rear Drive Unit Failed?

[Stuart21]

Received a phone call from Tesla Service today. They were very considerate and apologized for the inconvenience.

According to the logs on the car: The DC inverter failed and prevented the HV pack from charging the 12V battery. They are currently working on the car to verify this is the issue and will update me later today. They asked for patience as this is the first Model 3 they have done significant work on.

Should have a low voltage alarm -

 

[stopcrazypp]

Received a phone call from Tesla Service today. They were very considerate and apologized for the inconvenience.

According to the logs on the car: The DC inverter failed and prevented the HV pack from charging the 12V battery. They are currently working on the car to verify this is the issue and will update me later today. They asked for patience as this is the first Model 3 they have done significant work on.

Reminds me of this thread, seems like they have some defective inverters they are recalling:
Part recall for Model 3

 

[Electroman]

Wow. I understand the concept of owners being beta testers, but from all the problems being reported with the Model 3, from failed motors to cracked glass roofs to failure to operate entirely, it sounds like production hell and bottlenecks may actually be in Tesla's best interests...

Eclectic - are you the same troll in Twitter with handle "Tesla is WHOMPY" ?

 

[Electroman]

As widespread as this issue seems,

How do you know? It is these kind of subtle characterizations which will attract trolls like fleas to sugar.

 

[EinSV]

Eclectic - are you the same troll in Twitter with handle "Tesla is WHOMPY" ?

View attachment 281783

Interesting -- the same post, verbatim. "Tesla is Whompy" is keef.

 

[Eclectic]

Eclectic - are you the same troll in Twitter with handle "Tesla is WHOMPY" ?

View attachment 281783

Someone is infringing upon my copyright. Oh, wait, I disclaim copyright rights in anything I post here...

But no, that's not me. Someone with good enough taste to steal my words, though.

I don't use Twitter but if someone cares enough to respond to that account, after I wrote my original post I found out that two of my neighbors have Model 3s and I asked them about their experiences. Neither had any catastrophic failures, just pretty minor interface/phone stuff. So Mr. Whompy should also include the post I'm writing right now in his or her next copy/paste.

Do I get an award for seeing two Model 3s within 10 minutes this morning while not being within 10 miles of Fremont or Palo Alto?

 

[vinnie97]

Copycat trolls are fun.

 

[Jays200]

Eclectic - are you the same troll in Twitter with handle "Tesla is WHOMPY" ?

View attachment 281783

Good pickup, rest my case.

 

[Electroman]

from the timestamps it would seem the TMC post (3:37pm) came after the Twitter post (1:54 pm) but it is hard to say which came first because of the timezones.

 

[DrLegoHair]

Just received an update from Tesla Service:

The drive unit DID in fact fail which they say caused the DC converter to malfunction. The new drive unit arrived today and they will be replacing that and then testing the DC converter to see if it charges the 12V battery.

Again as always, very polite wonderful service. I am enjoying the Model S loaner so the wait is not too painful (although I do prefer the 3!)

 

[gekcut]

You were lucky you were located near a service center. Think about poor Starman when his battery prematurally died.

"Starman and his electric-car-turned-spacecraft were equipped with cameras that live-streamed the car’s journey as it floated through space. Unfortunately, the Roadster’s transmission didn’t last quite as long as expected. The batteries were expected to broadcast for at least 12 hours, but they ended up dying after only 4 hours of transmission. Sadly, that left space enthusiasts in the dark, wondering how Starman was doing as he piloted his convertible through the cosmos."

 

[ohmman]

You were lucky you were located near a service center. Think about poor Starman when his battery prematurally died.

"Starman and his electric-car-turned-spacecraft were equipped with cameras that live-streamed the car’s journey as it floated through space. Unfortunately, the Roadster’s transmission didn’t last quite as long as expected. The batteries were expected to broadcast for at least 12 hours, but they ended up dying after only 4 hours of transmission. Sadly, that left space enthusiasts in the dark, wondering how Starman was doing as he piloted his convertible through the cosmos."

I think there's a ranger on Mars who can meet him when he crosses Mars orbit.

 

[RayK]

I believe that the only Rangers out in space went towards the moon, not Mars .

 

[luckyruby]

Picked up Model 3 yesterday. This morning the car says that the rear drive unit failed. “Exiting and reentering the vehicle may restore function”.

Well that didn’t work and the wierd thing is that I can not power down the vehicle completely from the touchscreen, it immediately turns back on. I’ve tried the scroll wheel reset while holding the break. That does a quick reboot but does not power down completely.

Any ideas? Tow truck is on the way! And I’m 200 miles from home!

What's your VIN? I picked mine up in Tampa on Feb 12th with VIN 60xx. At 302 miles driven, the car became inoperable after a software update and shortly lost 12V power afterwards. I pick up my car tomorrow from the service center and they said it was due to a fault in the rear drive unit. I'm curious if we were part of the same batch of cars. Tesla Model 3 Down: Won't Power Up, and is Inaccessible

 

[DrLegoHair]

What's your VIN? I picked mine up in Tampa on Feb 12th with VIN 60xx. At 302 miles driven, the car became inoperable after a software update and shortly lost 12V power afterwards. I pick up my car tomorrow from the service center and they said it was due to a fault in the rear drive unit. I'm curious if we were part of the same batch of cars. Tesla Model 3 Down: Won't Power Up, and is Inaccessible

Vin is 50xx. I was told that shortly after my drive unit failed, a service bulletin went out to replace the drive units on a whole range of Vins. I tried to get more details but unsurprisingly they would not give me any more info.

 

[drifttek]

Woke up to this, in the morning. Tesla towed to a service center.

So they are replacing the rear drive unit. ETA 3 days. They gave me an Infiniti qx70 loaner

 

[brkaus]

There was a thread here about a possible firmware bug causing a failure. Something about shifting between drive/reverse while the car was still moving. Seams to me I recall the symptoms were similar?

 

[Mgyo]

Ok - so now I actually have a few minutes to type out a coherent post.


I had been trying to post here in between multiple phone calls to Tesla and trying to stick to my Saturday evening plans!


Before anything else I want to say:


If you find yourself in a similar situation to me and you NEED to move your car - at your own risk you may JUMP the 12v battery. Tesla advises against it - but it was the first thing the Tesla preferred tow driver did. He told me has seen this issue already on several model 3s (! There can’t be more than 100 delivered in my region). He jumped the battery and was able to get the car into drive. It’s easy to access the 12v battery in this car, I won’t go into it here but you can look it up easily. If you do decide to jump - do it quickly and immediately move your car somewhere safe. My 12v battery completely failed shortly after we got it into drive and could not be fully jumped again.


Okay - so here is the full timeline.

I took delivery of my beautiful model 3 on Friday. I went over it with a fine tooth comb and was shocked to find absolutely NO issues. Exterior fit and finish was absolutely perfect. I was impressed, I had expected issues. The car is much better nicer than pictures - as others have said. I can’t wait to get it back.


I decided to do a little road trip to work out any issues before my work week started. Everything was going great - we drove about 200 miles, stopped to charge at a friends house and two hours later got the error message:


Rear drive unit needs service - exiting and reentering the vehicle may restore operation.


We tried all the normal techniques to reboot the car - the strange thing being the car wouldn’t actually ever sleep. For example - if we tried to power off from the touch screen - the screen would just flicker and come back on. In hind sight, this may be because the 12v battery didn’t have enough power to disconnect the HV pack. At this point I called Tesla and they recommended to leave the car alone and arranged a truck to tow my car 200 miles home to my local service center.


While I was waiting for the tow truck, I continued trying different reset techniques. At this point the error message changed to: “Car needs service - car may not start” and “Systems powering up - shift into drive when this message disappears“ Now the AC blower motor was also failing to start - this really should have clued me in to it being a 12v issue but I was thinking it was a firmware problem.


Finally, about thirty minutes after the tow truck driver arrived - the message changed to “12V battery needs service”. He jumped it - was able to shift into drive/neutral and line up the car with the truck. At this point the remaining systems started to power down. The tow driver actually got stuck in the car and I had to remind him to use the emergency release. He was unable to re-jump the 12v battery to a sufficient charge to shift the car into drive again, in fact he couldn’t even release the parking brake. Eventually we couldn’t even get the touchscreen to come back on - although strangely the car was still responsive on the Tesla app for another 15 minutes.


As widespread as this issue seems, I hope this post will help someone understand what is happening if they get a series of confusing error messages like I did. And, if you get the car to start by jumping it, move it quickly to a safe place and then be prepared to lose all power to the vehicle!


Can’t wait to get the car back!

Hi, I had a similar experience. The first time, model 3 was about a month old and tesla replaced the 12v and said I should be fine. When I got the same error msg 2 weeks later, I called roadside assistance who said I just needed to drive the car more (I drive it everyday) and 12v would recharge itself. I decided to drive it to the service center. After I got there it died and they couldn't get it started. They need to replace the rear drive shaft. Curious how your issue was remedied and if you've experienced any other issues? I too am excited to get my car back, but also anxious, hoping that 4 visits to the service center in 2 months is all I'll have to make for the year.

 

[cwerdna]

Hi, I had a similar experience. The first time, model 3 was about a month old and tesla replaced the 12v and said I should be fine. When I got the same error msg 2 weeks later, I called roadside assistance who said I just needed to drive the car more (I drive it everyday) and 12v would recharge itself. I decided to drive it to the service center. After I got there it died and they couldn't get it started. They need to replace the rear drive shaft. Curious how your issue was remedied and if you've experienced any other issues? I too am excited to get my car back, but also anxious, hoping that 4 visits to the service center in 2 months is all I'll have to make for the year.

Rear drive shaft or drive unit?

 

[vmoscaliuc]

Woke up to this, in the morning. Tesla towed to a service center.

So they are replacing the rear drive unit. ETA 3 days. They gave me an Infiniti qx70 loaner

I had exactly the same issues a few days ago. Model 3 2019, about 1000 miles. The messages I got:
The car cannot charge
Unable to drive
Pull over safely
The car is shutting down

Car is now in service. Waiting for a resolution. Got a loaner.