Model 3 won't wake up from app OR in the car

[jjrandorin]

I've never owned a car which only has a 15" laptop screen to provide feedback and without which the car is undrivable (pedals and gear stalk dead and phone app was hanging).

A better analogy is "have you never had to hold down the power button to hard reset your phone or Windows laptop?". The answer, of course, is yes but very, very occasionally. Maybe twice in 25 years I've had to reinstall windows due to corruption, but not for a long time.

Obviously having to double scroll wheel reboot the car occasionally isn't more than an inconvenience. However it does indicate something is wrong. Should the double scroll wheel reboot fail to work, this could lead to major inconvenience. And the car is only 3 weeks old which doesn't instill confidence.

I am more than happy to beta test features for tesla as long as glitches are only minor inconvenience.

Cheers.

The team I manage supports windows and mac devices as well as phones, and lets just say they break a lot more than you have experienced, and have to be rebooted, in general, way more than you have experienced. Thats phones though, not a car.

I have owned my model 3 for a bit over two years now (2 years and a couple months) and have experienced a situation where the screen went dark, and there was no feedback, 1 time (was in the garage at the time).

Because the car doesnt get "shut down" that often (it goes to sleep) and I feel ALL computers need to be rebooted occasionally (obviously servers much less than regular consumer computers, but...) I shut my model 3 down using the power off feature after every firmware update. That means it gets shut down, on average, every 3-5 weeks or so.

I dont think you are going to have some systemic problem that renders the screen inoperable, and if you do, it would need a service appointment. Needing or wanting to reboot it using the thumbwheels, likely a bit more often but its not "common" for the car to have an inoperable screen.

 

[Peteski]

3 years experience with a Model X has taught me that the odd re-boot is required. Earlier software versions were worse for freeze ups, but never had a situation where a re-boot has failed to get it going.

Only had our M3 for a couple of weeks and so far it has behaved itself, although it did spontaneously re-boot itself in the garage the other day. I didn’t even give it a second thought.

 

[Swordtail]

Because the car doesnt get "shut down" that often (it goes to sleep) and I feel ALL computers need to be rebooted occasionally (obviously servers much less than regular consumer computers, but...) I shut my model 3 down using the power off feature after every firmware update. That means it gets shut down, on average, every 3-5 weeks or so.

Yes, I agree about the reboots, I think I'll follow your lead on this one, cheers. It'll make me feel better if nothing else!

 

[Gasaraki]

I've not driven my model 3 for a couple of days but it has been plugged in the whole time. This morning the app was hanging with the "waking up..." message. I went to the car which did open with the bluetooth phone key but the screen would not wake up. I managed to reboot it by holding down the two scroll wheels.

It is a bit disconcerting this happened, especially as the car is less than a month old. There hadn't been a software update as far as I can tell.

Should I worry about this and report it?

Cheers.

No.

 

[Peteski]

Yes, I agree about the reboots, I think I'll follow your lead on this one, cheers. It'll make me feel better if nothing else!

I would only worry about it if you keep having this issue repeatedly. For me it’s typically something that happens maybe 2 or 3 times a year. Usually when I’m in a hurry!

 

[Swordtail]

The Tesla advisor responded with:

"The screen going black is something which has happened to me before and can be quite worrying. In essence as the screen is very much like a standardised PC/Mac or tablet device it has a cache. Cache memory is a chip-based computer component that makes retrieving data from the computer's memory more efficient. It acts as a temporary storage area that the computer's processor can retrieve data from easily. This temporary storage area, known as a cache, is more readily available to the processor than the computer's main memory source; however that can fill and needs to be cleared.


I’m not sure if you have ever been working on a PC and have had the message ‘Windows has detected an issue and had to restart’ when your machine does that it is basically clearing the cache as your car has done. You can also manually perform this action whilst in park; press and hold the brake pedal and hold in the two scroll wheels on either side for approx. 20 seconds, you will then see a Tesla symbol on the main screen and you can let go of the brake and scroll wheels. However with that being said if you can where possible keep a log of date and time of these screen outages I am more than happy to investigate this for you"

I'm not completely convinced it's a cache overload issue as you'd hope (!) a modern computer would manage its cache a little better rather than freeze and require a hard reboot, but I'm not going to worry about it unless it starts to happen on a regular basis.

 

[AZAV8R]

"You can also manually perform this action whilst in park; press and hold the brake pedal and hold in the two scroll wheels on either side for approx. 20 seconds, you will then see a Tesla symbol on the main screen and you can let go of the brake and scroll wheels."

I have read that holding the brake pedal does nothing. Did I miss something?

 

[jjrandorin]

"You can also manually perform this action whilst in park; press and hold the brake pedal and hold in the two scroll wheels on either side for approx. 20 seconds, you will then see a Tesla symbol on the main screen and you can let go of the brake and scroll wheels."

I have read that holding the brake pedal does nothing. Did I miss something?

Thats my understanding as well (that depressing the brake pedal does nothing additional).

 

[stopcrazypp]

I'm not completely convinced it's a cache overload issue as you'd hope (!) a modern computer would manage its cache a little better rather than freeze and require a hard reboot, but I'm not going to worry about it unless it starts to happen on a regular basis.

Being in software engineering, I don't really buy the "cache" argument that much. The blue screen he mentioned in windows is not typically from cache issues. However, it is true that if there is a memory leak in an application (basically the application keeps taking up memory, but never releases it), it will keeping using up memory until the computer becomes unresponsive, freezes or crashes. In such a case, a reboot would help fix things.

The core problem is some bug in the software, and you would need to take note of the day and time the freeze occurred, then they can look back at the logs to determine which application was causing the issue (and perhaps do further diagnosis from there). Absent of that I don't think they have personnel with the free time to comb through logs without an idea where to look for.

 

[stopcrazypp]

"You can also manually perform this action whilst in park; press and hold the brake pedal and hold in the two scroll wheels on either side for approx. 20 seconds, you will then see a Tesla symbol on the main screen and you can let go of the brake and scroll wheels."

I have read that holding the brake pedal does nothing. Did I miss something?

The latest manual doesn't mention the brake pedal either (at least the latest version), only the two scroll wheels) Was there perhaps a change from a previous version or why would it be mentioned so frequently?

 

[Swordtail]

I certainly didn't have my foot on the brake when I held down the scroll wheels, so I just ignored that! Hopefully the car isn't prone to launching itself into a wall when rebooted

Being in software engineering, I don't really buy the "cache" argument that much. The blue screen he mentioned in windows is not typically from cache issues. However, it is true that if there is a memory leak in an application (basically the application keeps taking up memory, but never releases it), it will keeping using up memory until the computer becomes unresponsive, freezes or crashes. In such a case, a reboot would help fix things.

The core problem is some bug in the software, and you would need to take note of the day and time the freeze occurred, then they can look back at the logs to determine which application was causing the issue (and perhaps do further diagnosis from there). Absent of that I don't think they have personnel with the free time to comb through logs without an idea where to look for.

Although I'm an ex-mainframe programmer and no Windows expert, this makes much more sense to me. When I contacted Tesla I mentioned I didn't know if they'd automatically get an error log or something for this. I think I was fobbed off a bit with the cache explanation but as long as whatever bug caused the issue isn't a very regular occurrence, I don't expect it matters. The nature of Tesla's software update strategy is going to be prone to bugs, but as long as they don't stop me being able to drive the car, I can put up with them knowing I'm getting new features more quickly and they'll likely be fixed pretty quickly.

 

[Peter 224]

I've had a couple of software sulks in the first month. Both are that the car /app communication fails and I have to use the key card, but on one the car opened but the screen was frozen when it opened, no touch response. I did the 2 button reset and all was fine.

As others have said, a Tesla is a collection of powerful computers that have to talk to each other: as long as it "fails safe" I'm not bothered. I live in an Apple computer environment and there are similarities in the way Tesla and Apple products go their own way.....

 

[irievibe]

How does she handle it when her phone bugs out? Because all of them do at one point or another.

That's not quite the same. While we are pretty dependent on phones at least you can still get to work and deal with it then. Having your car not start in the morning while you are trying to rush out the door is pretty tough. I suppose this also seems to remind me of using Windows in 1995. All they need is the BSOD on the tesla display.

I have a new Model Y and the car thought it's location was back at the supercharger station while it was in my driveway. Dog Mode was on (as it was at the supercharger station), and would not wake up or start for my wife. She couldn't engage the car to drive or disable Dog Mode. I do have to say, she's a trooper, and was able to call support and pretty quickly learned how to reboot the Tesla.

It's just surprising Tesla wouldn't have this polished up a bit more.

I will say I recently updated to Version 2021.4.18.10. It seems it is recommended to reboot after you update? I will remember to do that next time...like my computer from 1995

 

[Truegrit]

I've not driven my model 3 for a couple of days but it has been plugged in the whole time. This morning the app was hanging with the "waking up..." message. I went to the car which did open with the bluetooth phone key but the screen would not wake up. I managed to reboot it by holding down the two scroll wheels.

It is a bit disconcerting this happened, especially as the car is less than a month old. There hadn't been a software update as far as I can tell.

Should I worry about this and report it?

Cheers.

It happened to me after I drove to an appointment, parked the Tesla 3 in the parking lot and returned to the car. After the appointment I entered the car then discovered a dark screen and my app continually stating “waking up”. I called my wife and her app said the same thing. I called Tesla support and they could not work their magic and called a tow truck to tow the car to the nearest service center, 90 miles away. Then I discovered that the door button didn’t work.
Fortunately I had lowered the windows a crack when I parked the car so when I used the emergency door latch I didn’t damage the window. I could not open the trunk or frunk so the tow hook was unavailable. Once I exited the vehicle and closed the doors I could not get back into the car.
Fortunately by the time the flatbed tow truck arrived (3 hours later) the parking spaces in front of my car (I had backed into the parking space) were not occupied so the truck was able to back straight up to the Tesla. I don’t know how he would have loaded the car onto the truck if he couldn’t back up to it. The tow driver had to use skids to drag my Tesla onto the flat bed. “Tow mode” was obviously not available.
As I write this the Tesla is at the service center. I don’t know how they will resolve the issue. I speculate that Russian hackers did me in.

 

[stopcrazypp]

It happened to me after I drove to an appointment, parked the Tesla 3 in the parking lot and returned to the car. After the appointment I entered the car then discovered a dark screen and my app continually stating “waking up”. I called my wife and her app said the same thing. I called Tesla support and they could not work their magic and called a tow truck to tow the car to the nearest service center, 90 miles away. Then I discovered that the door button didn’t work.
Fortunately I had lowered the windows a crack when I parked the car so when I used the emergency door latch I didn’t damage the window. I could not open the trunk or frunk so the tow hook was unavailable. Once I exited the vehicle and closed the doors I could not get back into the car.
Fortunately by the time the flatbed tow truck arrived (3 hours later) the parking spaces in front of my car (I had backed into the parking space) were not occupied so the truck was able to back straight up to the Tesla. I don’t know how he would have loaded the car onto the truck if he couldn’t back up to it. The tow driver had to use skids to drag my Tesla onto the flat bed. “Tow mode” was obviously not available.
As I write this the Tesla is at the service center. I don’t know how they will resolve the issue. I speculate that Russian hackers did me in.

Ouch, keep us posted on what was the actual cause.

Did you try the key card or NFC from your phone? From my understanding and testing it seems to have a more direct connection to wake up the vehicle than bluetooth.

Note for opening the frunk, if the 12V battery is dead or the car is unlocked, you can open the frunk by jumping the wires under the tow hook cover.
Do It Yourself - Model 3

 

[Dxtlexus]

Hi guys new here, had the same issue that couldnt connect to my tesla with app, had to restart it, but still thought it was not working went after in app and waited like 20 minutes until it connected, after newest update i dunno it looks like it goes into some deep state or something..

 

[CarlZ]

This happened to me for the second time this month and don’t think it’s a cache issue (I work in tech network engineer by profession) and I keep a log for now. I don’t have a charger and park in the basement. I’ve noticed this happens when the car go into deep sleep mode (I don’t drive daily) and if I let the car sleep for 3+ days this seems to happen. Should I be worried or is this a feature ? Last time the reset brought the screen back this time it didn’t but the reset let me drive and before I came out of my underground car park the screen came back on

 

[Flybyglass]

Malfunctions are common. I think more of us are OK with that. The 2012 Volt that I mention above had a malfunction in the Infotainment computer that disabled the main touchscreen. So no climate controls, no display screen, and audio controls were limited to steering wheel controls. But the car was still drivable.

Software issues that make the care inoperable are what concerns me.

Living in cold weather country, wait till you preheat the car for an unscheduled departure. For the battery could take 30 minutes for optimal use.

 

[dmurphy]

Living in cold weather country, wait till you preheat the car for an unscheduled departure. For the battery could take 30 minutes for optimal use.

For full regen, sure, it’ll take a bit.

But the car is absolutely driveable, immediately at any time. I’ve had no issues even up in the mountains when it’s -10F. Hop in and go.

 

[SlimJim]

Hi guys new here, had the same issue that couldnt connect to my tesla with app, had to restart it, but still thought it was not working went after in app and waited like 20 minutes until it connected, after newest update i dunno it looks like it goes into some deep state or something..

I havent been able to connect for two days now. I hope the car is doing ok.
I might send a post card tomorrow.