My So my M3 broke down 2 days after delivery

[gambit48]

Also they confirmed that they tried switching out my drive unit first and still had the errors, which led to the battery discovery. They said they then put my original drive unit back. It seems like it’s trial and error. I hope they got the issue right. I’d be lying to you if I told you I was really confident with the outcome.

To be fair, trial and error is what most diagnosing and fixing is. The more experienced you are, the more you see and the less you have to trial, but you still do some.

 

[D3xDt3Reaction]

Incredible... Maybe it's just from growing up in a country town in Australia but it's pretty much standard practice if you see a car stuck in a dangerous position that you or someone else would backtrack to a more visible place and stop with your hazards on so to avoid an accident occurring. I get that some people are busy, but a half hour and no-one helping out? How stressful.

That’s awesome. We need more people who would do that for someone else.

 

[Tozz]

Once they resolve your issue, I'd file a safety complaint w/NHTSA at Home | Safercar -- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Why? Why would you bother the NHTSA with a technical issue on a single car? So you recommend to file a complaint every time you see an ICE stranded?

I'm surprised this car ever made it out of the factory. Having to replace the drive unit and battery pack would seem like a pretty severe problem that should have been caught by quality control.

It could be as simple as a loose plug or improperly manufactured cable that got loose due to driving (vibrations). If the connection was still good enough in the factory this won't pop up in a quality control.

Quality controls won't find everything.

This is quite disconcerting. I’m assuming this vehicle was built late April or early May based on the delivery date you provided. The battery pack has been disassembled by two groups so far and they both swore that this was the most advanced they had ever seen, well built, extremely unlikely to fail, etc. Battery failure on day 2 is indeed disconcerting.

Again, can be as simple as a loose plug. Or perhaps a bad monday morning version of a component in the pack, such as a faulty contactor.

 

[Quickstart88]

@ cwerdna - Do you even own a model 3? Just curious.

 

[GeekGirls]

We had some quirks with our Model S initially that were eventually tracked back to an intermittent wiring harness connection. The car never failed to charge or drive, it just resulted in warning lights at odd moments. Tesla was very apologetic and thorough in their evaluation, and eventually tracked down and addressed the issue for good. I chalked it up to being one of the first 3000 produced but the reality is that any mass-produced product has a chance of failure and sometimes you get unlucky.

I’m glad to hear the situation wasn’t worse for you, however nerve wracking, and have confidence that Tesla will make it right. If the individual you’re working with doesn’t take it seriously enough, escalate.

... and I agree 100% with the general advice that I wouldn’t go on a road trip immediately with a new vehicle. I wouldn’t do so right after getting new tires, or a major service, or anything else that could potentially suffer immediate failure.

 

[Kenrubin]

I had a similar experience. My M3 with 20 miles on it flashed a message last Friday: "12V battery power low. Do not drive. Car could shut off at any moment." I called Tesla, they towed it in to service, took 4 days to diagnose, said it was a high voltage battery charger that was defective and had to be replaced, part would take a week to arrive, then a couple days to fix. My M3 is still in the shop. I presume that had I driven the car, it would have shut down while driving, so assume the same or similar problem. Tesla mechanic said they'd not seen this problem before. I suspect there's some other flaw that caused this problem, but who knows (until the next time it shuts down....).

Anyone else get this message?

Will update.

 

[cwerdna]

Why? Why would you bother the NHTSA with a technical issue on a single car?

Because not doing so means one less data point. Imagine if everyone decided to NOT file, figuring theirs was a single case. Not every car driver is active on a message board/forum related to their car. It would be irresponsible to wait to file complaint until there's a ton of buzz in the news. Some recalls literally are the result of a issued reported on a tiny number (e.g. under a dozen) affected vehicles, at first.

Look at the graph at It's All Your Fault: The DOT Renders Its Verdict on Toyota's Unintended-Acceleration Scare | Feature | Car and Driver. Some people reported and what's up the huge spike post-recall? If most of those people who filed post-recall did it earlier on (and they were legit), do you think it might've gotten Toyota's and NHTSA's attention earlier?

I pointed out a recall example at When to report NHTSA issues? that said

July 9, 2015
Based on the above investigation, Toyota decided to conduct a voluntary safety recall campaign
on the subject vehicles.
As of July 7, 2015, Toyota is not aware of any crashes or injuries caused by this condition.
Two Toyota field reports and 62 warranty claims have been received that relate or may relate to
this condition. Multiple counts of the same incident are counted separately.

and as I said, was out of 108K vehicles.

Look at page 3 of https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2012/RCDNN-12V537-8546.pdf. What became a recall started with SINGLE field report in Japan which then had them attempt to replicate the problem, recover steering shafts from the field, more recovery, two more field reports, a field report from the US and so on. What if these tiny number of field reports were instead swept under the rug and blown off? It'd be pretty likely to cause a significant delay in the chronology of everything and a delay in a recall, if ever.

Also, recalls can affect a tiny set of vehicles. Examples:
Toyota recalls 86 coupe over ignition-key troubles - Roadshow - 94 cars
Smallest Recall Ever? A Solitary 2014 Chevrolet Volt Involved in Ten-Car Steering Recall

https://www.cars.com/articles/2013/07/the-top-10-smallest-recalls-of-2013/ has a list of recalls that affected. They're all separate and the range of affected # of vehicles ranges from FOUR to 74.

Each of these affected ONE vehicle a piece:
BMW Issues The Smallest Recall Ever; One BMW X3 Affected @ Top Speed
Rolls-Royce issues smallest recall ever, affects just one car

 

[RScottyL]

Don’t even get me started on how me calling 911 took 30 mins for someone to show up./QUOTE]

Was there an immediate need to call 911?

If not, please just call the non-emergency in the future!