Need some help figuring out my salvage model S

[Gizmotoy]

Shouldn't Tesla reactivate the 3G once he gets the repairs all completed and has Tesla review and "sign off" on the repairs?

I'd be a little bit surprised if Tesla themselves didn't want the connection active either way. Based on their stance on the safety of salvage vehicles, I'd think they'd be interested in keeping a close eye on the vehicle for signs of a dangerous situation. They may be of the position that it's not their problem, but having some computer monitoring warning metrics is dead cheap and could protect their brand. I can see why they'd cancel it if they thought the car was destroyed, but if they find out it's back on the road...

 

[zhur0002]

The navigation does work car knows where it is. Its just that none of my maps load up its just a blank gray screen where all the roads need to be. The first time I charged before the car shut itself off, it left a flag in that spot so now when I drive away flag moves away. I wan to complete all repairs and take it to inspection to them, hopefully it will reactive the 3g(even if I have to pay something for it monthly like onstar). Plus it would be nice to get updates on the car, unique part of tesla's ownership.

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Car originally did not have supercharging capability. If I pass inspection and pay them supercharging initiation cost I don't know why they would blacklist it. I will find out soon enough.

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If car is connected to Wi-Fi everything works on it. The car uses 3g to update the navigation map, traffic etc.

 

[CJS2]

I will pretty much guarantee that your supercharging has been turned off. I drove my restored salvage 14,000 miles on superchargers after I paid tesla for a yearly inspection right after I purchased the restored salvage car where I have documented that they blessed the car. Now due to new policy they think my car is junk after they already inspected it, and have turned off my car and, I believe, now forced the car to throw errors at me to get me to pay the new $1200 inspection fee and pay for repairs that they have cooked up. The reason I say this is I messed with rebooting the computers and drove it for an hour to the nearest supercharger and tried to charge, which now it will not do. It then threw codes at me and I had to limp home. Now it will not start. So a perfectly working car for 14,000 miles past original inspection is now not driveable? The 800 number tesla guys say all I need is a software upgrade which the service center will not do unless I pay them $1200 and give them the rights to permanently shut off my car with no recourse and sign all my rights away. I own another tesla so I love the car and now hate the company. I also own a Nissan leaf that was a restore salvage and nissan begs me to service the car and will sell me any part I want. I have serviced my own airplanes which are a hell of a lot more dangerous, and love working with mechanical things. Tesla is being completely ridiculous in this regard.

 

[qwk]

I will pretty much guarantee that your supercharging has been turned off. I drove my restored salvage 14,000 miles on superchargers after I paid tesla for a yearly inspection right after I purchased the restored salvage car where I have documented that they blessed the car. Now due to new policy they think my car is junk after they already inspected it, and have turned off my car and, I believe, now forced the car to throw errors at me to get me to pay the new $1200 inspection fee and pay for repairs that they have cooked up. The reason I say this is I messed with rebooting the computers and drove it for an hour to the nearest supercharger and tried to charge, which now it will not do. It then threw codes at me and I had to limp home. Now it will not start. So a perfectly working car for 14,000 miles past original inspection is now not driveable? The 800 number tesla guys say all I need is a software upgrade which the service center will not do unless I pay them $1200 and give them the rights to permanently shut off my car with no recourse and sign all my rights away. I own another tesla so I love the car and now hate the company. I also own a Nissan leaf that was a restore salvage and nissan begs me to service the car and will sell me any part I want. I have serviced my own airplanes which are a hell of a lot more dangerous, and love working with mechanical things. Tesla is being completely ridiculous in this regard.

For some reason Tesla thinks they have a right to do anything they want with the car after they sell it, without the owners permission. This is something that is plain ridiculous. It's going to only bite them in the behind. It's bizarre that Tesla has to learn every single thing the hard way.

 

[wk057]

Sounds like we all need to move to MA where the right-to-repair stuff is in effect and force them to release whatever is needed to do these things... and then move back to wherever.

 

[Gizmotoy]

For some reason Tesla thinks they have a right to do anything they want with the car after they sell it, without the owners permission. This is something that is plain ridiculous. It's going to only bite them in the behind. It's bizarre that Tesla has to learn every single thing the hard way.

They're essentially applying the software model to vehicles. I can see where that's attractive to them, but they're fundamentally different products, and I agree that eventually they're going to get sued over it.

It's strange that CJS2's car was inspected, and now needs another $1200 inspection. Is that the out-of-warranty general diagnostic fee? If so, :scared:. If it was already inspected and passed, it should be treated like any other out-of-warranty vehicle, IMO.

 

[wk057]

Some of the issues brought up in this thread and others regarding salvage vehicles are exactly the reason I decided to not buy and repair a salvage Model S as a project car. When software became an issue disabling the car, I'd eventually just start replacing everything on the car that is needed to make thing thing move with non-Tesla equivalents, starting with the BMS and inverter control. Once that was done there would be nothing Tesla could do to stop me from driving the car since I would be controlling the inverter/motor and battery with my own software/hardware. Probably wouldn't be quite as safe, but hey, if they want to be a******s about it then oh well. Now they'd have a Model S on the road running 3rd party drive unit software that is certainly not up to their standards. When I finally wrecked the thing in a huge fiery ball of overtaxed lithium ion battery meltdown explosion since my hacked-together hardware/software didn't quite do things safely, and it ends up on the 6-o'clock national news... maybe that's what it'd take for them to stop being stupid about selling parts and performing service on these vehicles.

Granted, the time, effort, and money needed to actually accomplish this would likely be higher than it would be to just buy the car new and not worry about it. So, by the time I felt like taking on such a project (years down the road when a salvage can be got for say, $15-20k) I feel like Tesla will have sorted out this salvage title car issue.

 

[CJS2]

I am honestly thinking of starting a kickstarter project to completely reverse engineer the car creating repair manuals, and convert the OS to android and other open source software so that others will not suffer the same problems as we salvage owners, and future non warranty cars WILL have. I believe turning off a feature such as supercharging after my car was inspected and had 14,000 miles of supercharging post salvage is a violation of just about every doctrine of business I can think of. Plus it was on the original purchase papers as an option to the car. Can you imagine GM telling you you must return all options of your car the moment it becomes salvage. Yes return your V8 please, and the tires you purchased because now you are salvage. The arrogance of the company is ridiculous.

 

[wk057]

I am honestly thinking of starting a kickstarter project to completely reverse engineer the car creating repair manuals, and convert the OS to android and other open source software so that others will not suffer the same problems as we salvage owners, and future non warranty cars WILL have. I believe turning off a feature such as supercharging after my car was inspected and had 14,000 miles of supercharging post salvage is a violation of just about every doctrine of business I can think of. Plus it was on the original purchase papers as an option to the car. Can you imagine GM telling you you must return all options of your car the moment it becomes salvage. Yes return your V8 please, and the tires you purchased because now you are salvage. The arrogance of the company is ridiculous.

I would definitely back this if the management was competent and capable of the task. I think too few are actually capable though, honestly, of doing this and making it comparable to the stock software/hardware.

 

[yobigd20]

I am honestly thinking of starting a kickstarter project to completely reverse engineer the car creating repair manuals, and convert the OS to android and other open source software so that others will not suffer the same problems as we salvage owners, and future non warranty cars WILL have. I believe turning off a feature such as supercharging after my car was inspected and had 14,000 miles of supercharging post salvage is a violation of just about every doctrine of business I can think of. Plus it was on the original purchase papers as an option to the car. Can you imagine GM telling you you must return all options of your car the moment it becomes salvage. Yes return your V8 please, and the tires you purchased because now you are salvage. The arrogance of the company is ridiculous.

I like this idea. Wish I could help (as I am a software engineer) but don't know how it's possible without direct access to the systems. There are definitely more qualified people than me for hacking embedded systems like this though.

I believe turning off a feature such as supercharging after my car was inspected and had 14,000 miles of supercharging post salvage is a violation of just about every doctrine of business I can think of.

I don't see how what they did is legal. Maybe you could find a lawyer to nab them on something like hacking or vandalism?

 

[HankLloydRight]

Yes.. The bad PR generated from such a lawsuit would be 1000x more damaging to Tesla than just working with salvage owners to make these cars drivable again.

This business policy is baffling, in that clearly Tesla can't see the bigger picture.

EDIT: And just think of the field day the Dealers Associations would have with this, rightfully so!!

 

[yobigd20]

I don't see how what they did is legal. Maybe you could find a lawyer to nab them on something like hacking or vandalism?

Actually extortion might work. I think you have enough legit evidence for that.

 

[bonnie]

Car originally did not have supercharging capability. If I pass inspection and pay them supercharging initiation cost I don't know why they would blacklist it. I will find out soon enough.

I will pretty much guarantee that your supercharging has been turned off. I drove my restored salvage 14,000 miles on superchargers after I paid tesla for a yearly inspection right after I purchased the restored salvage car where I have documented that they blessed the car. Now due to new policy they think my car is junk after they already inspected it, and have turned off my car and, I believe, now forced the car to throw errors at me to get me to pay the new $1200 inspection fee and pay for repairs that they have cooked up. The reason I say this is I messed with rebooting the computers and drove it for an hour to the nearest supercharger and tried to charge, which now it will not do. It then threw codes at me and I had to limp home. Now it will not start. So a perfectly working car for 14,000 miles past original inspection is now not driveable? The 800 number tesla guys say all I need is a software upgrade which the service center will not do unless I pay them $1200 and give them the rights to permanently shut off my car with no recourse and sign all my rights away. I own another tesla so I love the car and now hate the company. I also own a Nissan leaf that was a restore salvage and nissan begs me to service the car and will sell me any part I want. I have serviced my own airplanes which are a hell of a lot more dangerous, and love working with mechanical things. Tesla is being completely ridiculous in this regard.

I am honestly thinking of starting a kickstarter project to completely reverse engineer the car creating repair manuals, and convert the OS to android and other open source software so that others will not suffer the same problems as we salvage owners, and future non warranty cars WILL have. I believe turning off a feature such as supercharging after my car was inspected and had 14,000 miles of supercharging post salvage is a violation of just about every doctrine of business I can think of. Plus it was on the original purchase papers as an option to the car. Can you imagine GM telling you you must return all options of your car the moment it becomes salvage. Yes return your V8 please, and the tires you purchased because now you are salvage. The arrogance of the company is ridiculous.

I don't see how what they did is legal. Maybe you could find a lawyer to nab them on something like hacking or vandalism?

So unless I missed something in the thread, this car never had supercharging capability. Tesla never turned it off. It never had it.

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Actually extortion might work. I think you have enough legit evidence for that.

No. I don't think he does. What would be the extortion claim?

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And congrats to the OP on getting the car working. I hope you get the rest of the issues resolved and can enjoy your beautiful car.

 

[JST]

So unless I missed something in the thread, this car never had supercharging capability. Tesla never turned it off. It never had it.

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No. I don't think he does. What would be the extortion claim?

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And congrats to the OP on getting the car working. I hope you get the rest of the issues resolved and can enjoy your beautiful car.

There are two different cars being discussed here. I think you're right that OP's car didn't have it, but I see nothing in the description of CJS2's car that suggests that.

 

[bonnie]

There are two different cars being discussed here. I think you're right that OP's car didn't have it, but I see nothing in the description of CJS2's car that suggests that.

Ahhh, you're right. Thanks for the correction.

 

[wk057]

Well... as for Supercharging, IMO Tesla needs to partition the car and station portions of this option. I personally think Tesla should certainly be able to limit who can use the supercharger network.

Imagine the case of some damaged Model S with shoddy repairs to the DCHV system using a supercharger and damaging the supercharger itself in some way. That person should be responsible for those damages, but we all know how that would go. IMO the car should definitely have to pass some testing and inspection for access to the supercharger network. As someone who depends on it for long distance travel, the last thing I want is someone with a busted Model S breaking every stall at a site somehow before I get there.

The option for DC charging, however, shouldn't be disabled if the car had it for things like the CHAdeMO adapter and future adapters. The Tesla owned and operated network of charging stations, on the other hand, are not, IMO, the option listed on the window sticker for "Supercharging Enabled" (or whatever it says). So if Tesla says you can't use the network, well, you can't use the network. It is their network after all.

Tesla also should have zero obligation to enable it if it wasn't enabled prior and I think this is perfectly fine.

As far as totally refusing to help fix a car or requiring an inspection before it can be "activated" after 3rd party repairs... that nonsense needs to stop.

Honestly, however, I highly doubt Tesla is remotely "breaking" salvage cars. In the case of CJS2, More likely there is something actually wrong with the car that needs to be repaired. The fact that it happened while trying to supercharge or shortly after probably just caused or exposed the issue.

 

[CJS2]

My vehicle is an 85 which Musk has said numerous times charging on superchargers is "for free for life"! There were no qualifications on this statement. I agree that cars should be checked for their fitness, which I did by bringing the car to them for an immediate yearly service interval even though the car at that time had 3,000 miles.

My vehicle was inspected by a service center and blessed to go on my cross country escapade and I told the service center before inspection that I was departing on a cross country trip, I subsequently went 14,000 miles on superchargers.

i received the dreaded 12V fault like hundreds and hundreds of other cars. This error is a manufacturing defect. It is bad engineering and ridiculous to require a massive disassembly of the car to access the 12v battery that runs everything but the drivetrain. I charged the 12v battery. I removed it, went to two separate places to evaluate the battery and they find it perfectly fine. The dc-dc converter checks out too. I give up on the car, and after some months, the car magically resets all its errors.

i start driving it again, and then bam, tesla pulls 3G access so I have no console maps, and at the same time they pull my supercharger access. Thanks tesla, you pulled supercharging from a car that was inspected. Now they want another inspection for $1200 and they will not tell me the criterion for inspection. They also say that if the car is not brought up to their specs, they will not allow any service to be performed on the car - ever. They won't publsh the specs, so I have no way to comply with this arbitrary and capricious request. I am totally mystified why anyone should be treated this way. Even though I bought a restored salvage car, I am still a customer. Tesla can choose if I am a happy customer or not. They choose to treat salvage cars and their owners as pariah and not worth any help or assistance,

I am also a second customer. That I guess is not a pariah. The other tesla 85 that I own has a warranty. This car I purchased used but warranty intact. This car has had its drivetrain replaced 3 times, it's 12v battery replaced. The high voltage battery replaced. Numerous other problems with the car, which thank goodness, were covered by warranty. I worry about this car and everyone else's'car post warranty period. As they certainly do have a monopoly on their parts and service centers.

 

[wk057]

Tesla's stance on salvage vehicles definitely needs work, no doubt about it.

As for superchargers being "free for life," unfortunately regardless of what Elon Musk has said, this particular line item is not in any of my paperwork after three Model S purchases. No where in any of my documentation, purchase agreements, order confirmations, etc does it say anything about superchargers being free for life and/or accessible forever or anything else along those lines. The purchase agreement specifically excludes any verbal promises, if I recall correctly, also. There is also no mention of 3G, free or otherwise, in any of the legal paperwork. Do I believe they'll go back on that particular feature? Probably not, would be horrible PR. Do I believe they're eventually going to start charging for 3G? Yep.

The only thing about supercharging in the documentation is an item that says "Supercharging" and a line that says "Supercharging enabled." This, to me, just means that the hardware in the car is unlocked and able to do DC charging.

As for 3G, it makes perfect sense for Tesla to cut off 3G access to a car that has been reported as a total loss. Why keep paying for service for a car that is in a junk yard?

Supercharger network access probably just disappears along with it. As I said before, I wouldn't want someone with a crappily repaired S breaking superchargers.

It is pretty much implied with any salvage situation that you're kind of on your own. The car was deemed a total loss for a reason.

I do believe Tesla needs to open up service documentation and diagnostic tools to 3rd parties, but I don't believe that they should indefinitely provide ongoing support for things like 3G and supercharging for vehicles not serviced and inspected by them on a regular basis.

Honestly, I think the $1200 inspection is more than reasonable, especially if it allows access to the supercharger network after passing. Even if it were a $1200 yearly inspection, that'd still be reasonable, IMO, to permit a salvage vehicle access to the infrastructure.

 

[Brass Guy]

The car was deemed a total loss for a reason.

Yes, but I've seen too many on eBay that the reason is probably cosmetic. Insurance companies decide if a car is a total loss, it's not necessarily dependant on its road worthiness.

I don't believe that they should indefinitely provide ongoing support for things like 3G and supercharging for vehicles not serviced and inspected by them on a regular basis.

I must disagree. This implies that after my warranty is over, I should be paying Tesla to regularly service my car in order to continue using 3G or the supercharger network. That's not free supercharging.

Honestly, I think the $1200 inspection is more than reasonable, especially if it allows access to the supercharger network after passing. Even if it were a $1200 yearly inspection, that'd still be reasonable, IMO, to permit a salvage vehicle access to the infrastructure.

Aw hell no! First of all, no inspection should cost that much. Due to the complexity of the vehicle, I could see maybe $200-$300. If I had to bring a VW a dealer for an inspection, I'd be pretty upset with a $100 tab. Actually, I'd be upset to have to bring it to them at all.
No way an annual inspection by the manufacturer, especially at the rate you suggest. Once a car`s vital systems have been given an ok, there's no reason to suspect that would change prior another major accident.

 

[schonelucht]

Honestly, I think the $1200 inspection is more than reasonable, especially if it allows access to the supercharger network after passing. Even if it were a $1200 yearly inspection, that'd still be reasonable, IMO, to permit a salvage vehicle access to the infrastructure.

According to Tesla, the car is simpler and easier to maintain than a comparable ICE car. How then is $1200 in any shape of form a reasonable price for a yearly 'inspection'?