New Model 3 - already died

[MissyMcBee]

OK-here’s the latest update. After 48 hours of radio silence, the techs were able to dig into the car this morning. As of now, it appears that during production one of the straps that holds one of the batteries in place was not properly installed and was causing all kinds of errors to happen which eventually overloaded the system. I’ll give a final update when I have it. Based on what I am seeing, this is a newly identified production problem-but at least the service people are great about dealing with it.

What was your production date or month?

 

[Thomken]

What was your production date or month?

 

[Thomken]

I took delivery second week of July- The reported gap’s in Vin numbers also doesn’t help narrow it down so that’s all I can tell you. It does seem to be the first instance of this that I can find though. To be fair is a bit concerning, because I’m wondering if I will have one of the other commonly reported problems too, eventually.

 

[MissyMcBee]

I took delivery second week of July- The reported gap’s in Vin numbers also doesn’t help narrow it down so that’s all I can tell you. It does seem to be the first instance of this that I can find though. To be fair is a bit concerning, because I’m wondering if I will have one of the other commonly reported problems too, eventually.

I'm sorry you have to go through this. I took delivery on the 15th and my car was built on 7/6 so i'm hoping that this is not a wide spread issue. The only problem i have is a front bumper sensor that decided to play 'hide and seek' after hosing off the front of the car (not pressure washing) and now i can't pull it out so i need to call the SC.

 

[TheCaptain67]

There were no service people working today anywhere in the area-I was talking with someone at a central call center. Since I was already on my trip there was no way to get one even if I demanded it anyway. I explained the entire situation of the timing of my trip to the person and they were sympathetic but basically unable to do anything except offer me a car from enterprise which I told them was unacceptable.

I tried to drop off my car at Tesla SC for service on a Saturday (Service dept is open), but they told me it was not possible to get a loaner on a Saturday and that I had to come in Mon-Fri 8-6PM if I wanted a a loaner.

Not the best first impression when trying to get issues fixed in the first 1,000 miles....

 

[Thomken]

Ok. Final update. Disclaimer is I’m not very tech savvy so I’m relying this in layman‘s terms as explained to me by the tech. Disclaimer is I’m not very tech savvy so I’m relaying this in layman‘s terms as explained to me by the Tesla tech.

There is evidently a group of five blots that secure the grounding wires running between the battery packs and the exterior/interior of the car. During production, these were not adequately tightened so the firmware monitoring this was constantly being overloaded because it could not always detect the car was grounded properly. This eventually caused a complete system failure. Given that this is likely an automated process to tighten those bolts, I can’t imagine I have the only model 3 built in July that has this issue. Good luck out there everyone! I hope this doesn’t happen to yours

 

[brkaus]

@Thomken - appreciate the update!

 

[boiler81]

Sorry to hear of your problem. For what it's worth, my adult son's well maintained BMW 535i w/ 40K miles on it, left him stranded in the mountain pass. Turned out they towed the car three hour on a flat bed back to nearest BMW dealership, only to be told it wasn't covered under warranty as it was the in-tank fuel pump (>$1400 repair), which isn't included in BMW's powertrain warranty. Of course the tow and rental car was his expense also. This is the second break-down he's had in the car in the last year. Their now talking about selling it.

At least you know you'll never be plagued with a fuel pump failure.

 

[Kenrubin]

Similar thing happened to me. Brand new M3, 20 miles on it. Backing out of driveway, get a message, "12 volt battery low, do not drive, car may shut down" then all cabin functions -- AC, radio, etc -- went dead. Tesla towed it to service center in Rockville MD, 4 days later diagnosed the problem as a defective high-voltage battery charger. Techs said they haven't seen any other problems like this. Part to take a week be delivered then a couple days to fix. M3 still in the shop, but will update.

 

[greendrive2019]

New owner first post. I just got my model three a couple of weeks ago and it is an absolutely amazing car. A few minor problems with it at delivery-passenger front window did not go down all the way, small tear at bottom of steering wheel where stitching comes together-but nothing significant. Last week the regulator on the glove box went out so it would not stay closed. Quick schedule into the service center to get it taken care of-no problems at all. Kind of a hassle because the nearest service center is over two hours away from me but not a huge deal.

My family had planned a fairly extensive road trip vacation to travel from Ohio to Orlando and come back through Charleston to break the car in and have a nice trip. This included routing and having hotel set up along the charger route, etc.

Currently my car is on a flatbed truck headed to Cleveland to a service center because it completely died this morning and they were unable to do anything remotely. We had just started the first leg of our trip, so I guess were lucky that it happened there than at the midway point. It was giving the car cannot maintain power/system activating error messages. They told me that it is not an issue with the system but rather an issue with something else in the car. Anyone else have any problems like this? Really inconvenient timing, and very expensive since my trip was planned around being able to drive the car-not to mention the fact that the vacation was centered around this so it is now ruined.

Just trying to see if there’s information about this to quell my frustrations!

Hi Thomken, thanks for sharing your experience here. I noticed the same thing with my steering wheel. I wondered if you did anything about it or just let it go. Hope all is well with the car now!