Phantom touch on the Model 3

[randy1077]

I believe I may have accidentally discovered the cause. A friend of mine had gotten in the car a few days ago. I went to show him the smart air vents and noticed the passenger side was pointing all the way towards the center of the screen, blasting the back of the screen directly only on the right side. This makes sense to me now. I had mentioned that it only happens when it was hot out and it doesn’t start for about 10 minutes after I leave work. I realize now that is about how long I was running the Air at full blast until It started happening. Usually after about 15 minutes total I turn the air way down and the problem goes away after about 3 minutes when it warms up a little. I believe it to be caused by blowing this extremely cold air on one side of the screen while the rest of the screen is still warm.

The problem has not happened since I repositioned the passenger vent to not blow directly on the screen!! Crossing my fingers.

Btw Tesla called me directly and they are working on a firmware fix. I expected little problems like this and have been very pleased with Tesla’s response so far.

 

[dhu1]

@tchaimd - Thanks for the report. 18.4.10 is starting to roll out. Maybe that will fix things. I have not experienced this when driving or had any phantom touch issues that I’m aware of. Makes me wonder if there are two types of music volume issues going on.

A staff member at my service center suggested that if your phone is on Bluetooth, whatever volume level your phone is set to will result in that volume level in the car when the music comes on. This doesn’t seem right to me. If it is phantom touches on the right side of the screen that cause the volume to turn up, the Bluetooth is irrelevant. In my case, I was parked and out of phone key range when I heard the car rocking.

are you still having this issue?

 

[dhu1]

Yes, unfortunately! I am on 2018.4.9 700fb88.

I am waiting now for Tesla to guide me to the next step - wait for yet another firmware update, or replace the screen/hardware.

When driving, I still get the volume changing on its own and random phantom inputs on the screen. Once, when this was happening, I opened the Sketchpad app, and noticed that all the phantom inputs were along the right edge of the touchscreen!

When parked in my garage, I’ve noticed the stereo turn on and off randomly, at max volume! Now my front speakers sometimes rattle/vibrate at normal volume, as if they have been blasting at full volume for a while and are damaged (?). Along with my eardrums from all of the random max volume incidents, ha!

Oh, and I notice a puddle of water under the car sometimes - probably due to A/C on when the car randomly turns on when parked in garage overnight.

Once I hear back again from Tesla, I will update you all.

Are you still having issues?

 

[Benjamin Brooks]

I really wish I could come up with cool names like this.

Anyway experienced this yesterday. Was driving along and randomly my volume got raised to max. Freaked out for a minute and turned off the music.

Then turned it back down. It kept trying to go to max until I pulled over and did a hard reset.

My vampire loss is really high. I was attributing to the temperature as it’s really cold right now. But I’ll monitor it more closely and see if it’s related to this. I’m losing about 20 miles a night after it’s done charging

Exactly same problem for months now! Sent multiple videos of the issue to Tesla and they have created trouble tickets but no fix

 

[Benjamin Brooks]

Has anyone had their car music turn on full blast since receiving software update 18.4.9?

Yes. Still occurring on 2018.12.1 for us.

 

[randy1077]

They have ordered me a new screen. It should arrive next week. It has occurred 4 times since my last report, all on hot sunny days. It always starts almost exactly 10 minutes into my drive and stops about 2 minutes later. It only seems to occur if the car interior was over about 100 when I first get in. It only occurs on my drive home, never in the morning where the car was in the garage overnight.

 

[PoitNarf]

I've only had this occur once within my first few days with my Model 3. I attributed it to the temporary plastic film that is on the screen from the factory since that film seemed to cause a slight static charge around the screen. Every since I removed the temporary film and replaced it with a screen protector from Abstract Ocean I haven't had a single phantom touch occurrence.

 

[Benjamin Brooks]

Still occurring for us with latest firmware, 2018.18.13. Pressing Tesla support to find a real hardware solution here...

 

[paliwoda]

I am experiencing SOMETHING like this on my 2023 MYLR (picked it up 2 weeks ago). Yesterday the volume started acting up ONLY when streaming from my phone using Bluetooth. I normally keep the volume around 25% but using Bluetooth stream the volume would increase by itself to 50% (it doesn't do this using Tesla Streaming or Radio). I can use the thumbwheel to reduce the volume but within seconds it increases to 50%. I have used Bluetooth streaming a few times before (usually to listen to Sirius/XM or a streaming AM station) without this happening. Even if I adjust the volume on my phone the car will increase it within a few seconds.

Anyone else have this problem? Is there a way to disengage the "auto volume" function (that increases the volume as interior noise increases).