Jack, the Tesla mobile ranger who comes to the house to do misc. service, highly recommended that I take our 2016 (HW v1) Model S in for the 8GB eMMC Recall as we had been having trouble with the screens going blank (but thankfully always recovered after awhile). It was something he can’t do on a housecall.
So when my wife had a business conference coming up in Albuquerque, I decided to go with her, and booked an appointment at the Nambé (Santa Fe) service center to have the recall service done last week, figuring I could drive it up there while she was in her meetings. I arrived a few minutes early for the 11:00 appointment on Tuesday, September 27 with 101,296 miles on the odometer, per my logging app.
The “90 minute” service took six hours, mostly due to the very bad Internet connection at the service center. The service rep explained that they had a lot of new cars to deliver, and the first thing they do when they arrive is connect to WiFi to download updated software, which swamps their limited connection. (They can’t get a couple of Starlink terminals?!)
When I finally left, I noticed all of our saved driver profiles and such had been wiped, so I stopped about a half-hour down the road to do things like turn Autopilot back on, which has to be done in Park. As I flipped through the menus to check settings, I noticed the odometer read 56,182 miles. (The mileage between the service center and where I stopped was lost because one of the settings I had to turn on was “mobile app access,” which is necessary for the “Tessie” logging app to record the drives.) By that point I was 30 or so miles down the road, and the service center was likely starting to close up. I was also hungry and tired, and anxious to get back to the hotel and have dinner with my wife.
Even with all the time they took they still couldn’t get all the software loaded into the car due to the terrible Internet. I noted the software was a 2020 version, even though it was up to date when I arrived. After dinner I connected to the WiFi at a Starbucks near the hotel and got the latest update re-loaded for the trip back home (western Colorado), and it’s now back to where it should be. But the missing 45,000+ miles didn’t reappear.
I mainly wanted to tell the story because it’s interesting, AND because since “rolling back the odometer” is illegal, I want to tell the story “in print” to establish that Tesla did it, not me. I’m sure this is very unusual and accidental on their part, and maybe it’ll resolve — but it hasn’t so far with the software update. Since it hasn’t, I’m hoping that Tesla can manually restore the missing miles so I don’t have to deal with incorrect mileage when selling the car at some point.
I have no beef with the folks at Nambé, who treated me well and seemed professional, nor with Tesla: I'm still a very happy Tesla owner and investor.
NOTE to Tesla news sites: you may NOT publish any of this without talking to me first. I can be most quickly contacted through my web site, thisistrue.com. Thanks.
So when my wife had a business conference coming up in Albuquerque, I decided to go with her, and booked an appointment at the Nambé (Santa Fe) service center to have the recall service done last week, figuring I could drive it up there while she was in her meetings. I arrived a few minutes early for the 11:00 appointment on Tuesday, September 27 with 101,296 miles on the odometer, per my logging app.
The “90 minute” service took six hours, mostly due to the very bad Internet connection at the service center. The service rep explained that they had a lot of new cars to deliver, and the first thing they do when they arrive is connect to WiFi to download updated software, which swamps their limited connection. (They can’t get a couple of Starlink terminals?!)
When I finally left, I noticed all of our saved driver profiles and such had been wiped, so I stopped about a half-hour down the road to do things like turn Autopilot back on, which has to be done in Park. As I flipped through the menus to check settings, I noticed the odometer read 56,182 miles. (The mileage between the service center and where I stopped was lost because one of the settings I had to turn on was “mobile app access,” which is necessary for the “Tessie” logging app to record the drives.) By that point I was 30 or so miles down the road, and the service center was likely starting to close up. I was also hungry and tired, and anxious to get back to the hotel and have dinner with my wife.
Even with all the time they took they still couldn’t get all the software loaded into the car due to the terrible Internet. I noted the software was a 2020 version, even though it was up to date when I arrived. After dinner I connected to the WiFi at a Starbucks near the hotel and got the latest update re-loaded for the trip back home (western Colorado), and it’s now back to where it should be. But the missing 45,000+ miles didn’t reappear.
I mainly wanted to tell the story because it’s interesting, AND because since “rolling back the odometer” is illegal, I want to tell the story “in print” to establish that Tesla did it, not me. I’m sure this is very unusual and accidental on their part, and maybe it’ll resolve — but it hasn’t so far with the software update. Since it hasn’t, I’m hoping that Tesla can manually restore the missing miles so I don’t have to deal with incorrect mileage when selling the car at some point.
I have no beef with the folks at Nambé, who treated me well and seemed professional, nor with Tesla: I'm still a very happy Tesla owner and investor.
NOTE to Tesla news sites: you may NOT publish any of this without talking to me first. I can be most quickly contacted through my web site, thisistrue.com. Thanks.
