Scary!!! Steering wheel difficult to turn while waiting at signal and car was stuck.

[loveforEV]

Today, I was at a signal couple minutes from home and waiting to turn right. The steering wheel froze and 'Autopilot safety/convenience features unavailable ' message popped up. When I tried to turn the wheel it was resisting and I could feel some vibration as you can see from the video. I was blocking the traffic but I had no way to move the car. The acceleration did nothing and the car was undriveable.
I called up road side assistance and they asked me to do a couple of reboots and a power reset .But nothing helped. So they ended up towing the car. I had to wait for 2 hours for the tow truck to show up. But overall it was a very scary exp and I hope the service center figures out the issue as I don't want to have the steering wheel freeze when on a highway.

I had not turned on autopilot or anything and I don't understand why the warning message is about autopilot being unavailable. Also, the issue appeared out of no where and only two weeks back I had my 2 year service done.

BTW, mine is a Model S,75D, Dec 2016 built HW 2.0 car.

Has anyone had a similar experience ? What was the fix ?

 

[DCEV]

Do you have a video?

 

[loveforEV]

Do you have a video?

Yes, I do . Will try to upload it today.

 

[loveforEV]

Here is the video. As you can see when I try to move the steering, it resists back and vibrates.

 

[Huskyf]

Are you in P in this vidéo when you are on Park mode it's not possible to turn wheel

 

[Big Earl]

Are you in P in this vidéo when you are on Park mode it's not possible to turn wheel

The steering wheel should turn freely in park as long as the car is on, which it is in this video.

 

[BigNick]

EXTERMINATE ALL HUMANS!

If I had to guess there is a hardware problem with the steering rack position sensor or something along those lines.

But if it gives the message that AP features are unavailable it shouldn’t be applying any resistance to the steering wheel. Loss of power assist on a Tesla will require a huge amount of force to get the wheel to turn when not rolling, given its wide, low-profile tires and weight.

 

[loveforEV]

The steering wheel should turn freely in park as long as the car is on, which it is in this video.

Yes, I was in park when I shot this video. But moving it into drive did not help either. Same behavior.

 

[ytwytw]

Sounds like steering component is failing

How many miles do you have on the car?

 

[loveforEV]

24k

 

[robg]

Not sure if this is the cause, but has your car had the steering bolt recall performed?
Tesla issues a voluntary recall for power-steering bolts in all 123,000 pre-April 2016 Model S vehicles

 

[loveforEV]

The car is 2016 December make. So it did not qualify for the recall.

 

[Ande]

Geez, some defective servo motor, grab the wheel like a man would work, not the wimpy two finger grip

 

[loveforEV]

Update:
Heard back from the service center. They have diagnosed an electrical component failure in the steering wheel and will be replacing the steering column. He also mentioned to me that this kind of failure is very rare and so they will be sending the old parts to California for further research.

 

[realvvk]

Update:
Heard back from the service center. They have diagnosed an electrical component failure in the steering wheel and will be replacing the steering column. He also mentioned to me that this kind of failure is very rare and so they will be sending the old parts to California for further research.

Thanks for the update! This is concerning but not entirely unexpected. Sorry it happened to you. Hopefully the car will be fixed permanently and sounds like under warranty.

 

[quickstrike12]

Am I wrong....as I understand it there is no electrical way by either power assist or servo or AP that the actual linkage between the steering wheel and the steering rack that the car cannot be manually turned. Basically the driver would always be able to steer the car in any failure. Albeit difficult and with no assistance from Hydraulic or servo.

Did the OP turn the wheel HARD? basically force it to turn or were you just being gentle for fear of braking something?
What I’m getting at is the elephant in the room. In a total power failure scenario the car should always steer as it it is stopping.

 

[loveforEV]

I was definitely being gentle with the fear of breaking something and making it worse. So it is possible that it could have turned by force but I also noticed that the steering was resisting and pushing back with some weird vibrations.

and yes, the repair will be completely covered under warranty.

 

[robg]

Am I wrong....as I understand it there is no electrical way by either power assist or servo or AP that the actual linkage between the steering wheel and the steering rack that the car cannot be manually turned. Basically the driver would always be able to steer the car in any failure. Albeit difficult and with no assistance from Hydraulic or servo.

Did the OP turn the wheel HARD? basically force it to turn or were you just being gentle for fear of braking something?
What I’m getting at is the elephant in the room. In a total power failure scenario the car should always steer as it it is stopping.

Yes, the Tesla system is electrically assisted power steering (not "steer by wire"), so there is a direct mechanical linkage from the steering wheel to the front wheels. In general, eps systems tend to be harder to turn (vs hydraulic) in cases where power is lost because you have to overcome the resistance/weight of the eps motor. So its very possible you could think that the steering is "locked" when in fact it just needs a lot of effort to turn it.

 

[David29]

When my steering failed a few months ago, apparently due to the type of bolt failure that is the subject of the recall mentioned above, I got more warning messages, and I think one of the messages said something about a steering failure.
As also mentioned above, I was able to wrestle the car to the curb, but it took considerable effort, and moving the steering off center caused it to make considerable noise and vibration. I felt fortunate at the time that I was just pulling out of my driveway onto the street, at low speed. I did not feel that I could safely drive it to the service center a couple of miles away, so i waited for the flatbed. It felt even harder than when I had a previous car's power steering fail, and had to steer by just my own force. This entailed much more resistance. So yes, i could steer, but not well enough to feel comfortable trying to maneuver in traffic. i would not like to think what the accident report would say if i had tried to steer through traffic but had an accident because I could not maneuver well enough....
Tesla ended up replacing the steering rack under warranty (hopefully with those new bolts, too!).

 

[BulldogsRus]

I think the issue was that you were currently listening to Adele which makes most people want to drive into an embankment. In this case the car locked up to protect you from injury.

Man, Tesla thinks of everything!