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Wiki Sudden Loss Of Range With 2019.16.x Software
- Thread starter Dutchmeeuw
- Start date
Multiple, but probably not all that should, posts have been moved to the Snippiness 2.0 thread. There is some objective, reasonable content in several of the posts there, but, unfortunately, certain members seem to be unable to control their own behavior and are resorting to ad hominums and falsehoods.
This is a very important thread, there are a lot of questions that are unclear. And when we have information, that should be shared. But attacks and rudeness toward those you disagree with won't be tolerated.
This is a very important thread, there are a lot of questions that are unclear. And when we have information, that should be shared. But attacks and rudeness toward those you disagree with won't be tolerated.
Re-posting the relevant info from this post that was moved for reference. I'm on "moderation" after my last post (which admittedly was a bit snippy), so not sure when/if this will actually show up here, but I feel this info should remain in this thread and not be lost.
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"Safety" is pretty broad. For example, I would consider a battery exploding/catching fire/etc without an external cause (like tampering, external fire, accident, etc) to be a safety issue. I wouldn't consider the car being or otherwise becoming unusable to be a safety issue. (Others have said that a car dying unexpectedly would be a safety issue, but I don't subscribe to that line of thought, considering cars break down all the time.) I wouldn't consider limited power or limited charging a safety issue. Etc.
With that in mind, to the best of my knowledge, no to both questions.
Open for debate.
The warranty explicitly disclaims capacity loss not related to a failure. Nothing has in fact failed, so I'd say by the letter of the warranty and relevant laws I'm aware of.... probably not. I'm also not a lawyer.
A better question would be, is Tesla allowed to avoid a warranty issue at the expense of the customer's ownership experience? Dunno. Don't think there's any good examples of this in the past, since Tesla's OTA setup is somewhat unique.
Mitigates a potential failure mode of the high voltage battery.
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I could have, from a technical perspective, defended my original statements at the time pretty well. (Edit: Keep in mind that the info below is based almost entirely on independent reverse engineering of the software and hardware.)
It was quite obvious from the software that Tesla was testing proactive functions that searched for, predicted, and attempted to prevent a particular potential failure mode (catastrophic and unsafe) (X) in the fleet, and also clearly obvious from analysis of that code that it was definitely not expected to actually be found in the fleet at all.
Instead what they got were loads of false positives from a previously unknown and unrelated condition (one not inherently unsafe) (we'll later define this as Z, but the developers didn't appear to be aware of a distinction just yet). (<<--- This is about the time I initially tweeted. If this test were indeed finding loads of cases of condition X, which it appeared to be doing based on the reports of range loss, then yes, this would have been a problem and a real safety issue. I was still reviewing reverse engineering of code from updates that had been pushed since then at this time, but had not made it past this point just yet.)
That code was updated hastily to implement temporary mitigation that would prevent both X+Z from being failure modes, at the expense of significant range loss (presumable temporary... it was pretty clear that at this point whoever was writing this code was aware there was no way these were all condition X).
The code was again updated to implement separate detection for Z. At this point, both paths led to being mitigated the same way with the temporary function. (<<--- This is about when I posted about the separate conditions.)
Detection for X was updated to also check for Z (since checking for X finds X+Z, but checking for Z only finds Z).
If X found and no Z, the vehicle would be immediately disabled with an error along the lines of "High voltage battery error. Vehicle will shutdown. Contact Tesla Service." (This is not the exact error message. I've seen zero reports of the specific error being noted by anyone, further confirming information from an insider that no cases of condition X, which would be unsafe, exist in the wild).
If Z detected, then mitigation for Z put in place.
Later updates tweaked mitigation for Z to lose significantly less usable capacity.
I had expected this trend to continue, but development seems to have halted/paused shortly after the initial tweaking and small rebound on capacity. I believe there's additional room for improvement, but doesn't seem to be a priority based on limited changes to the relevant functions.
Edit: Also, I've fallen behind on my reverse engineering of the most recent firmwares... so there could be changes I'm unaware of. It takes a significant amount of time to analyze and annotate changes, determine functions, etc. I've even written custom tools to streamline some of this with various modules on the Model S, but it still involves a lot of human brain power to get anything useful. Unfortunately the time I have to set aside for this sort of stuff has been limited lately.
That's as far into this as I'm getting.
---
"Safety" is pretty broad. For example, I would consider a battery exploding/catching fire/etc without an external cause (like tampering, external fire, accident, etc) to be a safety issue. I wouldn't consider the car being or otherwise becoming unusable to be a safety issue. (Others have said that a car dying unexpectedly would be a safety issue, but I don't subscribe to that line of thought, considering cars break down all the time.) I wouldn't consider limited power or limited charging a safety issue. Etc.
With that in mind, to the best of my knowledge, no to both questions.
Open for debate.
The warranty explicitly disclaims capacity loss not related to a failure. Nothing has in fact failed, so I'd say by the letter of the warranty and relevant laws I'm aware of.... probably not. I'm also not a lawyer.
A better question would be, is Tesla allowed to avoid a warranty issue at the expense of the customer's ownership experience? Dunno. Don't think there's any good examples of this in the past, since Tesla's OTA setup is somewhat unique.
Mitigates a potential failure mode of the high voltage battery.
---
I could have, from a technical perspective, defended my original statements at the time pretty well. (Edit: Keep in mind that the info below is based almost entirely on independent reverse engineering of the software and hardware.)
It was quite obvious from the software that Tesla was testing proactive functions that searched for, predicted, and attempted to prevent a particular potential failure mode (catastrophic and unsafe) (X) in the fleet, and also clearly obvious from analysis of that code that it was definitely not expected to actually be found in the fleet at all.
Instead what they got were loads of false positives from a previously unknown and unrelated condition (one not inherently unsafe) (we'll later define this as Z, but the developers didn't appear to be aware of a distinction just yet). (<<--- This is about the time I initially tweeted. If this test were indeed finding loads of cases of condition X, which it appeared to be doing based on the reports of range loss, then yes, this would have been a problem and a real safety issue. I was still reviewing reverse engineering of code from updates that had been pushed since then at this time, but had not made it past this point just yet.)
That code was updated hastily to implement temporary mitigation that would prevent both X+Z from being failure modes, at the expense of significant range loss (presumable temporary... it was pretty clear that at this point whoever was writing this code was aware there was no way these were all condition X).
The code was again updated to implement separate detection for Z. At this point, both paths led to being mitigated the same way with the temporary function. (<<--- This is about when I posted about the separate conditions.)
Detection for X was updated to also check for Z (since checking for X finds X+Z, but checking for Z only finds Z).
If X found and no Z, the vehicle would be immediately disabled with an error along the lines of "High voltage battery error. Vehicle will shutdown. Contact Tesla Service." (This is not the exact error message. I've seen zero reports of the specific error being noted by anyone, further confirming information from an insider that no cases of condition X, which would be unsafe, exist in the wild).
If Z detected, then mitigation for Z put in place.
Later updates tweaked mitigation for Z to lose significantly less usable capacity.
I had expected this trend to continue, but development seems to have halted/paused shortly after the initial tweaking and small rebound on capacity. I believe there's additional room for improvement, but doesn't seem to be a priority based on limited changes to the relevant functions.
Edit: Also, I've fallen behind on my reverse engineering of the most recent firmwares... so there could be changes I'm unaware of. It takes a significant amount of time to analyze and annotate changes, determine functions, etc. I've even written custom tools to streamline some of this with various modules on the Model S, but it still involves a lot of human brain power to get anything useful. Unfortunately the time I have to set aside for this sort of stuff has been limited lately.
That's as far into this as I'm getting.
Pre 2019-252
After- 220
After 2020.24.6- 238 at 96%
Battery scroll thing says its should be at 242
What?!? You have stated several times you dont own a car. So now you do?
Also if that was your "plan" like most of us you should be upset they are messing with it and not being honest about why they did it and make it seem like they want to prolong the life of the battery past warranty so they dont lose out. smh you are something special.
Funny thing hes stated on this thread he doesn't own a Tesla several times. If I was good at searching id find it before he deletes it.
Nope, someone else kept stating that I don't have a car.
trayloader
Member
Thank You Jason, really appreciated! A long time coming but everything seems clear now.
Is it a coincidence or consequence that we didn´t see any more fires since 2019.16.1.1 and newer then?
My posts summarizing Jason's wall of text also got snippied despite being helpful and just calling for the wiki post to be updated. Here is the relevant info in concise form ("confirmation" refers to not from Tesla's mouth, but from expert opinions here) :
1. Confirmation that software updates did not fix safety issues - condition X
2. Confirmation that X has not been found in the fleet, but Z was found which isn't unsafe but needs mitigation
3. Tesla has been attempting to bring the range back up incrementally but stopped at some point (as they are wont to become distracted...). Lets hope they get back in the saddle.
4. No cases of X detected in the wild. What the "abundance of caution" was about remains a mystery.
1. Confirmation that software updates did not fix safety issues - condition X
2. Confirmation that X has not been found in the fleet, but Z was found which isn't unsafe but needs mitigation
3. Tesla has been attempting to bring the range back up incrementally but stopped at some point (as they are wont to become distracted...). Lets hope they get back in the saddle.
4. No cases of X detected in the wild. What the "abundance of caution" was about remains a mystery.
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I don't see a difference between pre and post TBH. Just uncap my battery and end this already!
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That one certainly shouldn't be included as anything related to this thread:Unless you think that somehow Tesla is supposed to make the cars resist external fire sources.
As far as the other two we have no idea of the source of the fire. (I suspect that the second one started with the Porsche.)
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Guy V
Member
Then which way are you arguing? If there have been no unexplained fires since the update it would suggest the update fixed a major safety problem, right? And if it was a major safety problem...
Unless you think that somehow Tesla is supposed to make the cars resist external fire sources.
As far as the other two we have no idea of the source of the fire. (I suspect that the second one started with the Porsche.)
...I both am and am not arguing either and both ways? Tesla said it was a fire problem when they capped us. Others here said have mentioned a slew of alphabetical safety problems that might not even exist but in the end the fires continued while my car was crippled for no reason. I'm so exasperated by this nonsense I feel like the only response is this: if my car is going to burn either way I might as well spend the ticking seconds left charging faster and less often. I have never been given any sort of justification for what was taken from me and all I want is what I already own.
KryoPhoenix209
Member
lightningltd
Member
@gmo43 's 96% used be 242 (0.96X252) before capping. His 96% now after 2020.24.6.x is 238. So, at 96% SoC, he is short by only 4 miles.
It's also been over a year since capping, hence part of that 4 miles might be just natural degradation? Looks to me, @gmo43 has almost all his miles back at 96%?
@gmo43 : What do you think?
I keep reading this and can't figure out how you reach that conclusion.
A: Some number of Tesla Model S vehicles have burned without any apparent external source of heat.
Do you disagree?
B: They released software to prevent condition X, which has never occurred, and adjust for condition Z, which is not dangerous.
Correct me if I got something wrong there.
C: From what I can find, with only a limited amount of efforting, there are at least two subsequent fires with no published explanation.
Is this incorrect?
D: So the vehicle has a non-zero number of fire incidents and no corrective action to avoid them.
E: There remains a non-zero risk of another of these vehicles encountering a fire incident.
Can you tell me where I went wrong in getting from A to E?
Edit to add some color.
I have a child whose room is above the garage hosting our Tesla Model S. My wife and I are downstairs on the other side of the house. Originally there would be no alarm until off gassing from a fire reached either my child's or an adjacent room. There is no opening or air ducting between the garage and the living space.
I researched modern house fires and learned the window for escape is much lower than it was when I was younger and fumes from modern textiles and other sources are far more toxic.
I cannot count on my child reacting rationally to a smoke alarm in the middle of the night and escaping in the proper direction.
For these reasons I chose to install a couple of Zigbee smoke alarms to provide earlier detection if there is a fire.
The risk is non-zero. The cost to achieve earlier detection is negligible. What kind of fool would I be not to take this action?
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