swegman: Car won't turn on (screens are dark)

[swegman]

Joost de Vries called and discussed the situation with me. The car happened to go to sleep while the vehicle was connected to the diagnostic equipment. Had that not occurred, Tesla would probably still be looking for the problem. I was requested to keep specifics of the discussion confidential. However, Tesla is going back to one of their suppliers regarding the need for the supplier to improve their production quality.

I wish to note that not only did I receive a call from Joost, but also George's office and Elon's office. They were all concerned and upset by my experience with the vehicle, gave me their personal contact information, promised to follow-up with me, and gave me a "gift" for my inconvenience. They are truly aiming for zero defects in their cars, and are in a class above the other car manufacturers.

 

[Grendal]

That's a very impressive story. I'm glad that you were fixed up. Tesla continues to impress.

 

[Gator]

Wow, that is completely awesome. It is cool that they were all informed, all the way to the top, and looking for the solution. This says alot about how prepared the Rockville Service center is to diagnose situations like these. In addition to be able to work with the west coast Tesla Engineers. I wonder if Joost de Vries went to the Rockville Service Center.

The magnitude of this experience is huge and will definitely help in customer confidence in the product and company.

 

[dflye]

If there is one thing Tesla needs, it is at least one "loaner" Model S in every service center (or potentially more/less where the concentration of service centers/owners is fairly dense/sparse).

At this point, while I've only had my Model S since November last year, I will go through absolutely any contortion required to avoid having to ride in my wife's RAV4! The thought of being stuck with some POS ICE while my Model S was in for an extended service visit is traumatic at best.

While they are apparently focused primarily on delivery of new vehicles, and sounds like parts for non-critical issues on early deliveries are scarce, they really need to readjust their focus on customer service.

Every day I'm out and about, I'm making contacts with folks who are interested in the Model S, either because they have heard / read about it, or just because it caught their eye. I tend to keep my conversations honest; Tesla isn't perfect, but they are making attempts to address their issues.

Whether those attempts are whole-hearted, half-hearted or purely for show, I can't really say. My personal experience has been they are awesome when you have them at hand; but good luck tracking them down and getting a response for non-critical issues.

I think one problem is the melding of the bleeding edge of technology atop an automobile chassis. Folks in the technology field are used to a very open, visible and responsive channel of communication about every bug and feature (current or planned) in the technology they work with on a daily basis, and they expect nothing less from Tesla.

In my mind, this is a critical lapse in Tesla's game plan: A significant portion of current owners are extremely tech savvy, and could/would provide endless detailed feedback if it were only possible given the current communication channels.

Currently, it is about as possible as a theatre-goer communicating with a mime who works for a magician somewhere offstage.

 

[jomo25]

Hate to say it, but there might be a pattern here: Dead in my driveway....

@Swegman: Sounds like they are trying to do the right things to make it up to you and let you know how sorry they are. The confidential part is a little worrisome.

You might want to add one of those "can't use my posts outside of this forum" signature disclaimers. I have a feeling this is going to get written about.

 

[Raffy.Roma]

@swegman
Nice to know that you received calls from George's office and Elon's office.

 

[Norbert]

@Swegman: Sounds like they are trying to do the right things to make it up to you and let you know how sorry they are. The confidential part is a little worrisome.

Confidentiality is common business practice when it comes to supplier issues. (Though there are exceptions.)

 

[Peksman]

Dead in Garage

My MS 60kw is 3 weeks old. Ive had no real problems except for a passenger rear door that would not open from the outside when I chose the child lock feature.

Yesterday Friday I received the 4.3 update notice on my screen and opted for a 2 AM update. As soon as I punched it in, I received a yellow warning sign that something was wrong and to bring the vehicle in for service. After a few seconds the screen went dark and the vehicle was not driveable.
I called Tesla and reached the Menlo Park Service Center. I described what happened. Brian told me that I may inadvertently punched in the update now button. I was told to wait two hours.
It's been four hours and the car has not woken up yet. The service center tried coaching me into rebooting by pressing down the two center buttons with no success.

They kept the communication line open and promised to send a Technician Saturday morning.

The technician came promptly at 9am. He immediately hooked up his laptop and diagnosed the problem to be more complicated. He could not wake up the car. He was also concerned that the 12v battery may discharge fully if left in its present condition in my garage.

He promised to call his supervisor to arrange for the car to be brought to a service station. An hour later his supervisor called to arrange a truck to load the car on Monday morning. They asked and I declined a loaner car.
Meanwhile the car is not driveable. The door opens and lights go on.

My tesla honeymoon is over.




60 kw MS

 

[Raffy.Roma]

As I said in another thread Model S is a very advanced car at the border of present technology and for this reason these things can happen. I think that you should consider yourself a pioneer in the field of EVs and as all pioneers you are going to undertake some troubles. But the solutions to your problems will be useful for next buyers. Then I would like to say that from another thread I saw that in these cases Tesla makes every possible effort to work out the problem in a short time.
Eventually we will have a market where buyers will be very willing to get EVs and that's good.

 

[mhpr262]

In the other thread "car dies after 2 days" another owner reported the identical problem. It apparently turned out that bad electronics from a supplier were at fault. i doubt there was only one item, probably more like a whole batch was built into various cars. Now that they have figured out what was wrong (and it seemed to have been really tricky) fixing it should be no problem (if the problems are indeed identical)

 

[Al Sherman]

Glad it's all over Sweg. What's you're config and vin please?

 

[Cattledog]

Peksman - Sorry to hear that. That was a short honeymoon, and although all marriages move past the honeymoon to deeper stages, you sure want the honeymoon to last as long as it can. I hope you'll get a permanent and quick fix soon.

 

[dgmanny]

Can you give me more information about what yellow jumper they removed? Do you mean the yellow fuse for the display? I picked up my car yesterday and they didnt have a 6-50 adapter. So I charged last night with my Siemens Versicharger 30a, j1772 (3 months old). I woke up this morning and the car is totally dead. I cant believe it. The charging ring is solid read and the tesla helpdesk cant access the car. The Siemens ESVE had an indicator of a fault. Any assitance is approciated.

I had a similar experience a few weeks ago while charging at work. I received a ChargePoint text message indicating that the cable had been unplugged, which seemed unlikely. I was also sure the car shouldn't have been fully charged, which used to trigger the same message prior to 4.2. When I went to the car to check it out I had the same symptoms: handles didn't auto-extend, but they responded to a double-press on the fob. Inside, the dash and touchscreen were unresponsive.

Tesla sent a ranger who removed the yellow jumper described elsewhere in this thread, waited a few minutes, and replaced it. I was told that there was only one similar report where the car "turtled" like this when dealing with a situation that shouldn't arise, and that it's a form of self-defence against chargers that violate specifications. Presumably later firmware updates will be designed to allow easier recovery? In any case, I'm sure I could find and remove the jumper if I needed to repeat the process.

This process compared favourably with my experience a few weeks prior after I found out our Boxster's battery was dead (it still had the original battery and hadn't been driven in a month - I suspect you can guess why!) Jump-starting a Boxster turns out to be a royal pain because you can't open the hood when it's dead, and the procedure listed in the owners manual didn't work. We wound up borrowing a device that loads the 12V system sufficiently through the "cigarette lighter" outlet to allow the hood to be released. It was interesting to compare the two experiences.

 

[Peksman]

Can you give me more information about what yellow jumper they removed? Do you mean the yellow fuse for the display? I picked up my car yesterday and they didnt have a 6-50 adapter. So I charged last night with my Siemens Versicharger 30a, j1772 (3 months old). I woke up this morning and the car is totally dead. I cant believe it. The charging ring is solid read and the tesla helpdesk cant access the car. The Siemens ESVE had an indicator of a fault. Any assitance is approciated.

What firmware version do you have? Is it coincidence that there are more posts about dead MS with the 4.3 update?

 

[dgmanny]

It is 4.2. Vin 685x. When i remove the 20a display fuse and reseat it, with a two button hard reset the car screens begin to boot up with a "car waking up mease", but after 20seconds it goes back to being completly dead. I am going to wait longer before trying the hard reset.

What firmware version do you have? Is it coincidence that there are more posts about dead MS with the 4.3 update?

 

[swegman]

Moderator, Can you please change the title of this tread back to "Car dies after 2 days" or perhaps "Car dies after two days, is "repaired", but dies again".

Bad news. Picked up the car from the Rockville Service Center Saturday evening. Drove the car home and around town. Around 11 pm I put the car in the garage and connected the charger. Around 2 am Sunday morning I tried to connect to the car with the iphone app to check the charging status, but was unable to do so. Went to the garage this morning around 9:30 am and the car is asleep again and will not wake up.

I contacted the Tesla 877 telephone number and they told me they received the same error message that they have received from my car in the past. They have notified Joost and Lenny (Rockville Service Center manager) via email to contact me. I also sent emails to Lenny, Joost, Elon's office and George's office.

Not happy.

- - - Updated - - -

I have a white performance (P85) with twin chargers, tech package, sound package, pano roof, 21 inch gray wheel. All options but for the jump seats and parcel shelf. VIN 6087.

 

[dsm363]

That sucks. Hopefully they figure this out.

 

[dgmanny]

Bummer. Did you notice any type of charging fault when your problem first surfaced? I am in the same situation as you but it happened after 1 day of receiving the car. Can you tell me what specific repairs they did so I can mention it to the Boston Service Center? Thanks.

Moderator, Can you please change the title of this tread back to "Car dies after 2 days" or perhaps "Car dies after two days, is "repaired", but dies again".

Bad news. Picked up the car from the Rockville Service Center Saturday evening. Drove the car home and around town. Around 11 pm I put the car in the garage and connected the charger. Around 2 am Sunday morning I tried to connect to the car with the iphone app to check the charging status, but was unable to do so. Went to the garage this morning around 9:30 am and the car is asleep again and will not wake up.

I contacted the Tesla 877 telephone number and they told me they received the same error message that they have received from my car in the past. They have notified Joost and Lenny (Rockville Service Center manager) via email to contact me. I also sent emails to Lenny, Joost, Elon's office and George's office.

Not happy.

- - - Updated - - -

I have a white performance (P85) with twin chargers, tech package, sound package, pano roof, 21 inch gray wheel. All options but for the jump seats and parcel shelf. VIN 6087.

 

[Peksman]

How many days has your vehicle been with Tesla Service Department?

My MS 60 is to be put on a flatbed tomorrow Monday morning. It also fell into a deep sleep and is not driveable. The service tech who came was prompt and very professional. He did worry about the 12V battery eventually discharging prior to it being towed back. He connected the 12V battery to a battery charger/jumper in my garage just in case

I sympathize with you. As for me, I had three great weeks with the MS 60. I just hope they get a permanent fix for these glitches we are experiencing.

 

[swegman]

I would ask the Boston Service center manager to contact Lenny at the Rockville Service Center to discuss. I was asked not to be too specific. But Lenny knows and can advise your service center.

The charger was connected this time when it went to sleep. It was not before. The ring is red. Tesla said the car issued a battery management error code just before it went to sleep around 2:30am.

The four way hazard lights work (but the indicator in the car does not). The door handles extend by pressing the handle (it does not autoextend). The trunk opens by pressing the button on the trunk. The wipers do not work this time (they did the first time the car went to sleep on March 7). No radio. No screens. Lights next to rearview mirror come on when the door is open.