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Tesla 3: Second drive unit failure in under a year

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Hey OP, how exactly did your motors fail? I'm curious about that. Being a dual-motor car, I'd assume the other motor would be able to limp home, but maybe the motor seized. Please let us know. And yes, this is the first time I hear of such thing, so at least a rare even indeed.

In the dual motor M3, the car is still drivable if the front motor fails. If the rear motor fails, it is not drivable.
 
Wait a minute, @cwerdna. I'm an engineer. The 12 volt battery problems you reference have nothing to do with the drive motor. There have been some "accessory" 12 volt batteries failing. The other issues you list are all over the place. Let's be real. There are about a million Teslas on the road. Of course there are going to be failures, like on any electronics. Of course it's always unnerving when it happens to you. Having two DUs fail on the same car might suggest an upstream or mechanical fault causing both. That needs to be thoroughly checked. But statistically it's like rolling dice, each throw is independent of the previous ones.

Reporting a drive failure to NTSB or whoever? sure, if there's a database, why not. Just be specific as to what failed and what was replaced so it's useful.

Now the OP and everybody needs to calm down. People are getting riled up about how he's being charged. That hasn't happened here. The standard Tesla invoice always shows cost to repair for their internal accounting. The car is under warranty, the drive train I believe for 8 years, there's no way he's going to pay anything, or be blamed for it, unless e.g. he commutes under water.

"I want a call back and someone to describe why the vehicle has had two catastrophic failures." Aside from the regrettable fact that they don't call back much, do you think that somebody making calls in service knows the answer to that question?

Please, relax, there's a good warranty, the cars are overall very reliable. Go pick up the car and talk to the service manager until you're satisfied. Ask if they've examined the car carefully and if they've completely excluded some other failure that would cause 2 drives to go out. Ask him what exactly failed, how, what they've replaced, and what else they've checked to ensure there's no hidden problem. Be polite but tell him how much grief and anxiety this has caused, and ask him if this wouldn't suggest to a reasonable person that they missed something during the first repair, and were being negligent, or that you might prefer a new car?
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Wait a minute, @cwerdna. I'm an engineer. The 12 volt battery problems you reference have nothing to do with the drive motor. There have been some "accessory" 12 volt batteries failing. The other issues you list are all over the place. Let's be real. There are about a million Teslas on the road. Of course there are going to be failures, like on any electronics. Of course it's always unnerving when it happens to you. Having two DUs fail on the same car might suggest an upstream or mechanical fault causing both. That needs to be thoroughly checked. But statistically it's like rolling dice, each throw is independent of the previous ones.
My major was in my university's school of engineering.

Funny how there are over 500K Leafs on the road and I've been active on MyNissanLeaf since mid-2011 (+ some Leaf FB groups in the past few years) w/the car going on sale in Dec 2010 yet drive unit replacements are almost nil. I can't think of even 5 in total.

The reason why I listed a bunch of other issues was to demonstrate that there doesn't even need to be a large population of affected vehicles when it comes to clear safety defects. In two separate recalls, each recall affected only ONE vehicle! In other words, OP shouldn't withhold nor should wait until some arbitrary event or thresholds to report (e.g. he hears of n more occurrences of it, like in the news media).
Reporting a drive failure to NTSB or whoever? sure, if there's a database, why not. Just be specific as to what failed and what was replaced so it's useful.
A loss of propulsion while in motion not due to user error is a clear safety defect, full stop. It should be reported to the appropriate safety body, which in this case is at Home | Safercar -- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). And yes, it's more helpful to do so w/details as to what was fixed, if possible.

There is nothing to gain by not reporting legitimate safety defects. Doing so could actually jeopardize the safety of other vehicles of the same model & that of other drivers who share the road w/them.

Notice the graph at DOT Renders Its Verdict on Toyota's Unintended Acceleration Scare Perhaps Toyota and/or NHTSA's timeline would've been different and a recall initiated earlier if all those people in orange reported their problems before the media circus?
 
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So much drama!

The car needed service and the poor guy is being told it's a POS, and cranked up in his anxieties. It's not a POS, it's a very reliable car, with very high customer satisfaction. Tesla Service doesn't communicate well, that's just how it is. They replaced the failed parts, at no charge of course, and he should ask the right questions in person. Chances are it'll be AOK.
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Really sorry to hear this story. I’m at 101k miles on my Model 3 and zero issues to report. Please keep us posted on how Tesla resolves this other than simply replacing the motor...again. I’m also wondering what warranty they provide on the replacement. Factory drivetrain warranty is 120k miles on a LR, so does that mean this replacement motor is warranted for 120k Miles?

Warranty will be the balance of the factory warranty. Not an additional 120K miles.
 
i once got the rear drive failure notification with the turtle on my 2nd day of ownership. I know the motor was not working bc it felt like it was driving in chill mode. Took it to tesla and they couldnt find any issues. I never had any issues with it since that time almost 2 years ago. I dont know what to make of it
 
Pretty sure the invoice is for reference, but if the vehicle is under warranty and there isn't some unusual situation, there will be no charge when picking it up. It is confusing that they do that, as lots of folks misunderstand the practice the first time they get service.

OP - why not just pick it up and not worry about it? Quite likely it'll be fine from here on out, and making a big deal out of it just consumes your time and energy.
Don't you think on a year old car with only 6000 mile at a minimum there should be an explanation?
 
So much drama!

The car needed service and the poor guy is being told it's a POS, and cranked up in his anxieties. It's not a POS, it's a very reliable car, with very high customer satisfaction. Tesla Service doesn't communicate well, that's just how it is. They replaced the failed parts, at no charge of course, and he should ask the right questions in person. Chances are it'll be AOK.
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How do you figure his car is "very reliable"? The equivalent of 2 engine failures is 6000 miles sure doesn't make his car reliable.
 
Don't you think on a year old car with only 6000 mile at a minimum there should be an explanation?

“Should” is the key word here. But *should* does not mean Tesla *will* give an explanation, unfortunately.

When my rear drive unit failed 1 day after driving off the lot, Tesla HQ did some kind of remote diagnostic and then instructed the local service center to remove the entire unopened drive unit and ship it back to California. So the local SC never even opened up the case to look inside, and therefore there was nothing that they could tell me (other than the fact that the visible half-shafts were still intact).

Whether or not anyone in California ever opened up the drive unit to identify the root cause is an unknown, but they certainly weren’t going to tell me if they did. It bugs me a little bit to this day not knowing.
 
6k and failed is awful. Wonder if they took out motor, took a look at it, maybe found something and stuck it back in? Either way, all this work should be free of charge because it is covered black and white under warranty, unless the car was abused which it does not sound like it.
 
Really sorry to hear this story. I’m at 101k miles on my Model 3 and zero issues to report. Please keep us posted on how Tesla resolves this other than simply replacing the motor...again. I’m also wondering what warranty they provide on the replacement. Factory drivetrain warranty is 120k miles on a LR, so does that mean this replacement motor is warranted for 120k Miles?

What's you your remaining capacity/range loss at that high of a mileage?
 
Unfortunately, Tesla is not any better than all other auto manufacturers in the transparency department. But as unfortunate as it is to be one of the few affected owners with powertrain issues, our cars are WAAAAAY more reliable than any ICE car. And that is not because Tesla is the #1 in quality, but because the moving parts on our powertrains are in the teens, vs hundreds (if not thousands) on ICE vehicles.
 
The situation has gone from bad to worse. What would you do?

I've responded in the app, called the Service center and left messages indicating I want a call back and someone to describe why the vehicle has had two catastrophic failures. No response, except now the vehicle is ready and the invoice has been posted in the app - $3,800. We have perfect driving records, two small children, and use this car occasionally for commuting; the idea that we did something to cause the replacement of 2 drive units is unbelievable. The vehicle is 12.5 months old.

I think the default is to declare the cost at time of request... But once you go in, chat, and they see it's warranty covered, no charge. They just err on the side of caution. I've had the same thing happen when I've scheduled visits. E.g. the top of my dash peeled away. They quoted me xyz$ to replace, but once I went in and showed them in person, it was covered FOC under warranty
 
"2 drive failures in 6000 miles is terrible, how is that reliable?" Very simple. THAT car has had one specific problem twice. That's not very good. But that tells us nothing about the other 999,999 Teslas. Nor about how THIS car will be doing over the next few years. There are about a million Teslas on the road. We, here, have no idea how many motor drives have failed overall. So there's nothing we can say about the failure rate. And "reliability" is all about numbers.

Now, the number of components in a Model 3 is much smaller than in a traditional car -- that's far fewer failure points. And the surveys are clear: Teslas have one of the highest overall satisfaction ratings.

But people love to bitch, and it seems quite fashionable to put companies down. We hear about 1 mm misalignments in panels and little paint defects on delivery, and that gets a LOT of press, so new owners are out there with their calipers and magnifying glasses. We've all heard about a couple dozen 12 volt batteries having to be replaced, and some people rushing to install substitutes, just in case. And about one or two main batteries burning up. Out of hundreds of thousands of Model 3s. And the display memory cards and the door handles on the oldest Model S's wearing out. And the guy getting decapitated under a truck in AP mode, and another hitting a divider. We get all the bad news, in bold print. And all about how Tesla is about to go bankrupt, and the stock is worthless. It stands to reason that if many people were having serious problems we wouldn't hear the end of it. But instead, Teslas are selling like hot cakes, word of mouth, people love 'em, and the company is doing great.

Most directly, I can only speak for myself, and the people I know. My 2018 Model 3 hardware has been solid, no issues. Friends and neighbors aren't having problems either. But ask me in 8-10 years, I'll know more. I expect my car to be running fine then, with about an 8-12% loss of range. Could I be wrong? Sure. We'll see. But nothing so far suggests we're driving an "unreliable car".
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Of course it's not typical, and the OP is entitled to a detailed explanation. FWIW, Having designed DC motor drives, one likely way for them to fail is the power semiconductors frying due to being, or becoming, loose on their heat sinks. And if I were Tesla I'd be very seriously looking for possible causes, like if there's something loose in the mounting that's rattled 2 drives into oblivion, or some mechanical binding.
 
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Similar to what others have alluded to, I suspect that there is something upstream/downstream of the drive unit that’s the true root cause behind the 2 failures. From what I’ve read, Model 3s haven’t experienced the same milling issue that Model S had. Model 3s appear to have issues with the HV inverter that’s part of the drive unit. When the inverter fails, it also tends to trip the pyrofuse that’s part of the HV battery.

Tesla is not obligated to and will probably not disclose the root cause of failure to the OP. Being a former powertrain engineer (mechanical not electrical), when we had warranty failures on the particular system/components we were responsible for, we would determine root cause on the returned parts and make design updates internally. I just instructed the field service manager on what diagnostic data to send me/which parts to replace and that individual would work directly with the dealer service manager and technician to get it done.
 
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