Tesla Incapacitated on Xmas

[CameronB]

Woke up this morning and tried to access car via app. Vehicle Connection Error. Weird, had never seen that before. Went to garage and opened the car with the fob. Inside, the binnacle display said charging scheduled (the charge cable is plugged in but apparently it didn't charge last night at the regular 1:00am time...which is suspicious).

But most damning is that the center display is completely black. Tried to reboot the MCU with the steering wheel controls but no go.

Pretty sure the car will not drive but haven't confirmed yet.

There was a scheduled software update last night as well. Maybe a failed update has caused this? Or something completely unrelated and just coincidence. Don't know. At this point I just want to get it driving again.

I am about to call Tesla but thought I'd ask here in case anyone has experienced this kind of thing before and has some advice about how to try to resuscitate my car!

 

[CameronB]

Turns out it was a failed software update but I've recovered. I just went back out and unplugged the charging cable. Got in and tried to put the car in gear. It said to wait for systems to start up again. Waited about a minute or two. Binnacle indicated that I could drive and I confirmed I could put the car in gear. Center console was still black. But this time the forced reboot with the scroll wheels worked.

MCU back in business. Was still on 2017.44 so the software update didn't 'take'. Immediately got another notification on my phone that a software update was available (assumed 2017.50). But as I have guests coming in in the next few hours, I'll delay the update until after they leave later this week.

I guess I slightly overreacted. All is "OK" now (minus Christmas mode!).

 

[Swift]

Turns out it was a failed software update but I've recovered. I just went back out and unplugged the charging cable. Got in and tried to put the car in gear. It said to wait for systems to start up again. Waited about a minute or two. Binnacle indicated that I could drive and I confirmed I could put the car in gear. Center console was still black. But this time the forced reboot with the scroll wheels worked.

MCU back in business. Was still on 2017.44 so the software update didn't 'take'. Immediately got another notification on my phone that a software update was available (assumed 2017.50). But as I have guests coming in in the next few hours, I'll delay the update until after they leave later this week.

I guess I slightly overreacted. All is "OK" now (minus Christmas mode!).

Same thing happened to me when the car received a software update over the air while I was at work. Car behaved exactly as yours did. Was able to drive without mcu, heat, etc. MCU reboot worked when I got home.

 

[redi]

Same thing happened to me when the car received a software update over the air while I was at work. Car behaved exactly as yours did. Was able to drive without mcu, heat, etc. MCU reboot worked when I got home.

Same here. TeslaFI reported an unresponsive car. Reboot time.

 

[RichardD]

hard reboot time.. press the brake in and hold the center wheels for 30 seconds..
I had to do it yesterday because of a failed update.

 

[Half Dollar Bill]

If you're scheduling your charging to take advantage of a time of use plan, get the software update out of the way before you plug in. A failed update could cause you to miss a charge cycle, like you experienced. I've also had the charge session initiate immediately after the update completes instead of at the scheduled time. Just one less variable to mess with.

 

[johnnyS]

I had the same problem the day before yesterday. It took a while after the reboot for the systems to come back on. The car did not charge as scheduled the night before.

 

[ABC2D]

hard reboot time.. press the brake in and hold the center wheels for 30 seconds..
I had to do it yesterday because of a failed update.

There is no "hard reboot" - just reboot. Pressing brake pedal turns your stop lights on and actuates brake calipers - that's about it, no magical "hard reboot". Holding the scroll wheels in does nothing as well.

"Hard" reboot... nonsense, right?

 

[boaterva]

Holding the scroll wheels does nothing? The scroll wheel reboot does the MCU. The touch screen.

Holding the top buttons (above the scroll wheels) does the binnacle/instrument cluster reboot.


The brake pedal (as was mentioned in the other thread) only works to ‘restart’ the car when you’ve shut it down using the ‘power off’ from the menu on the settings page.


The only actually fourth option is to activate it from the app. I had to do this once when it died and nothing would work to start it. (This was in conjunction with the 2017.42 mess where AP2.5 cars weren’t happy... until 42.1 came out.)

 

[ABC2D]

Sorry for not being clear. Of course holding scroll wheels restarts the MCU, what I meant is holding them in longer to initiate a "hard reboot" does nothing. The same for the brake pedal - yes, it does start the car, but holding the brake pedal to initiate "hard reboot" while pressing the scroll wheels or buttons above, does nothing.

Thank you for correcting me.

 

[boaterva]

Sorry for not being clear. Of course holding scroll wheels restarts the MCU, what I meant is holding them in longer to initiate a "hard reboot" does nothing. The same for the brake pedal - yes, it does start the car, but holding the brake pedal to initiate "hard reboot" while pressing the scroll wheels or buttons above, does nothing.

Thank you for correcting me.

Gotcha! Yep, never heard of this ‘hard’ reboot in practice either, except by pulling power totally. They had to do that to my car when it locked up and lost Steering Assist and other things back at 17.38 or whatever it was...

From a user point of view, we have what’s in my post.

 

[RichardD]

There is no "hard reboot" - just reboot. Pressing brake pedal turns your stop lights on and actuates brake calipers - that's about it, no magical "hard reboot". Holding the scroll wheels in does nothing as well.

"Hard" reboot... nonsense, right?

Thanks for clarifying, but that is exactly what Tesla service told me to do. My car was completely un-responsive.

 

[boaterva]

Thanks for clarifying, but that is exactly what Tesla service told me to do. My car was completely un-responsive.

They may have been referring to the plain step on the brakes to wake it up. Or they may also be guilty of some misremembered combination. Who knows.

I would have tried the app approach, in your case, since I have found that to still work when it was otherwise dead.

 

[RichardD]

They may have been referring to the plain step on the brakes to wake it up. Or they may also be guilty of some misremembered combination. Who knows.

I would have tried the app approach, in your case, since I have found that to still work when it was otherwise dead.

What was absolutely crazy was after about 20 seconds the brakes started vibrating like ABS engaged and the speakers were making a clicking noise like interference. The service technician was really nice and gave those instructions, but in the end, it rebooted on its own. I truly suspect they have a script that they follow and that was on his script..
They mentioned quite a few issues with this software push, I think I was just impatient with the car. Serves me right for being in a rush.

 

[JonathanD]

I guess I slightly overreacted. All is "OK" now (minus Christmas mode!).

Still good to have your experience saved on the message board for others to search though!

 

[CameronB]

Thanks. I just freaked out a bit because in the 8 months I’ve owned the car I had never had a “hard crash” or a failed software update, nor a missed charge session. It was all new and unexpected after many months of flawless updates and scheduled charges.

Thinking back I wonder if the fact that the scheduled charge AND the software update both scheduled to take place at the same time (1:00am) had anything to do with the issue? Or just coincidental bad luck.

 

[TaoJones]

Had a minor Christmas debacle of my own while on the road yesterday that required Tesla's remote intervention. Lost cruise control. Figured maybe I'd missed 3 nags, except the error message was slightly different. Pulled over, put into Park, unParked, and still no joy. Was at a travel plaza so walked around for a bit and by the time I got back to the car, an update was available. So tried to install that. It failed with the message that they'd send another update (at some future date). Nice. Perhaps it detected that all was not well in Denmark. Or in my case, Kettleman City.

So once underway, still no joy with cruise control. Called Tesla. Pulled over. Complete power off process (Controls --> Settings --> et cetera). Tesla saw the error messages beforehand, waited for the power off to occur, remotely reset the driver assist features, and from that point all was well again.

5 stars for Tesla Christmas remote support.

 

[bmah]

@CameronB: Thanks for posting. That was a good heads-up.

I had something very similar happen. Odd thing was my car (S85D) was sitting in an airport parking garage when it went silent (it normally has excellent network connectivity there). The Tesla app (iOS), Remote S, and TeslaFi were all unable to communicate with the car. It had downloaded the 2017.50.2 update but other than that it was just sitting there for several days while I was on a trip. At the time it was running 2017.48.

When I came back from my trip and went to retrieve the car, the valet had a little difficulty driving it because the CID was totally black (ergo no backup camera). He mentioned this to me and (because I'd read this thread...don't you all continue to obsessively read TMC while on vacation?) I told him that yeah it probably needs a reboot. I hit the brake pedal to turn the car on, and got the "systems powering up" message on the IC. After awhile I got tired of waiting so I just rebooted the CID (pressing the scroll wheels). When it came up, all seemed to be well...I drove the car about 50 miles since and all systems, including AP, seemed functional. Got home and applied the pending software update (which is how I know it was 2017.50.2). Haven't tested the new software yet but so far I'm not aware of any problems.

Bruce.

PS. As a side note that was a slightly nerve-wracking experience, with my wife, son, and in-laws all looking over my shoulder while I pressed buttons and prayed that I wasn't going to have to call Roadside Assistance.

 

[CameronB]

Sounds like a few of us had similar issues.

Just to close the loop, I had mentioned that after I finally got rebooted that I still had 2017.44 and that the app alerted me of a new update.

I didn’t explicitly accept the subsequent update. But this morning (Dec 26th) when I went out to the car I saw it had updated itself anyhow. I now have 2017.50.2. No problems from this update. Everything is functioning as normal. Hopefully the crashed update I had yesterday was a one-off occurance.

 

[john pane]

I had a similar issue occur one day after successful update to 2017.50.2 on 12/24. I drove it several times the 24th (in Santa mode), then parked/charged overnight in my garage. When we all piled in to go somewhere on the 25th the big screen was black and the car had the system powering up message on the instrument cluster. As it was booting the displays started to return to normal but (maybe I didn't wait long enough) some things seemed sluggish. For example, when I put it into reverse to back out of the garage, the seat moved slightly but not all the way into my driver profile position. Since I had not seen this behavior occur spontaneously in the seven months I've had the car, I suspected an issue with 2017.50.2. Not wanting to risk getting stranded somewhere in the cold with my family, we all switched to my wife's ICE. Subsequently, all seems fine.