Tesla Model 3 Down: Won't Power Up, and is Inaccessible

[Alketi]

I guessed that this thread would get picked up immediately by the permanent dark forces aligned against Tesla, since Tesla's existence completely violates their world-view.

I wasn't disappointed.

Spiegel doesn't actually do the research, he's too busy furiously tweeting. Instead it's brought to him by others. He's also angry and awake and obsessed at 4:46AM on a Sunday morning. Truly impressive.

From the looks of it Keef Wivaneff is quietly trolling the threads, hoping and praying to find issues like this one. He's already been banned from Twitter once. Looks like he's resurfaced.

Mark B. Spiegel on Twitter

 

[MarkS22]

@MarkS22 I think the reason most of us object to the term "bricked" is that it usually means that the device is unrecoverable and has to be thrown away/recycled. You do not yet know if your car is recoverable or not. (Very likely it is.)

Yeah, I see now. In my background with consumer electronics and PCs (and even the Wikipedia definition), "bricked" doesn't necessarily mean it's permanently disabled. I come from a place where it might mean having to replace BIOS or use a special interface/tools to re-flash the firmware.

To be clear, I most certainly am not expecting the Model 3 to be "unrecoverable" and never meant to infer that.

 

[N5329K]

That's like six times as many letters to type, though.

But it sounds so much less threatening. Kind of like the difference between Oh shyte and Mistakes were made.
Robin

 

[MarkS22]

What would you call an ICE vehicle if it quit working and needed service?

Honestly, if it was due to a firmware/computer issue and had no electrical response, I'd have called it "bricked" also. If it was mechanical, I would probably say "died" or "quit working." In hindsight, I'd probably only use the term "bricked" if it happened immediately following a firmware update or I had more evidence that it was firmware related.

 

[Uncle Paul]

Most any car in the world will become unresponsive "bricked" if it's 12 Volt battery dies.

Can't tell you how many times my ICE vehicles would not start when I lived in Michigan. The hot summers weaken them, then the cold winters finish them off.

When any cars battery dies, you need to first perform a diagnostic to determine the cause, then repair it. For ICE cars it could be alternator, voltage regulator, starter motor jammed, lights left on, too cold, or just a defected or shorted out battery.

Sounds like you will be back on the road shortly.

 

[Dr. J]

What would you call an ICE vehicle if it quit working and needed service?

DITW.

 

[MarkS22]

I guessed that this thread would get picked up immediately by the permanent dark forces aligned against Tesla, since Tesla's existence completely violates their world-view.

I wasn't disappointed.

Spiegel doesn't actually do the research, he's too busy furiously tweeting. Instead it's brought to him by others. He's also angry and awake and obsessed at 4:46AM on a Sunday morning. Truly impressive.

From the looks of it Keef Wivaneff is quietly trolling the threads, hoping and praying to find issues like this one. He's already been banned from Twitter once. Looks like he's resurfaced.

Mark B. Spiegel on Twitter

Disappointing, but when this car gets out into the wild, there will be no stopping it. It's that good. Launching a new platform will always have issues. Maybe the person scanning this thread and posting to Twitter would like to link to my initial 100 mile impressions instead of paraphrasing the negatives?

 

[mjgillen]

What would you call an ICE vehicle if it quit working and needed service?

A Ford...

 

[Reciprocity]

I can't read this whole thread, my eyes will melt from all the corrections of everyone's yeah let's usage of this term or that.

Was it the 12v or not? And what what the solution? Or after 5 pages of everyone correcting everyone, do we still not know?

Thanks,

Concerned citizen of TMC.

 

[MarkS22]

I can't read this whole thread, my eyes will melt from all the corrections of everyone's yeah let's usage of this term or that.

Was it the 12v or not? And what what the solution? Or after 5 pages of everyone correcting everyone, do we still not know?

Thanks,

Concerned citizen of TMC.

We’ll know (hopefully) tomorrow/Monday and I’ll be sure to post a follow-up.

 

[Chopr147]

Sorry to hear about you new car being bricked. Sucks but thanks for the beta testing.
I am real curious what the issue is

 

[scaesare]

I'm going to wade in and give the expired equine my lashing or two.

In the electronics industry, bricked carries the connotation of "non-recoverable failure", typically requiring component replacement, most often in a non-field-serviceable manner. This also is often in conjunction with some user-operation.

Examples:

- Error or power loss during a firmware upgrade that renders the device unstartable, including the routine to load new firmware. In this case you often have to resort to replacing the chip(s), as there's no way to get a working firmware image on to the device.

- Non-removable non-volatile storage failure. If you have solid state storage soldered on to the motherboard that goes bad. There's no "supported" method for replaceingg the storage.

- Permanent battery damage. Operating a device's rechargeable cell outside it's parameters such that it no longer accepts a charge. This typically implies a cell/pack not designed for temporary use (i.e. an EV, not a flashlight).

- Damage to a device induced by external means rendering it permanently inoperable. A lighting strike can induce an EMP damaging electronics. (This happened to me where I lost a couple dozen Ethernet ports across a variety of devices in my house).


Now, things that aren't permanently damaged, or may require some specific restoration sequence, are typically not considered bricked. Such as:

- Needing to do a factory reset on a device because you entered some parameters incorrectly.

- A corrupted boot volume that can be corrected with a wipe/reload

- A frozen host/process/GUI/etc... that needs a reboot.

- A battery that's too low to power a device up, but that can be recharged.


So, while it may seem like folks are splitting hairs here, the truth is that until you know what the state of your car is, calling it bricked is a bit premature. And given the history with folsk jumping on that term with the Roadster, and the degree of anticipation regarding the Model 3, I think many, myself included, are hoping not to give the clown brigade any more fodder than necessary for their FUD campaign.

Unfortunately, as seen above, it may be too late for that.

 

[TEG]

just to add some perspective to this issue.
My Leaf 12V has failed twice and behaved in exactly the same way as the Model 3...

FYI, my (well my daughter has it now) early production 2011 LEAF is still going on the original 12V battery without problems.
Never any problem with the car failing to start or "breaking down". No real service at all in 7 years other than tires, wiper blades, and washer fluid.
The degradation on the battery pack is disappointing. It is down to "9 bars" (out of 12) on the range gauge and you might say it is a "60 mile EV" now instead of "90 mile" when it was new.
Battery dropped from 10 bars to 9 bars just after the time limit Nissan offered for free replacement. I suppose I should have charged it to 100% (instead of 80%) to make the battery age faster and qualify for a replacement...

 

[TEG]

Sorry to hear about you new car being bricked. Sucks but thanks for the beta testing.
I am real curious what the issue is

I am going to hazard a guess that it could be related to the 12V system. It would be unusual for such a new car to have the 12V battery drain down so far that quickly, so I suspect Tesla wants to anaylze the situation first before just trying to recharge the 12V battery. I could imagine some situation where the traction battery gets full, the charging shuts down, the DC/DC converter shuts off yet there is still some "vampire drain" on the 12V system that drains the aux/starter 12V battery. Lets say if there was a firmware bug that left the ventilation system running or something like that. Something that Tesla would want to understand before just "rebooting" the car. On the other hand, it could be component failure... Something as simple as 12V fuse or something.

Bricked implies major malfunction... No way to fix the car without some huge expense... I think the title of this thread is somewhat misleading.
Better to say the car "appears like it might be 'bricked' ". But diagnosis will tell if it is just something minor (maybe even a 12V recharge / reboot) or something more major (complete failure in the traction battery?).

Yeah, it will be good to hear what actually happened. I think Tesla prefers to keep these things quiet if possible though.

 

[Reciprocity]

I guessed that this thread would get picked up immediately by the permanent dark forces aligned against Tesla, since Tesla's existence completely violates their world-view.

I wasn't disappointed.

Spiegel doesn't actually do the research, he's too busy furiously tweeting. Instead it's brought to him by others. He's also angry and awake and obsessed at 4:46AM on a Sunday morning. Truly impressive.

From the looks of it Keef Wivaneff is quietly trolling the threads, hoping and praying to find issues like this one. He's already been banned from Twitter once. Looks like he's resurfaced.

Mark B. Spiegel on Twitter

You mean Mark, I buy Twitter followers, Spiegel? I checked his profile one day and my cat had more followers. Then one day he shot up to 30,000+, now back down to 8000, or just a few more then my cat.

 

[pharma5]

@MarkS22 and @TEG: if Mod and OP are agreed, perhaps we can remove the contentious b-word from the thread title?

FWIW, I am about a hour south of the OP in NJ, have a 36xx VIN Model 3, and have had it for just shy of two weeks. No issues like this yet, but I'm very interested to see what it could be as I'm sure many others are. In that vein, I think the edit above may help keep things on-topic vs. debating nomenclature.

(I've also owned a Roadster for six years and counting and have a healthy appreciation for the b-word and its ability feed FUDsters like the tweet above...).

 

[Reciprocity]

Because this thread has gone so far off the rails, I'm going to start calling everything that goes wrong, bricked. If my toast gets burnt, I'm going to say my toast is totally bricked now so I can't eat it. If my coffee is cold, I'm going to say it's bricked. I hope that doesn't offend anyone.

Damn, my shoe laces are tied in a knock, they must be totally bricked. That pisses me off because now I'm going to need some scissors to unbrick my shoes.

I might have to take my shoes back to the shoe dealership to get them serviced. This sucks, life is hard when everything is getting bricked all the time.

 

[MarkS22]

Better to say the car "appears like it might be 'bricked' ". But diagnosis will tell if it is just something minor (maybe even a 12V recharge / reboot) or something more major (complete failure in the traction battery?).

Yeah, it will be good to hear what actually happened. I think Tesla prefers to keep these things quiet if possible though.

You're welcome to edit the subject to remove bricked. Perhaps "Tesla Model 3 Down: Won't Power Up and Unaccessable" I think everyone is spending too much time interpreting this one word that we're losing sight of the issue at hand. I clarify exactly what I mean in the YouTube description and the body of the message. I never mention the word "brick" in my video.

My intention is to document the process, just as I gave my (overwhelming positive) experiences on the first 100 miles with the Model 3 on this forum. Should this happen to someone in the future, they might do a search and find some insights here.

That said, I'll keep everyone up to date. I don't see this as a particularly negative thing. It's a brand new vehicle platform and Tesla is working on it. I'm not concerned and the car is, in most other ways, exceeding my expectations.

 

[MarkS22]

Because this thread has gone so far off the rails, I'm going to start calling everything that goes wrong, bricked. If my toast gets burnt, I'm going to say my toast is totally bricked now so I can't eat it. If my coffee is cold, I'm going to say it's bricked. I hope that doesn't offend anyone.

Damn, my shoe laces are tied in a knock, they must be totally bricked. That pisses me off because now I'm going to need some scissors to unbrick my shoes.

I might have to take my shoes back to the shoe dealership to get them serviced. This sucks, life is hard when everything is getting bricked all the time.

This thread is totally bricked.

 

[TEG]

You're welcome to edit the subject to remove bricked. Perhaps "Tesla Model 3 Down: Won't Power Up and Unaccessable"...

Yes, OK - I did that - just so people can stop throwing bricks around.