Touchscreen Bug Solution

[bfuller24]

This morning, while sitting in my parked M3, the touchscreen stopped responding to my touch and then, suddenly, started wildly scrolling through about 10 different navigation screens and would not respond to anything I did. I called the Burbank Service Center and they patiently guided me through a "hard reset" of my touchscreen by pressing on the brake pedal and pushing on both of the scroll wheels on the steering wheel all at the same time and keeping all three of those points pressed for 30 seconds until a big Tesla "T" appeared in the middle of the screen. This process worked like a charm.
Anyone else ever encountered this issue?
Thank you in advance.

 

[ewoodrick]

It sounds as if it might have been locked up and then started responding to inputs all at once. I haven't heard of it occurring.
The reset is the common full reset. You can also do it without the brake for a display computer reset.
Some folks have issues in which the display periodically resets on its own and then there are some times when things get out of whack and a reset is needed.

 

[scottm]

@bfuller24 Welcome to Tesla ownership!

Reset and reboot are different. You did a reboot.

You can do a factory reset of the car by going through menus to find that option which zeros-out everything and restores all car defaults. (It won't set the odometer back to zero miles though, sadly). You'd to a reset if you want to change lifetime averages, and any personal data, stored bluetooth and wifi settings, navigation targets, favorites, etc... when you sell the car.

You reboot the console by pressing buttons, like you did, in effort to clear up computational issues or various conditions of the car. It's not-so-amazing what a good ol' reboot will solve. Use it often, if in doubt of a glitchy behavior observed.

Sometimes console just crashes and reboots itself, giving you the big T. Mine crashed last week while coming out of listening to a podcast (tunedin).. and rebooted 3 times in a row all by itself. I was beginning to think the car was stuck in a reboot loop.. but it pulled out of it. Thank goodness.

Pressing the brake pedal when doing a reboot is just a thing Tesla throws in as a comment, it's not necessary... it's just safer to do when not rolling so you're not flying dark. The buttons do a reboot whenever you do that with them. It's the same "strength" of reboot, pressing the brakes, or not.

The car is still driveable while rebooting, but some convenience features like HVAC and signal indicator sounds won't be heard when blinking... because all that requires a working console. Another good reason to do it while parked.

 

[bfuller24]

Scott,
Thanks a bunch for the great info. Where did you learn all of this? Trial and error from being an early adopter? The manual has nothing about it.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

Scott,
Thanks a bunch for the great info. Where did you learn all of this? Trial and error from being an early adopter? The manual has nothing about it.

If you look for "restart" instead of "reset" or "reboot", you can find it in the owner's manual. In mine, it's on page 44.

Restarting the Touchscreen If your touchscreen is unresponsive or demonstrates unusual behavior, you can restart it. To do so, shift into Park and hold down both scroll buttons on the steering wheel until the touchscreen turns black and the Tesla logo appears. Within approximately 30 seconds, the touchscreen restarts. If the touchscreen is still unresponsive or demonstrating unusual behavior, contact Tesla.

Note: Restarting the touchscreen does not power Model 3 off and on. Warning: Paying attention to road and traffic conditions must always be the driver's highest priority. To ensure the safety of vehicle occupants as well as other road users, restarting the touchscreen should be done only when the vehicle is in Park.