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Weird rain damage

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And you lost your parking sensor harness & assembly of course. But that's about it!

The more I think about it, the more I think it should be a warranty repair. Those welds should not just come off; the bolts should rip out. Though, you have to trust someone on the internet about what they drove through, of course.

Do you have the pictures of the inside of the part that fell off, you should be able to see the state of the missing brackets! (And the ripped off bits and pieces of the shredded side ones, perhaps.)
 
It is 2 month old! These are few more pictures from the body shop.
 

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It is 2 month old! These are few more pictures from the body shop.

Interesting. What is the build date on the driver B pillar?

We have a significant amount of data from vehicles indicating that around July/August timeframe (as I recall, the posts are around here somewhere...) they stopped installing the middle bolt - and in fact there is no bracket for it on recently built cars. You can clearly see this bolt & bracket in your picture - that one held together.

Maybe they were trying to recover some rejected frames to build more vehicles, if your vehicle was built after that date?

Explaining what I said earlier: The rear diffuser which the bolts go into is plastic. Even if you DID drive through a lake (which it sounds like you didn't), and it filled the thing up and ripped it off, what you should see is all the bolts should still be present - the plastic shouldn't be strong enough to rip off a welded component, I don't think. You can see that your middle bracket WAS strong enough. The bolt & washer are still present, happily installed in their bracket which remained attached to the vehicle. The plastic just ripped out as expected. On the side ones, they were strong enough too, though they got torqued at an angle and the bolt just ripped out of the bracket, and the bracket got bent (you can clearly see this in your pictures).

So, I think this indicates the brackets with the weld failures should have been better attached.

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Interesting. What is the build date on the driver B pillar?

We have a significant amount of data from vehicles indicating that around July/August timeframe (as I recall, the posts are around here somewhere...) they stopped installing the middle bolt - and in fact there is no bracket for it on recently built cars. You can clearly see this bolt & bracket in your picture.

Maybe they were trying to recover some rejected frames to build more vehicles, if your vehicle was built after that date?

View attachment 367145
06/18 is the date on the door.
 
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06/18 is the date on the door.

Checks out, it should have the middle bracket and it does. This is an old car. It's 6-7 months old.

Just have Tesla warranty repair it. They probably didn't get the welds right. They're just non-critical spot welds so I can see that going poorly if they're rushing. (I assume that (covering it with your warranty) is what they are doing?)

I'm sure they'll be very interested in knowing this failure mode so they can take corrective action if they haven't already done so. There have been other failures like this so they may have already patched things up in the production line.
 
And you lost your parking sensor harness & assembly of course. But that's about it!

The more I think about it, the more I think it should be a warranty repair. Those welds should not just come off; the bolts should rip out. Though, you have to trust someone on the internet about what they drove through, of course.

Do you have the pictures of the inside of the part that fell off, you should be able to see the state of the missing brackets! (And the ripped off bits and pieces of the shredded side ones, perhaps.)
Those are the only pictures the body shop sent us. Tesla of course said they had never heard of this issue, so we called our auto insurance.
 
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Checks out, it should have the middle bracket and it does. This is an old car. It's 6-7 months old.

Just have Tesla warranty repair it. They probably didn't get the welds right. They're just non-critical spot welds so I can see that going poorly if they're rushing. (I assume that (covering it with your warranty) is what they are doing?)

I'm sure they'll be very interested in knowing this failure mode so they can take corrective action if they haven't already done so. There have been other failures like this so they may have already patched things up in the production line.
Checks out, it should have the middle bracket and it does. This is an old car. It's 6-7 months old.

Just have Tesla warranty repair it. They probably didn't get the welds right. They're just non-critical spot welds so I can see that going poorly if they're rushing. (I assume that (covering it with your warranty) is what they are doing?)

I'm sure they'll be very interested in knowing this failure mode so they can take corrective action if they haven't already done so. There have been other failures like this so they may have already patched things up in the production line.
We picked this car up the end of September. It was our second one. When we picked up our first one the paint job was all scratched and had air bubbles. They said it would take months to get a new one. # days later we got a call there was one ready to pick up!! Now we know why.
 
Those are the only pictures the body shop sent us. Tesla of course said they had never heard of this issue, so we called our auto insurance.

Tesla should not have said that, since there is evidence on their Twitter feed (as I recall...they did offer a public statement in any case) that they HAVE heard of this issue. They responded to a couple owners who lost their bumper covers & diffusers just like you!

Do follow up with Tesla; they will treat you right. You're armed with the appropriate information now. They particularly need to explain why the welds failed, that's what I would focus on. I believe that could have started the whole process, if you didn't drive through deep water (and actually even if you did).

That being said, I wouldn't drive my vehicle through any sort of puddle (has been my policy for a while now since seeing these failures months ago!). I know all my bolts are tight and present, but I see an example here of that alone possibly not being sufficient. Again, I have to believe what someone said on the internet, but to me those weld failures are a red flag and I don't actually have to believe what anyone says to draw conclusions.
 
We picked this car up the end of September. It was our second one. When we picked up our first one the paint job was all scratched and had air bubbles. They said it would take months to get a new one. # days later we got a call there was one ready to pick up!! Now we know why.
No Tesla said this was not an issue that they knew about, so we had our insurance company take care of it.
 
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Tesla should not have said that, since there is evidence on their Twitter feed that they HAVE heard of this issue. They responded to a couple owners who lost their bumper covers & diffusers just like you!

Do follow up with Tesla; they will treat you right. You're armed with the appropriate information now. They particularly need to explain why the welds failed, that's what I would focus on. I believe that could have started the whole process, if you didn't drive through deep water (and actually even if you did).
Thank you!!!!
 
No Tesla said this was not an issue that they knew about, so we had our insurance company take care of it.

If it's already been repaired it might be trickier with Tesla. But you still have the pictures, seems like enough as they are pretty detailed. I would definitely have them send someone to look at it, if it has not yet been repaired.
 
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Just have Tesla warranty repair it. They probably didn't get the welds right. They're just non-critical spot welds so I can see that going poorly if they're rushing. (I assume that (covering it with your warranty) is what they are doing?)

I am sure Tesla will say that fording a "few" inches of water at ~30 MPH is not covered under the warranty. In one case it looks like the bracket is still there but the end of it is torn off. I would think that would take a lot of force.
 
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I am sure Tesla will say that fording a "few" inches of water at ~30 MPH is not covered under the warranty. In one case it looks like the bracket is still there but the end of it is torn off. I would think that would take a lot of force.

It's definitely true that we have no idea what actually happened.

It definitely would require a lot of force to rip the metal. But the brackets I'm concerned about are the ones facing the rear of the car - which are just gone. You can see 3 spot welds on each attachment point. Once those welds go AND the upper clips on the bumper jiggle loose (they're just plastic hooks, so I think a good bump might dislodge them...though that is a bit of a mystery to me), the bumper is just free to fall off (if you've removed the bumper before, it's clear what I'm saying...). Then it would be held on by those (now torn) side brackets, but the bumper would be dragging on the ground and scooping up water. That would create a lot of force on the remaining brackets, and they just rip free. The plastic failed on the middle and the three shared ones (though I can only make out two bolts for the shared ones) with the mid rear aero cover (those bolts are all still present). For the side ones, the welds held but the metal failed.

To be clear, it definitely could be owner negligence, but I just don't like that spot weld failure. That's really not great.
 
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