When will there be Zero drive-unit issues/replacements?

[AmpedRealtor]

I live in the Bay Area and an employee told me that early Teslas had a spline issue relating to it being too small for the load and that they engineered a larger spline. Ive had one DU replaced (at about 5000 miles) and am having issues again and going in to discuss another replacement (now at 36000 miles).

That doesn't exactly point to issues only being with early cars, as Elon and JB said during the call. There is some misdirection going on here by the executive team.

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After listening to it a few times I get the impression that was an example of one of the issues with the drive unit, not the only one.

It sounded like they were about to get into the other issues when Elon quickly said "let's not get into the weeds" or something to that effect.

 

[Sunlight]

I find the responses to this question depressing! In over 2 years nearly 60% of Tesla-interested people do not believe that Tesla will have resolved the DU issue?

If this is truly the case then I (as an EV fan and a Tesla-supporter ..) would start wonder if Tesla will survive or whether the bears are right.....It could crucify new sales to 'unknowledgeable' buyers and could be used easily as negative reporting.

OK maybe people are being too 'extreme' and taking the question to mean - NO failures - at all - ever. I did not mean to phrase the question in such a way but rather when would Tesla get to the point where there are so few failures (well below the average for ICE cars as a simpler piece of kit) that DUs would no longer feature as a concern - now and in the future.

Would this alter the replies?

 

[jerry33]

I did not mean to phrase the question in such a way but rather when would Tesla get to the point where there are so few failures (well below the average for ICE cars as a simpler piece of kit) that DUs would no longer feature as a concern - now and in the future

That's the way I took the question, but I answered end of 2016 (but it might really be end of '17). By that time there will be enough cars with three years of service on them and enough miles to bring out all the problems and design a fix. The larger gears and centre bore of the newer drive units appear to be a very good start, but I doubt those are the only changes required. In the meantime no failures in 2.75 years and 61+K miles.

 

[JRP3]

Certainly. I took "zero issues" to mean zero issues. Funny that :wink:

 

[Zythryn]

I find the responses to this question depressing! In over 2 years nearly 60% of Tesla-interested people do not believe that Tesla will have resolved the DU issue?

If this is truly the case then I (as an EV fan and a Tesla-supporter ..) would start wonder if Tesla will survive or whether the bears are right.....It could crucify new sales to 'unknowledgeable' buyers and could be used easily as negative reporting.

OK maybe people are being too 'extreme' and taking the question to mean - NO failures - at all - ever. I did not mean to phrase the question in such a way but rather when would Tesla get to the point where there are so few failures (well below the average for ICE cars as a simpler piece of kit) that DUs would no longer feature as a concern - now and in the future.

Would this alter the replies?

Polls like this are notoriously unreliable.
First, the thread title does ask about "when will no issues...." Which, as you implied, will never happen.
Second, someone that has experienced no issues, or expects no future issues, may not even open the thread to look at the options.
Third, the poll is incomplete, as it doesn't have an answer "problem already solved". This is the reason I didn't vote.

Your best source of information about this is to watch Tesla's warrantee reserves in their financials. If this problem were truly as bad as the forum makes it sound, the reserves would be skyrocketing.

 

[ecarfan]

Your best source of information about this is to watch Tesla's warrantee reserves in their financials. If this problem were truly as bad as the forum makes it sound, the reserves would be skyrocketing.

In the last earnings call the issue of warranty repairs came up and it was sites that warranty reserves were adequate to cover repairs, or so,etching to that effect.
The drive unit issue is overblown. Yes, many cars had had DU replacements (and no one outside of Tesla has any remotely accurate data on how many cars have been involved). No, this is not a significant financial problem for Tesla at this time. According to Elon, Tesla has figured out the issue, resolved it, and the drive units currently being produced are more reliable than the older units.
And online forum "polls" never provide any useful data to draw conclusions from on any subject because they are not a random sample and therefore are not statistically valid.

 

[AmpedRealtor]

According to Elon, Tesla has figured out the issue, resolved it, and the drive units currently being produced are more reliable than the older units.

I believe he said something along those lines a year ago as well. That's why I voted for the future option because it doesn't feel like Elon is being up front and honest with the public about this issue. A year ago it was shims, clips, and cables that were vibrating. Now it's spline grease. JB said the problems were limited to early DUs, which is completely false. I've had three DU replacements from 2013 to 2015. If it were only early units then I wouldn't have needed a replacement as recently as February of this year. Elon is full of it when it comes to this issue. Absolutely full of it.

 

[JRP3]

I think part of the issue is there are limited numbers of the new redesigned drive units, so many of the replacements are simply refurbed older designs, that seem to develope the same problems repeatedly, until eventually one of the new units becomes available, which hopefully finally fixes the problem for good. Pure speculation on my part, but not much else makes sense. Same issues/noises appear over and over again in a number of replacement drive units. Why some with the older drive units have no problems at all might suggest a design that is very sensitive to manufacturing tolerance variation.

 

[Ingineer]

If they have upgraded to larger splines, then older cars are not compatible with this newer design unless they are retrofitted with newer half-shafts. This may also require new suspension components. Maybe it's more cost effective for them to keep replacing the old DU design with a refurb than to do the retrofit, and if JRP3's speculation is indeed true, then maybe they also have no choice because new DU's are all slated for production.

Maybe once they catch up and have new DU's available for warranty work, they will start doing the retrofits. We'll be able to tell if they start replacing half-shafts, as well as the lack of "reman" on the invoice.

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Also, as I mentioned earlier, the spline may indeed be the only CAUSE of the problems. The sloppy spline may trigger damage elsewhere in the geartrain. Fix the spline, the other problems don't occur.

 

[Electric700]

I was talking to my service center about this and the frequency of repairs for drive units of the same cars, and they said that they now have a permanent fix available. May be this is the rumored million-mile drive unit? Some people posted on another thread that Tesla is on drive unit revision Q (here: 100% drive unit failure rate?? - Page 15).

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

I was talking to my service center about this and the frequency of repairs for drive units of the same cars, and they said that they now have a permanent fix available. May be this is the rumored million-mile drive unit? Some people posted on another thread that Tesla is on drive unit revision Q (here: 100% drive unit failure rate?? - Page 15).

I sure hope they have the permanent fix available because they only have 9 more tries left.

 

[JRP3]

If they have upgraded to larger splines, then older cars are not compatible with this newer design unless they are retrofitted with newer half-shafts.

That's assuming the issue is with the half shaft splines in the gear case, which I'm quite sure are wet lubed with oil. At least I've never seen ones that weren't. The motor spline is the one I'm assuming was undersized, (which we've seen pictures of it now being larger), and also had an issue with insufficient grease at one point.

 

[ilovemycoffee]

Are the new DU's being installed in the newer cars (like my wife's 2 week old car)?

 

[keydiver]

I believe Elon said the "million mile" DU has been shipping for the past few months. My 70D was manufactured in August, so I'm hoping I won the DU lottery.

 

[Xenoilphobe]

I have two p85's with over 70,000 miles - no issues with the DU (but you don't give me an option to vote on already resolved) .

 

[qwk]

If they have upgraded to larger splines, then older cars are not compatible with this newer design unless they are retrofitted with newer half-shafts. This may also require new suspension components. Maybe it's more cost effective for them to keep replacing the old DU design with a refurb than to do the retrofit, and if JRP3's speculation is indeed true, then maybe they also have no choice because new DU's are all slated for production.

Maybe once they catch up and have new DU's available for warranty work, they will start doing the retrofits. We'll be able to tell if they start replacing half-shafts, as well as the lack of "reman" on the invoice.

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Also, as I mentioned earlier, the spline may indeed be the only CAUSE of the problems. The sloppy spline may trigger damage elsewhere in the geartrain. Fix the spline, the other problems don't occur.

It's the rotor spline that strips out. The car won't move when in drive, and makes a grinding noise. The SC's say it's a very rare problem.

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That's assuming the issue is with the half shaft splines in the gear case, which I'm quite sure are wet lubed with oil. At least I've never seen ones that weren't. The motor spline is the one I'm assuming was undersized, (which we've seen pictures of it now being larger), and also had an issue with insufficient grease at one point.

The larger shaft in the rotors posted upthread are for the dual motor cars(small motors). The big motor rotor had a redesign in late 2013, and I think the rotor shaft isn't much bigger if any.

 

[Electric700]

I sure hope they have the permanent fix available because they only have 9 more tries left.

LOL! I needed that.

On the serious side, yes let's hope this revision does it.

 

[tliving]

I think they have them under control for new cars. But for existing cars (made before about Q4 2014) there will still be occasional DU failures likely until they're all replaced with new ones that don't have the issues.

 

[tliving]

lol, its been a while since my last post here. I just got scheduled for a second DU replacement. So I'm still in the "way in the future" camp...

 

[SeminoleFSU]

Mine was replaced for the 2nd time at 50k miles. I didn't notice anything wrong on the 2nd replacement unlike the 1st which was droning and clunking before they replaced it