Georgesb2
George Borrelli
My outside temperature is stuck and remains on 68F no matter what the real temperature is. I don't know what causes this to be broken. I scheduled Tesla service to fix it. If there's a DIY fix, I'd like to know.
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It just happened to my 2022 Tesla Model 3P.The outside air temperature (OAT) sensor is located inside the front wheel well (passenger side.) The wiring harness for the OAT sensor is prone to being chewed by rodents (mice, rats and squirrels.) Open a service request in the Tesla app, hopefully Tesla Mobile Service can come to your location and determine if rodent damage is the reason why the OAT sensor is giving a false reading. This type of vehicle damage, less your deductible, should be covered under your automobile comprehensive insurance.
Hi, did anybody touch/repair your car before this issue developed?yes same issue , rectified on next drive say 15 minutes
I have noticed that my outside temp reading is wrong (lower) then the actual reading by 10 degrees for the first 10 minutes of my drive. Anyone else have this problem?
Every car I have had does that. It takes time for the sensor to accommodate temperature changes. Especially if you keep it in a garage.Hi everyone! I have a question for you. Before this temperature thing developed, did you ever send your vehicle to the shop for repair?
Sorry, my question was "Did you send your car in for repair before this temperature things happen?" Thanks for your response!Every car I have had does that. It takes time for the sensor to accommodate temperature changes. Especially if you keep it in a garage.
Thanks for your response! My question was "Did you send your car to the shop for repair?”I have a 2022 Model 3, so this is my understanding.
The temperature sensor is located “inside” what I call the radiator box. That box is sometimes alsocalled a heat exchanger. It's in a a box called and labeled Active Grill Shutter Assembly.
I believe there are motor controlled shutters to external air access to that box.
To access the temperature sensor, remove the funk plastic. You'll see a rubber boot center towards the front. That's t he connection to the temperature sensor. How do I know this? Rodents ate that wire and I had to replace the entire wiring harness involved. If that wire is chewed through, the temperature will be “stuck” and will not change at all. If the temperature changes but it's slow, that's likely kind of normal.
Consider that the box that the temperature sensor is locate inside of is inside the car, surrounded by heat producing components such as front motor (if you have one)and tires and wheels which get quite hot. Even as important is that the box has a lot of metal and fluids. That tends to slow the rate of change of the temperature there. That's a collection of heat producers and thermal mass. Thermal mass greatly slows down the rate of change of temperatures.
That temperature sensor isn't really a true reading of external temperature, instead it's a reading of the air in the box housing the radiator or heat exchanger. You can expect variations in there from the true external temperature. But if the car is moving through the air rapidly and the louvers are wide open, the temperature should be quite close to external ambient.
If your car is inside a garage for many hours, there's still residual heat in the box and the garage will tend to influence the overall temperature. It will take some time driving outdoors for the reading to be closer to the air ambient outside.
Also note that from my experience working on cars, in older cars, temperature sensors were thermistors. They have an inverse relationship to temperature. That is as the temperature goes down, the ohms or resistance goes up. The computer handles the rest. But I've found many old thermistors get out of calibration and eventually fail, often failing open.
While I wouldn't expect the temperature to be lower than ambient, it can be if the conditions are right for that. If the car was outside in colder weather when parked is one such condition. If the battery needs to be heated, it may have the effect of cooling down the radiator box. That might happen during overnight charging. These are guesses. But I'm not surprised to see initially that the external temperature is different from true ambient, either higher or lower until the car gathers enough air to bring the box closer to ambient.
A pretty good expose of that radiator is in this video:
The outside temperature was 80F, but my car read 73F. My car was outside for hours.Every car I have had does that. It takes time for the sensor to accommodate temperature changes. Especially if you keep it in a garage.
This has been my experience as well, but I’ll be honest…I never noticed it behaving this way until the last few updates. Prior to this, it was always fairly quick to update in my experience.Garage parked (around 55-65F all year round).
Outside temperature: 20F
Car shown: 51F for 15 minutes driving. Then, it dropped down to 22F very quickly after 15 minutes driving. I guess after reading all the posts, it's normal, just delayed.