You Tesla _needs_ to be on wifi else it dies??!

[ozweepay]

Well, I had a Model S for 3 years and the lease ended, so I got another one on Sep 3rd 2018.

This new Model S is now 4 months old and had 75% charge when it suddenly just died: neither screen would come on. It was towed away by Tesla Roadside (which is another long frustrating story, but I'll omit that part).

Three days later Tesla Service explained the problem: I had failed to add my car to my home wifi network so the car could not download map updates for several months. The car has updated its software many times since I collected it four months ago but apparently it doesn't want to download map updates unless it has wifi. After getting months behind, it did the only rational thing next: it died.

I was perplexed: I had a Model S for 3 years prior to this one and I never had it on my wifi. But now it is a fatal mistake to exclude my car from my home network?! I searched these forums and couldn't find anything like this. And the service folks did not instruct me to put the car on wifi when I picked it up last September.

Is this is a known thing? Do you have your car on your home network?!

 

[Joelgjr]

Can you elaborate on “it died”?

We’re any screens still on? Throw any error messages? Did it lock/unlock? Lights work? Etc

 

[Holo]

My MS is on my home network and prior threads have mentioned the need to be on WiFi for maps to update, BUT, nothing even remotely suggesting that the car would simply give up and pout if maps do not update. Does not make sense to me!

 

[Lasttoy]

Tesla stopped downloading sw via LTE from ATT directly into your car since v9. And its cheaper to do it from service center over wifi.
BUT
My wifi is not close to my car, so i had to pull it up to the front of house and open window. Then he loaded.
BUT, has that nothing to do with your problem what so ever. That is pure bs. The chances of all our cars being next to our wifi is crazy stupid.
You have major sw problems.
v9 broke my car, cannot super charge except at a Gen 5 site,. 3 months still no fix.
V9 is junk in many ways.

 

[ozweepay]

Sorry if I wasn't clear about "it died." More details:

Neither screen would come on. Reboot attempt had no effect. Door handle lights and interior lights did illuminate. Strangely, if I tried 20-30 times to put the car into drive, it would eventually go into drive and operate (this is how I got it on to the flatbed tow truck).

 

[Shamrock]

Had an incident with some similarities: returned from a month long trip a few days ago to a partially dead Tesla, which had likely lost home WiFi connection for some reason. The MS was garaged and plugged in the entire time and access via Tesla App stopped working sometime during last week of the trip.

Had to manually press door handle to open, driver screen had only partially drawn graphics, main screen black. Was able to reboot via scroll buttons but seemed to take longer than normal. After the reboot everything returned to normal but I did need to re-establish the MS WiFi connection. Home WiFi was working normally as far as I could determine.

 

[ReddyLeaf]

I’ve had a similar “long time to wake up” incident. I don’t have WiFi at all, so the car has never been connected except at SC.

 

[Bballou]

No, this isn't a thing.

Many owners, like myself, live in apartments and never have their car on wifi.

 

[SMAlset]

This is the most bizzare thing I’ve heard. I imagine there are a number of Tesla owners without a wifi connection.

 

[Ande]

My neighbor just got he's car on WiFi, had it 3 years, w/o WiFi.

 

[Az_Rael]

That sounds like service center B.S., honestly.

 

[demundus]

Sorry if I wasn't clear about "it died." More details:

Neither screen would come on. Reboot attempt had no effect. Door handle lights and interior lights did illuminate. Strangely, if I tried 20-30 times to put the car into drive, it would eventually go into drive and operate (this is how I got it on to the flatbed tow truck).

Dead battery or dead MCU. Not wifi related lol...

 

[JoeMartin]

Sounds like a dead MCU to me. Probably got to the end of the write-cycle life of the card inside that the map data is on and it bricked it.
Happened to me.

 

[TonyT]

Sounds like a dead MCU to me. Probably got to the end of the write-cycle life of the card inside that the map data is on and it bricked it.
Happened to me.

My thought also, the constant attempting to download and writing wore out eMMC. Which will result in black screens. I heard that waiting 30 seconds in car with the black screens will actually let you drive.

 

[TonyT]

Sorry if I wasn't clear about "it died." More details:

Neither screen would come on. Reboot attempt had no effect. Door handle lights and interior lights did illuminate. Strangely, if I tried 20-30 times to put the car into drive, it would eventually go into drive and operate (this is how I got it on to the flatbed tow truck).

Guess your 20-30 tries was about 30 seconds?

 

[JoeMartin]

Even if both IC and MCU are dead you should be able to drive. It takes about a minute for the car to fully boot back up, which it has to do each time you get back in to the car, before you can begin to drive.

The caveat to this though, if you MCU did fully die, the charge limit would be set to the absolute minimum for standard charging and you'd charge about 1 kwh/day. BUT you could still SC without an issue.

 

[vickh]

My thought also, the constant attempting to download and writing wore out eMMC. Which will result in black screens. I heard that waiting 30 seconds in car with the black screens will actually let you drive.

Isn't the HUD good enough to drive? or is the MCU essential. One reason I like the MS over the M3 having a dual display

 

[Hugh Mannity]

That sounds like service center B.S., honestly.

Yeah that ^^ there is no way the car would act up if it had no wifi connection

 

[JoeMartin]

Isn't the HUD good enough to drive? or is the MCU essential. One reason I like the MS over the M3 having a dual display

You don't technically need the IC or the MCU to be able to drive, but the IC is definitely "enough" to drive with safely. You just will have a very lackluster (and at this time of year, cold) driving experience.

 

[vickh]

You don't technically need the IC or the MCU to be able to drive, but the IC is definitely "enough" to drive with safely. You just will have a very lackluster (and at this time of year, cold) driving experience.

not in AZ but your point is well taken. It's nice to have a back up IC so you can see gear/speed and even Nav if the MCU fails. Wonder if M3 will suffer from this when older?