Small price to pay for supporting a noble cause.
Now that it doesn't work and suck coal- and oil-generated electricity, it protects the environment even better.
Our Tesla Model 3 Suffered a Failure While Parked
111–120 of 173 posts
Re: Our Tesla Model 3 Suffered a Failure While Parked
#112Actually I strongly prefer catastrophic failures while parked to catastrophic failures while driving... Of course, having a defect in a basically new car is very annoying, but that is the curse of any technology. At least with an almost new car, there is little argument about whether it is carried by warranty. Tesla will either fix it or give them a new car and then they can hopefully enjoy it.
> Actually I strongly prefer catastrophic failures while parked to catastrophic failures while driving...
Certainly something to consider when owning a Tesla car!
Re: Our Tesla Model 3 Suffered a Failure While Parked
#113On the flip side, how cool is it that cars are now smart enough to diagnose themselves and prevent you from driving before what could potentially be an unsafe situation has a chance to occur?
"Now"? This has been implemented for years - most people just call it "Check engine light" ;)
The check engine light is only for emissions related failures which is why in most cases the car is still driveable. In serious cases like this most cars will flash the CEL but AFAIK that is not legally required. The whole point of the CEL is that when the emission system is compromised its not immediately obvious, in fact the car may even perform better depending on the fault.
Re: Our Tesla Model 3 Suffered a Failure While Parked
#114Recently my bothers Ford Focus had service engine light that had come on and vehicle was shut down. He had it towed to ford. which let him know that they recently had a recall on the model and they knew the exact issue. He was neither given rental nor Uber or loaner etc. he had to talk to his insurance company which also did not include recall as a clause so he had to rent. This sort of shit happens to all cars. Alth…
The point of TFA that the car failure / bad service happened to CarAndDriver's long term test drive Model 3 early on its lifespan and they have never had this happen before for any of their long term cars. "This sort of shit happens to all cars" misses the significance of this event due not applying basic statistics. Simply put, readers of this article have far more cars than the writers.
No, the misapplication of basic statistics is yours in concluding that one data point in a small sample size must be significant. The opposite is true.
Re: Our Tesla Model 3 Suffered a Failure While Parked
#115I rented a 2018 Ford Explorer AWD with ~8k miles on it last year. It suffered a persistent "Terrain Management System Fault. Service AdvanceTrac." error while parked, stranding me on a mountain for 2 days. This is apparently a shockingly common problem with Ford vehicles equipped with AdvanceTrac.
It's getting tiresome that any similar issues Tesla encounters are somehow newsworthy... For example fires - according to FEMA, there's ~171,500+ highway car fires per year and if a Tesla ever catches on fire it's big news
Re: Our Tesla Model 3 Suffered a Failure While Parked
#116I was very disappointed that the author's idea of Catastrophic was far less interesting than what I pictured in my head. It's definitely not the only time an expensive car has failed in the first 6,000 miles of use. Also, the author's assumption that ICE cars don't fail while parked is a bit of hairsplitting. This isn't much different from any of the dozen or so times I've driven somewhere and discovered my car won't…
I am honestly surprised by your blasé reaction. To make an apples to apples comparison, have you ever had a: 1. New car, 2. Which cost almost $60,000, with 3. Fewer than 6000 miles, 4. Suffer a catastrophic failure (i.e. couldn't start with a jump), 5. While parked, 6. And had the manufacturer not communicate the source of failure, 7. Or how long it would take to fix? That, to me, seems almost unbelievable. I have en…
I bought a VW GTI 20th anniversary (a numbered car) and the transmission broke on my third drive (wouldn’t shift out of third) which was a catastrophic failure. This was about 50 miles deep. Took a few hours to get towed. VW said they would fly in an expert from Germany to diagnose the issue. I opted to get a different car (new number, same model) and that one worked fine. Did I have massive ill will towards VW? no. This was even a numbered car that technically “could not be replaced”. Errors happen.
Statistically, a few hundred thousand model 3s have been delivered and many are well past 6k miles. I think you should wait and hear what Tesla’s reaction is before writing them off.
Things you should consider are:
- they have sold so many cars in the past 2 years that service center growth is struggling to keep up and wait times are long
- Tesla vehicles cannot be serviced easily by third parties so you have no option if Tesla says something you don’t like or wait times are long
Choosing the one broken car out of hundreds of thousands delivered as a reason to not buy one doesn’t make much sense. All manufacturers deliver defective vehicles. Looking at statistics on how many are defective per capita from each manufacturer would be a more reasonable course of action.
Re: Our Tesla Model 3 Suffered a Failure While Parked
#117To me, the scariest part of the article is the last image showing the Tesla screen: "Schedule an appointment on your Tesla Mobile App". No ability to take it somewhere else, no ability to diagnose and attempt a fix yourself, you just have to hope that Tesla will fix it quickly for you. I like Tesla as much as anyone else here, but that last image, imho, takes a bit of ownership/agency away from the owner of the car.…
This is why we need strong Right to Repair laws in all 50 states--not just for cars, but for all expensive technology.
Re: Our Tesla Model 3 Suffered a Failure While Parked
#118I rented a 2018 Ford Explorer AWD with ~8k miles on it last year. It suffered a persistent "Terrain Management System Fault. Service AdvanceTrac." error while parked, stranding me on a mountain for 2 days. This is apparently a shockingly common problem with Ford vehicles equipped with AdvanceTrac. It's getting tiresome that any similar issues Tesla encounters are somehow newsworthy... For example fires - according to…
OTOH it’s a car and driver long term test car, so one would hope that entropy wouldn’t affect it much. If you’re saying it’s common for many vehicles to just die while parked, I don’t think that’s really a thing yet.
Re: Our Tesla Model 3 Suffered a Failure While Parked
#119To me, the scariest part of the article is the last image showing the Tesla screen: "Schedule an appointment on your Tesla Mobile App". No ability to take it somewhere else, no ability to diagnose and attempt a fix yourself, you just have to hope that Tesla will fix it quickly for you. I like Tesla as much as anyone else here, but that last image, imho, takes a bit of ownership/agency away from the owner of the car.…
No ability to call and make an appointment.
Re: Our Tesla Model 3 Suffered a Failure While Parked
#120I was very disappointed that the author's idea of Catastrophic was far less interesting than what I pictured in my head. It's definitely not the only time an expensive car has failed in the first 6,000 miles of use. Also, the author's assumption that ICE cars don't fail while parked is a bit of hairsplitting. This isn't much different from any of the dozen or so times I've driven somewhere and discovered my car won't…
I am honestly surprised by your blasé reaction. To make an apples to apples comparison, have you ever had a: 1. New car, 2. Which cost almost $60,000, with 3. Fewer than 6000 miles, 4. Suffer a catastrophic failure (i.e. couldn't start with a jump), 5. While parked, 6. And had the manufacturer not communicate the source of failure, 7. Or how long it would take to fix? That, to me, seems almost unbelievable. I have en…
I disagree with your reaction.
With any another car, the car would fail to start with a generic idiot light. You would then arrange to drop it with the dealer with no expectation of diagnosis on the spot. Later they would call you up and let you know.
No manufacturer is immune to problems, even with very new cars.
In this case the major difference is the car proactively notified the owner of the problem.