My P85 is Haunted! Any thoughts?

A month or so ago, i took my P85 to the Rockville MD SC to have the underbody shield installed, tires rotated, etc. As part of the visit i had the technician look at the dash pad as it appeared that there was a blemish in the material. Upon inspection, the service technician decided to replace the dash pad in its entirety. And that’s when the strangeness began.


After a couple of days, i wiped down the dash pad with a microfiber cloth and observed some bizarre behavior that i was able to confirm this evening.


Here’s what I’ve observed. When i wipe the top of the dash pad with a cloth, applying slightly more than very minimal force, the car goes bonkers. The center screen invokes every control, turning them on and off at random. To be clear, all I’m doing is rubbing the top of the dash pad. I am not touching the center screen at all. The seat heaters come on and off, the front and rear defrosters come on and off, the temperature settings change by themselves, the bluetooth screen appears and disappears, the version home screen comes on and goes away, etc.


The only thing i can think of, is that the dash pad must have been improperly installed. But i am more than a little concerned about driving the car when such random events could occur. Has anyone experienced anything like this?

Thanks to all. "Ownership" responded immediately to my email where i described the issue. They suggested that it was static electricity and that i should use the cloth supplied by Tesla when i purchased the car. I took their suggestion and tried the "Tesla cloth" and observed the same results. I also used a cotton cloth on the dash and got the same bizarre results.

My concern is that i am having real problems with the nav system in that sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. When it does not work, i can enter an address, press "GO" and nothing happens. I'm wondering if that issue could be related to the weird center screen/grounding issue that i am experiencing.

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Dien Kim Nguyen said:

I had a similar issue, my wife sometimes would grab the blanket from the back seat when she gets cold (which is quite often) the defroster would immediately turn on, the car AC is turn on full blast, and both seat settings would turn on to #3. From what I was able to observe, the static electricity, caused by the motion of displacing the blanket near or touch the bezel of the screen, created these behaviors. It took me a while to understand what what going on. This is an electromagnetic interference (EMI) that Tesla didn't take in an account when designing the screen. Basically they don't have proper shielding and grounding near that area.

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You have described precisely what i am seeing.

Chris said:

Experienced the exact same behavior a few times. Thought I was just imagining this but guess not

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That was my reaction the first time i experienced this. I then reconfirmed it using a cotton cloth and the screen cleaning cloth provided by Tesla. I'm guessing that the SC did not properly ground the screen when they replaced by dash pad during a prior SC visit.

Todd Burch said:

This is a known issue for us old(er)-timers (relative to the life of the Model S). Yes, Tesla has a fix to better ground the dash (although I've never needed it). Use screen cleaning mode (available in the Displays tab), and apply a little bit of gentle non-harsh cleaner or water to the cloth first. The moisture will prevent significant static buildup.

And regarding your nav issue, do you have the .109 flavor of 5.9 yet? (Or the latest 5.11 version)? I think this is a bug that was fixed in the latest firmware update that's slowly being pushed to owners.

In short, you're not crazy, your car is not haunted, and the very thing that rockets your car from a stoplight is to blame!

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Thanks for the insight. I just got .109 last night (not 5.11) so we'll see if the nav performance improves. Thanks again.