3G internet connection drops on Model S

ualdriver · Feb 27, 2015

How often are you finding that your Model S drops its internet/3G connection (in areas where a known 3G coverage exists) requiring a reboot of the screen? I'm finding that recently I've had to reboot about once a week. Is that normal? Seems like too much to me.

Second problem........I drove this evening into the boonies, and the S dropped the internet connection. That's not unexpected as the coverage in the area I was driving was likely sparse. However, when I drove BACK into an area that I know has adequate coverage, the S did not pick the signal back up. I had to reboot the screen in order to get it working again. That doesn't seem normal to me. It seems like my S simply won't pick its connection back up when it drops it, no matter what the reason for the drop is.

dirkhh · Feb 27, 2015

That does not seem right. I frequently lose internet in a spot where my phone (also on at&t has coverage), but it always reconnects quite quickly. Same after driving through the mountains with truly no signal for a while.
I'd contact your service center.

muleferg · Feb 28, 2015

I had many issue's when I was with AT&T. I B happy happy now with Verizon. Maybe some day we will be able to choose our choice of service. When Apple buys Tesla

3s-a-charm · Feb 28, 2015

ualdriver said:
How often are you finding that your Model S drops its internet/3G connection (in areas where a known 3G coverage exists) requiring a reboot of the screen? I'm finding that recently I've had to reboot about once a week. Is that normal? Seems like too much to me.

Second problem........I drove this evening into the boonies, and the S dropped the internet connection. That's not unexpected as the coverage in the area I was driving was likely sparse. However, when I drove BACK into an area that I know has adequate coverage, the S did not pick the signal back up. I had to reboot the screen in order to get it working again. That doesn't seem normal to me. It seems like my S simply won't pick its connection back up when it drops it, no matter what the reason for the drop is.

I am experiencing this to about the same degree. Happened yesterday. The Slacker music doesn't pick up the next track and the maps stop refreshing. Reboot fixes it. I've done this about once every 2 weeks and yesterday did happen after being in a cell dead-zone for a few minutes.

bob_p · Feb 28, 2015

Happened to me this morning. Had no connectivity in my garage - even though there's a WiFi router above the garage with a very strong signal. The car didn't have a connection to either WiFi or to the AT&T 3G. When I pulled away from the house, there still wasn't a 3G connection - so the nav systems and map display didn't work.

Tried rebooting - and that didn't fix it. After driving for a few minutes, 3G came back on and the map was slowly displayed until it filled the screen.

This was the first time I've seen this problem. If it happens again - I'll try to do a BUG REPORT - oops... without a network connection - that probably won't work...

JMG · May 6, 2015

Reviving a semi-old thread. I'm having this same problem. Three times now when starting the car in the morning and disconnecting from my wifi, it won't bring up the 3G. The other day on my father-in-law test drive, I couldn't play him any music because it had no connectivity. At the time, I didn't know about rebooting. It has happened two more times since, and each time I've had to reboot and eventually it will connect.

I guess I'll add it to my list that I need to address with the service center. Other issue, incredible wind/whistling noise from the pano at speeds above 65mph.

sorka · May 6, 2015

Just started happening to me tons starting yesterday after I finally installed .188. On my two hour drive to work, I didn't have 3g for more than half the trip. Slacker would time out and then tell me to sign in. Maps would fail to work and no traffic data for most of the trip. I haven't tried rebooting but I guess I should have done that first thing. Just slipped my mind this time.

3s-a-charm · May 6, 2015

3s-a-charm said:
I am experiencing this to about the same degree. Happened yesterday. The Slacker music doesn't pick up the next track and the maps stop refreshing. Reboot fixes it. I've done this about once every 2 weeks and yesterday did happen after being in a cell dead-zone for a few minutes.

After my last service visit this has not happened to me anymore. I am unsure of what they did to correct it but seems to be fine now. Let Tesla know - maybe they will fix it for you.

GiantsFan · May 12, 2015

I am having a similar issue. My car can be showing good connectivity (even 5 bars of 3G) but the map and streaming audio will cease to operate. This issue can persist for tens of minutes despite my connectivity showing 3+ bars the entire time. The problem appears to be most pronounced in certain areas; unfortunately, I live and drive most of the time in an affected area (Los Gatos / Saratoga / Monte Sereno area in California). I can now predict where I will hit bad / no connectivity despite having 3+ bars and despite this not being an issue in the past. I have reached out to Tesla Service and provided them logs with near 0 feedback -- other than Tesla acknowledging I am not the only one with this issue.

Anyone else here experiencing a similar issue? I estimate this started about 6 weeks ago. There are a lot of Model S cars in the neighborhood, but it is hard to imagine the cars on the road pulling nav and audio are saturating the spectrum or SLA with the AT&T. Any other thoughts on what the problem could be or how to resolve with Tesla?

Thanks

Ben W · May 12, 2015

I've experienced this problem quite a bit. In West LA I park in an underground garage with no cell reception, so the car never has a 3G signal when it wakes up. About 10% of the time, the car seems to "give up" finding the signal before I even leave the garage, and when this happens, I can drive around indefinitely (I've driven at least an hour) and the 3G never appears. A reboot (while driving) sometimes fixes it, but not always.

If Tesla is listening -- when this happens, my instinct is always to tap on the signal strength bars on the touchscreen as a way of telling it to search again for a 3G signal, or perhaps to pop up a little menu showing the connection status. But this currently doesn't do anything.

DFiveK2 · May 12, 2015

Why does everyone refer to 3G in their comments? Isn't the Tesla 4G capable? I don't have mine yet so perhaps I'm wrong. It would seem to be silly to have 3G and not 4G in such an awesome machine.

JMG · May 12, 2015

DFiveK2 said:
Why does everyone refer to 3G in their comments? Isn't the Tesla 4G capable? I don't have mine yet so perhaps I'm wrong. It would seem to be silly to have 3G and not 4G in such an awesome machine.

That's because it is 3G. Rumor has it that LTE is coming in the future, we just don't know how or when. You would think that 4G LTE would be a given on this kind of machine, but it isn't for some reason. So the nav maps are slow to refresh and the browser is quite slow.

DFiveK2 · May 12, 2015

Yuck. The worst part of that is 4G coverage is much better and will continue to get better. 3G is what you get.

Cyclone · May 12, 2015

DFiveK2 said:
Why does everyone refer to 3G in their comments? Isn't the Tesla 4G capable? I don't have mine yet so perhaps I'm wrong. It would seem to be silly to have 3G and not 4G in such an awesome machine.

The car is HSPA+ capable, which AT&T refers to as 4G. The car is not LTE capable. That said, I do not know if AT&T is only providing the car w/ HSPA (3G) or HSPA+ (AT&T "4G") service. Either way, it most definitely is not the newer, better LTE service.

pimp-boy · May 12, 2015

I am experiencing the same $hit as you. Ever since updating the damn software to 6.2 (any variants), I get no updates on the moving maps, slacker, or Tune-IN. This is specific again to Los Gatos, Saratoga, and Monte Sereno. I filed multiple bugs via the voice command in hopes that they actually listen. It used to all work fine, now it doesn't. Once I enter into Campbell, it starts working. It has between 3 - 5 bars of reception!!!!!

GiantsFan said:
I am having a similar issue. My car can be showing good connectivity (even 5 bars of 3G) but the map and streaming audio will cease to operate. This issue can persist for tens of minutes despite my connectivity showing 3+ bars the entire time. The problem appears to be most pronounced in certain areas; unfortunately, I live and drive most of the time in an affected area (Los Gatos / Saratoga / Monte Sereno area in California). I can now predict where I will hit bad / no connectivity despite having 3+ bars and despite this not being an issue in the past. I have reached out to Tesla Service and provided them logs with near 0 feedback -- other than Tesla acknowledging I am not the only one with this issue.

Anyone else here experiencing a similar issue? I estimate this started about 6 weeks ago. There are a lot of Model S cars in the neighborhood, but it is hard to imagine the cars on the road pulling nav and audio are saturating the spectrum or SLA with the AT&T. Any other thoughts on what the problem could be or how to resolve with Tesla?

Thanks

bigdomer · May 12, 2015

This happened to me last month. Diagnosis was bad modem. To fix they replace the entire 17" screen. Thus, you will lose your seat settings and driver profiles. No problem since.

Blu Zap · May 12, 2015

Interesting thread. Agree, issues discussed are best taken up with the SC. I go out of range periodically, (West Marin) and then get the signal back at the same area where I lost it. No big deal. So if the MS doesn't do that, the go to the SC. Regarding 6.2, there have been some bug fixes since the original launch. Initially, there was no, or intermittent, real time traffic on the maps. Very troubling. I do use Tesla-waze, so all was not lost. But a recent bug fix release took care of that.

Seattle · May 12, 2015

@pimp-boy (kind of hate to write that) have you rebooted the console computer since your updates? That's about all you can do easily.

ualdriver · May 12, 2015

I started this thread a couple of months ago, and (at least for me) it *appears* to have gotten better. I'm not sure if it was the software updates or what, but I'm definitely having better luck with the system finding a signal after it is lost. I still have to reboot once in a while (maybe once in the past 30 days recently?), but it's better for whatever reason.

JohnnyMac · May 12, 2015

pimp-boy said:
I am experiencing the same $hit as you. Ever since updating the damn software to 6.2 (any variants), I get no updates on the moving maps, slacker, or Tune-IN. This is specific again to Los Gatos, Saratoga, and Monte Sereno. I filed multiple bugs via the voice command in hopes that they actually listen. It used to all work fine, now it doesn't. Once I enter into Campbell, it starts working. It has between 3 - 5 bars of reception!!!!!

Same here. Same issue in the same area. I have had the Sunnyvale SC team working on this for the past few weeks since the issue began for me. They expect a patch to solve it in the next week or so. Apparently the issue is that for some reason, the car drops the connection to the main AT&T towers and inadvertantly locks onto Micro Cells or Cell Signal Boosters that people have installed in their homes. That causes the lack of ability to traffic refresh, search in maps or Slacker's ability to play. Apparently it has been a tough one for them to resolve.

3G internet connection drops on Model S

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