So, my car just got this issue. It seems to be fairly quick to diagnose (besides not actually feeling heat) since the climate screen will have the "Climate Keeper is unavailable..." message, and you won't be able to turn on Dog or Camp mode, etc. You also won't be able to use the remote climate feature on the Tesla app, as it will error out.
I have an SC appoint for two weeks out (hoping they can switch to mobile service, but apparently no service centers or people are working on the weekend) for this, but wanted to throw some stuff up here for others as I suspect those of us in cold climates (which is pretty much everyone in the U.S. at this point thanks to the cold snap) are going to experience this based on what I've read.
The short of it is that it seems there are some defective temperature / humidity / pressure sensors in the heat pump 3/Y. This misreport what they're supposed to report, and that jacks up the software that controls how the heat pump is supposed to operate. Past videos show that Tesla got around this with firmware updates that would bypass these sensors. They are also apparently replacing these sensors, but clearly were still using bad sensors as of the December batch of Model 3s, so who knows how many are out there.
I've had my 2021 since early December and the heat was fine up till the 2021.4.6 update that installed a couple days ago. Not sure if this is correlated with my heat stopping working today or not, but given the past FW updates bypassed these bad sensors to "band-aid" the issue, I'm wondering if something changed with the "bug fixes" that undid what previous firmwares did.
I'm going to go to NHTSA and file a safety report since this is obviously a safety issue since it could impact the defrost working in cold climates. I highly recommend anyone else who has this issue do the same. The only way to get Tesla to actually do a recall for these faulty sensors (which seem to be very common from what I've read) is to get the NHTSA to force them to (which is much the same as the MCU1 flash issue that Tesla was ignoring and forcing owners to pay for out of pocket to fix that they now have to fix under the national recall or reimburse owners who already paid).
You can find the form here: File a Vehicle Safety Complaint | Safercar.gov | NHTSA
I'll post here with updates after the SC messages me back. I'm sure the SC will be able to fix it based on other YT videos I've watched, but I feel like it's really important to get some NHTSA pressure on Tesla so they can do a better job of vetting parts in the future and more proactively recall cars for safety issues.
I have an SC appoint for two weeks out (hoping they can switch to mobile service, but apparently no service centers or people are working on the weekend) for this, but wanted to throw some stuff up here for others as I suspect those of us in cold climates (which is pretty much everyone in the U.S. at this point thanks to the cold snap) are going to experience this based on what I've read.
The short of it is that it seems there are some defective temperature / humidity / pressure sensors in the heat pump 3/Y. This misreport what they're supposed to report, and that jacks up the software that controls how the heat pump is supposed to operate. Past videos show that Tesla got around this with firmware updates that would bypass these sensors. They are also apparently replacing these sensors, but clearly were still using bad sensors as of the December batch of Model 3s, so who knows how many are out there.
I've had my 2021 since early December and the heat was fine up till the 2021.4.6 update that installed a couple days ago. Not sure if this is correlated with my heat stopping working today or not, but given the past FW updates bypassed these bad sensors to "band-aid" the issue, I'm wondering if something changed with the "bug fixes" that undid what previous firmwares did.
I'm going to go to NHTSA and file a safety report since this is obviously a safety issue since it could impact the defrost working in cold climates. I highly recommend anyone else who has this issue do the same. The only way to get Tesla to actually do a recall for these faulty sensors (which seem to be very common from what I've read) is to get the NHTSA to force them to (which is much the same as the MCU1 flash issue that Tesla was ignoring and forcing owners to pay for out of pocket to fix that they now have to fix under the national recall or reimburse owners who already paid).
You can find the form here: File a Vehicle Safety Complaint | Safercar.gov | NHTSA
I'll post here with updates after the SC messages me back. I'm sure the SC will be able to fix it based on other YT videos I've watched, but I feel like it's really important to get some NHTSA pressure on Tesla so they can do a better job of vetting parts in the future and more proactively recall cars for safety issues.