New Model 3, can feel the road from wheel

[youngmcdonald]

It’s a common case of road noise. Nothing is wrong most likely but would be curious to find out.

 

[Kilotango74]

Sounds like you have “I read the forums to much and am freaking out about something different from my security blanket car and so I want to automatically bail”, syndrome. It’s a clinical term.

 

[worldbofree]

I picked up my brand new M3 yesterday, and felt the same thing. 19in wheels and AWD. I thought it was just because I put the steering into comfort mode?

Also, is there a proper thread to give all my thoughts and pose all my questions as a new owner? Im not seeing one.

 

[qdeathstar]

I found the model three to have very tight shocks compared to most othe cars i have driven so that might match with the “feel” the road sensation you are describing...

 

[dannydan]

Ok, moving on, why does my rear camera have a blurry spot / line across on it?
I tried gently wiping the camera but that doesn't seem to fix it.

https://i.imgur.com/hx7o4Tn.jpg

 

[snyder]

Closest SC appointment is September 9th. I don't get why you guys don't see the risk of waiting for them to (maybe) fix it vs just returning it and being on the safe side.

Also what kind of car company has service appointments so far out?

Did you try a different service center? They are every where especially in CA. In fact I just went through a SC appointment last week and was able to find one the same day but ended up choosing one couple days later. Its just that I had to go through the minor inconvenience of checking the app for availability a few times in 2 different centers.

Unless you made your mind to return, I’d suggest doing this or go to any service center and explain your situation and I’m pretty sure they’ll be motivated fo fix if there’s really a problem. Good luck!

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Also, is there a proper thread to give all my thoughts and pose all my questions as a new owner? Im not seeing one.

No, it's pretty much the wild wild west around here! Everyone keeps asking the same (or similar) questions over and over again, and people keep patiently (or not so patiently) providing the same answers. Stickies or a FAQ would be cool, but would be some upfront work I suppose, and it would become controversial and devolve into an unproductive and vituperative discussion about how the FAQ is wrong, is my guess.

I do recommend the search function though. If you can pick the right key words you'll probably find what you need for a lot of common questions. Enjoy the car!

 

[dannydan]

lol,next appointment is now September 18th.
What a joke.

Honest question, not trolling - with so many people needing service and the appointments filling up so quickly, isn't this a big red sign the cars might have serious quality issues?

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Honest question, not trolling - with so many people needing service and the appointments filling up so quickly, isn't this a big red sign the cars might have serious quality issues?

I think it is a combination of factors. One is probably that a lot of service appointments are probably to allay people's fears about their battery capacity. Hopefully Tesla is mostly ignoring those now.

I think also, there are a lot of vehicles, for not a lot of service capacity. There are a reasonable number of service centers for the number of cars out there, but it's not clear what capacity they have at each service center.

Also, there are a lot of issues. Teslas are not the most reliable vehicles. This should have come up in your research before you decided to buy one, though! In theory, the core mechanicals should last a long time, but Model 3 is going to have quality issues for a while, before all the bad portions of the design are isolated and revised. In general the car has been holding together pretty well, but there are definitely starting to be some common failures that show up (axles, cracking glass panels, underbody aero shields, etc.).

There are definitely a lot of initial quality issues too and those things put a load on the service center. I have something like 13 items on my car that still need to be taken care of (doors need to be straightened up, my front half-axles apparently need replacing (or adjustment!), a couple plastic trim pieces need to be replaced, and there's a pretty significant door rattle), but I'm just waiting until I have to go in. I don't have anything that is actually broken (the axles are probably the closest thing). And I've had my car for nearly a year!

 

[groovidad]

I think it is a combination of factors. One is probably that a lot of service appointments are probably to allay people's fears about their battery capacity. Hopefully Tesla is mostly ignoring those now.

I think also, there are a lot of vehicles, for not a lot of service capacity. There are a reasonable number of service centers for the number of cars out there, but it's not clear what capacity they have at each service center.

Also, there are a lot of issues. Teslas are not the most reliable vehicles. This should have come up in your research before you decided to buy one, though! In theory, the core mechanicals should last a long time, but Model 3 is going to have quality issues for a while, before all the bad portions of the design are isolated and revised. In general the car has been holding together pretty well, but there are definitely starting to be some common failures that show up (axles, cracking glass panels, underbody aero shields, etc.).

There are definitely a lot of initial quality issues too and those things put a load on the service center. I have something like 13 items on my car that still need to be taken care of (doors need to be straightened up, my front half-axles apparently need replacing (or adjustment!), a couple plastic trim pieces need to be replaced, and there's a pretty significant door rattle), but I'm just waiting until I have to go in. I don't have anything that is actually broken (the axles are probably the closest thing). And I've had my car for nearly a year!

Brother, I can’t imagine your discomfort! Hang in there! Something good is going to happen!

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Brother, I can’t imagine your discomfort! Hang in there! Something good is going to happen!

Ah, no discomfort here. Just cosmetic issues except for the axles. I have four axles so if two go bad, I should still be fine. All is well.

 

[dannydan]

I think it is a combination of factors. One is probably that a lot of service appointments are probably to allay people's fears about their battery capacity. Hopefully Tesla is mostly ignoring those now.

I think also, there are a lot of vehicles, for not a lot of service capacity. There are a reasonable number of service centers for the number of cars out there, but it's not clear what capacity they have at each service center.

Also, there are a lot of issues. Teslas are not the most reliable vehicles. This should have come up in your research before you decided to buy one, though! In theory, the core mechanicals should last a long time, but Model 3 is going to have quality issues for a while, before all the bad portions of the design are isolated and revised. In general the car has been holding together pretty well, but there are definitely starting to be some common failures that show up (axles, cracking glass panels, underbody aero shields, etc.).

There are definitely a lot of initial quality issues too and those things put a load on the service center. I have something like 13 items on my car that still need to be taken care of (doors need to be straightened up, my front half-axles apparently need replacing (or adjustment!), a couple plastic trim pieces need to be replaced, and there's a pretty significant door rattle), but I'm just waiting until I have to go in. I don't have anything that is actually broken (the axles are probably the closest thing). And I've had my car for nearly a year!

Interesting stuff. Honestly, I didn't do any research. Just took a test drive and decided I want one
I also really like the vision of a driverless car, though I'm starting to seriously doubt I'll see it in my vehicle's lifetime. Lots of interesting discussions whether it can really be achieved without LIDAR.
Anyhow, I've been reading a lot of fairly positive feedback and seems like most owners are very happy with their purchase. That said, I realize now Tesla has a very loyal fanbase that's almost blind to their imperfections and I should have filtered out some of that noise.
As far as reliability, I guess my expectation was that with EVs there are "fewer moving parts" thus reliability should be higher, but I may have been wrong. The other part of the problem is I thought I was buying a luxury car and expected luxury all-around (finish, service etc). With the higher price tag come higher expectations. At least compared to "traditional" cars and dealerships, I can't say the experience of purchasing / owning a Tesla has been better thus far. I mean yeah there's no haggling, but if you're willing to pay MSRP (which is effectively what we're doing with Tesla) then you can avoid that too. And I can schedule a service appointment for our Mazda on Monday morning. As in within a day, not a month.

Another mistake I made with this purchase is breaking my own rule of never buying a v1 of an expensive product.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

a v1 of an expensive product.

It’s been continuously revised so what you have probably can’t really be described as a v1. Some of the issues/shortcomings have been sorted out already. Definitely not all. There are no model years.

I think it is an awesome car to drive, and going into it expecting to have problems has so far resulted in me feeling like things are going somewhat better than expected.

This issue of your wheel seems extremely minor to me, but I absolutely think you should get it taken care of ASAP, to make sure it is not something more serious. I don’t want to recommend just going to a tire shop (I would, but I would make sure everything is done properly), but I think that is your best option if you cannot get the service center to take care of you on a walk-in basis.

Unlike my issues, I don’t think yours is one that should be ignored.

 

[worldbofree]

Technically, its not still V1 right? Isnt Tesla constantly fixing leaks while they’re producing new cars?

 

[alsetym]

My brother in law had a similar problem with his 3...turns out he should use his signals more often as it was just the lane keep assist telling him he was crossing lanes without signalling...

And service centers are typically busy because when an update screws something up, instead of waiting for the next update people rush in to complain. That and, based on this forum, people waste much of their time complaining about micro adjustments in trim pieces and paint. I wonder when the last time a person bought a toyota and showed up with calipers to measure body panels lol.

 

[Kilotango74]

lol,next appointment is now September 18th.
What a joke.

Honest question, not trolling - with so many people needing service and the appointments filling up so quickly, isn't this a big red sign the cars might have serious quality issues?

Is this a huge surprise to you? Did you not do any research before your purchase? This is obliviously another bi@$h post on this forum full of them.

 

[smartypnz]

Ok, moving on, why does my rear camera have a blurry spot / line across on it?
I tried gently wiping the camera but that doesn't seem to fix it.

Probably due to the unbalanced tire.

 

[dingyibvs]

Some people just don't believe a car should cause any hassle, what's so hard to understand? I recently got 4 new tires for my fiancee's Lexus and one of the tires was squished a bit by the packing tape. It took 3-4 visits to the tire shop before they managed to stretch it out and mount it. We both agreed afterwards that we don't have time for this ish.

Coincidentally we each had an '04 Camry before, and wasting ANY time to repair a car or part that's not incidentally damaged is simply not an acceptable use of our time. I hate spending time on the car enough that I let it go 20k miles before changing the oil one time. We thought getting the windshield repaired by a mobile tech was such a hassle that we procrastinated for 3 months until we were about to take a 2 wk road trip. We hardly ever even wash our cars.

One of the main reasons I've been researching EVs extensively is because the prospect of no maintenance. But I'm holding off for now due to the potential of wasting time instead with issues. I can hardly tolerate a mobile tech visit, let alone actual service center visits plus the hassle of scheduling.

It's true, we do live in different realities, and in my reality a car's foremost job is to get me from point A to point B. Anything inhibiting that whether it's maintenance, repairs, or whatever else is a big minus.

 

[worldbofree]

Some people just don't believe a car should cause any hassle, what's so hard to understand? I recently got 4 new tires for my fiancee's Lexus and one of the tires was squished a bit by the packing tape. It took 3-4 visits to the tire shop before they managed to stretch it out and mount it. We both agreed afterwards that we don't have time for this ish.

Coincidentally we each had an '04 Camry before, and wasting ANY time to repair a car or part that's not incidentally damaged is simply not an acceptable use of our time. I hate spending time on the car enough that I let it go 20k miles before changing the oil one time. We thought getting the windshield repaired by a mobile tech was such a hassle that we procrastinated for 3 months until we were about to take a 2 wk road trip. We hardly ever even wash our cars.

One of the main reasons I've been researching EVs extensively is because the prospect of no maintenance. But I'm holding off for now due to the potential of wasting time instead with issues. I can hardly tolerate a mobile tech visit, let alone actual service center visits plus the hassle of scheduling.

It's true, we do live in different realities, and in my reality a car's foremost job is to get me from point A to point B. Anything inhibiting that whether it's maintenance, repairs, or whatever else is a big minus.

I'd recommend you read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" That book changed my life. I'd be really curious to see what yours thoughts were after reading it, knowing your current attitude towards cars.

 

[KenC]

Some people just don't believe a car should cause any hassle, what's so hard to understand? I recently got 4 new tires for my fiancee's Lexus and one of the tires was squished a bit by the packing tape. It took 3-4 visits to the tire shop before they managed to stretch it out and mount it. We both agreed afterwards that we don't have time for this ish.

Coincidentally we each had an '04 Camry before, and wasting ANY time to repair a car or part that's not incidentally damaged is simply not an acceptable use of our time. I hate spending time on the car enough that I let it go 20k miles before changing the oil one time. We thought getting the windshield repaired by a mobile tech was such a hassle that we procrastinated for 3 months until we were about to take a 2 wk road trip. We hardly ever even wash our cars.

One of the main reasons I've been researching EVs extensively is because the prospect of no maintenance. But I'm holding off for now due to the potential of wasting time instead with issues. I can hardly tolerate a mobile tech visit, let alone actual service center visits plus the hassle of scheduling.

It's true, we do live in different realities, and in my reality a car's foremost job is to get me from point A to point B. Anything inhibiting that whether it's maintenance, repairs, or whatever else is a big minus.

I think most people want a no-hassle vehicle. Everyone understands that. The thing is, the things we want, and the things we get, aren't always in our control.

Your Lexus tire issue, how exactly are you going to avoid that? Never order new tires? Saying you "don't have time for this ish", doesn't mean you can avoid it next time.

Yes, "wasting ANY time to repair a car or part that's not incidentally damaged is simply not an acceptable use of [anyone's] time", as everyone's time is valuable; but, sh*t happens.

"I hate spending time on the car enough that I let it go 20k miles before changing the oil one time. We thought getting the windshield repaired by a mobile tech was such a hassle that we procrastinated for 3 months until we were about to take a 2 wk road trip. We hardly ever even wash our cars."

You should either Uber everywhere, rent a car that you can just return if it needs washing, or get yourself a PA.

"I can hardly tolerate a mobile tech visit". You don't even have to stick around for a Mobile Ranger.

Dude, my brother is a heart surgeon at Cedars, and you talk just like him. When I tell him his iPhone needs to be taken in to the Grove, he starts ranting about how busy he is, and how he can't be bothered! I told him to get a PA.