P85D Lost power on road, "Pull over safely"

[DoctorJJ]

I'm a P85D owner, delivered Dec 22. I've had 167 since the first day it was mentioned as released on here. I didn't think anything of it. I haven't had any issues. Tesla has not contacted me to warn me about this potential issue, which I strongly think they should have being as this condition could be a serious safety issue (start to pull out on the road and it goes dead and me and my kids get T-boned by a semi truck!!!)

I drive with range mode off and typically in insane mode. But if I would have decided to turn on range mode, it could have been disastrous. I just logged on to the site and saw these posts and was definitely surprised.

 

[gpetti]

I had my first problem last Saturday as did wk057 and I believe Tesla told wk057 then that it was a known problem. Since then I'm sure I've seen approaching 10 other reports of this problem between here and TM, vger just recently reported one before rice390. None of those owners had foreknowledge from Tesla, and thus far nobody here or on TM (that I have seen) has reported getting any warning from Tesla. Additionally someone (maybe wk057) mentioned that roadside assistance has been very busy with this problem. Presumably for any informed owners they would not need roadside assistance. If TESLA did send out an email it must have been extremely selective. Here on TMC when Jerome sent out an email about delayed P85DS most people got that email. Not sure why this would be a different distribution. Small data set or no, I think it's a pretty safe assumption that Tesla hasn't formally communicated to any owners about this.

 

[wk057]

Additionally someone (maybe wk057) mentioned that roadside assistance has been very busy with this problem.

Was me, this was mentioned by the person I spoke to at roadside assistance.

 

[electrish]

I guess it had to happen!

I haven't followed the forum, but have tried to figure out how to drive my P85D more efficiently.
.167 initially seemed to improve things, but I kept turning on Range Mode for increased range.
Three days ago, I had the "Car needs service, power reduced" incident, limped home, and rebooted with resolution.
I called Tesla Service anyways, who did not mention this to be a widespread problem at all, but rather said it was probably the cold around here (between -3 to 30 °F). They gave me the all clear, since the reboot seemed to have fixed it.

Then this morning in rush hour traffic I completely lost power. Pulled over and rebooted again, which solved the problem. This time I turned off Range Mode, don't know why, but after reading these posts, that seemed to have been the right thing to do.

I am just baffled by the fact that not only are Tesla not actively notifying owners, but if one calls in with the problem, they give them the wrong information that everything is ok.
They seem to be asleep at the wheel!

BTW, I didn't notice any noise (at least not while listening to music), but both times before it happened I had accelerated to pass somebody.

 

[Linux64]

...both times before it happened I had accelerated to pass somebody.

I had it happen to me yesterday. Same scenario, I had range mode on and accelerated hard to pass someone and about 5 seconds after I completed the pass the error messages started popping up and acceleration power disappeared.

My problem cleared without rebooting after being parked on the side of the road long enough that the car turned off. I pushed the brake pedal turning the car back on and the errors were gone.

The service center called me and told me to keep it out range mode and that a software update would be coming soon. They said keeping it out of range mode would prevent the problem from occurring.

 

[Andyw2100]

I guess it had to happen!

I haven't followed the forum, but have tried to figure out how to drive my P85D more efficiently.
.167 initially seemed to improve things, but I kept turning on Range Mode for increased range.
Three days ago, I had the "Car needs service, power reduced" incident, limped home, and rebooted with resolution.
I called Tesla Service anyways, who did not mention this to be a widespread problem at all, but rather said it was probably the cold around here (between -3 to 30 °F). They gave me the all clear, since the reboot seemed to have fixed it.

Then this morning in rush hour traffic I completely lost power. Pulled over and rebooted again, which solved the problem. This time I turned off Range Mode, don't know why, but after reading these posts, that seemed to have been the right thing to do.

I am just baffled by the fact that not only are Tesla not actively notifying owners, but if one calls in with the problem, they give them the wrong information that everything is ok.
They seem to be asleep at the wheel!

BTW, I didn't notice any noise (at least not while listening to music), but both times before it happened I had accelerated to pass somebody.

I think what happened to you is pretty lousy. And I've been one of the people here who has been critical of Tesla not being more proactive in notifying P85D customers to just not use range mode.

That being said, I'm wondering if your first incident was on Monday morning or on Tuesday morning, as that makes a pretty big difference. If it happened Tuesday morning there simply is no excuse for you having been given the wrong information. But if it was Monday morning, that was still pretty early in all this, and I'd actually be willing to give Tesla a pass on that one, as it's possible that whomever you reached in service didn't yet know what was going on with this issue.

 

[dirkhh]

So I think we have pretty well established by now that
a) Tesla has not informed all P85D owners of the risk of suddenly losing power
b) It keeps happening to people and they get into dangerous situations because of it

I'm quite disappointed.

PS: note that I didn't claim that they haven't informed any P85D owners. People love to attack posters who are critical of Tesla's actions so I want to make clear that yes, it's possible that there is a P85D owner in Northern Nebraska to whom Tesla sent a carrier pigeon that informed her about the issue. But she apparently isn't on TMC.

 

[PungoteagDave]

I can assure you that in my case it was a total power loss. The car came to a complete halt. I had the presence of mind beforehand to shift into neutral and weave through traffic onto the shoulder as the car slowed. This is truly scary and could be life and death. It is far more serious than the battery fire and bottom reinforcement issue. It affects many more cars directly and is an existential risk to both Tesla and any P85D owner. That's not exaggerating even a little bit. The friggin car has a software bug that can shut it down at speed. I was just driving along, got a lost power message and some red lights, game over. No communication from Tesla, but an "known error" response when I called. Seriously? You knew my car was at risk of shutting down in traffic and no one emailed or called? Seriously? Not only should NHSTA be involved, but there should be fines and remedial action required. The more time that elapses here, the more outrageous is Tesla's lack of communication. I am now headed over to NHSTA website. You should too.

 

[Andyw2100]

Seriously? You knew my car was at risk of shutting down in traffic and no one emailed or called? Seriously? Not only should NHSTA be involved, but there should be fines and remedial action required. The more time that elapses here, the more outrageous is Tesla's lack of communication. I am now headed over to NHSTA website. You should too.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of this is a part you didn't mention: the risk goes away if the car isn't driven with range mode on. So if Tesla --had-- chosen to email or call, they could have just informed you to drive with range mode off, and as long as you did that, everything would have been fine.

I point that out because I'd think it would be a lot easier to make calls like that, that can offer a temporary solution, as opposed to calls that would just say, "your car may be at risk of doing this, and we're working on a solution and should have one soon, but until then, be careful."

 

[dirkhh]

I can assure you that in my case it was a total power loss. The car came to a complete halt. I had the presence of mind beforehand to shift into neutral and weave through traffic onto the shoulder as the car slowed. This is truly scary and could be life and death.

THIS. This is why I think this is handled way too nonchalantly...

It is far more serious than the battery fire and bottom reinforcement issue. It affects many more cars directly and is an existential risk to both Tesla and any P85D owner. That's not exaggerating even a little bit. The friggin car has a software bug that can shut it down at speed. I was just driving along, got a lost power message and some red lights, game over. No communication from Tesla, but an "known error" response when I called. Seriously? You knew my car was at risk of shutting down in traffic and no one emailed or called? Seriously? Not only should NHSTA be involved, but there should be fines and remedial action required. The more time that elapses here, the more outrageous is Tesla's lack of communication. I am now headed over to NHSTA website. You should too.

Thanks for doing that. I'd also copy Jerome on your communication. Yes, he knows about the issue. But he and his team seem not to take it seriously. And that's a shame.

- - - Updated - - -

Perhaps the most frustrating part of this is a part you didn't mention: the risk goes away if the car isn't driven with range mode on. So if Tesla --had-- chosen to email or call, they could have just informed you to drive with range mode off, and as long as you did that, everything would have been fine.

+1000

Seriously, what rational logic got them to the point that it's better to let P85D drivers "find out while driving" that it is dangerous to operate a P85D with .167 in range mode? Do we have to have an actual serious accident before they figure this out?

 

[billarnett]

I'm guessing that Tesla's logic goes like this: if we admit to,the problem then we are potentially open to extra legal liability and worse to an immediate fire storm in the press. So let's get the fix out in a couple days and hope no one is hurt in the meantime. After all, there are only a few hundred cars affected and the probability of a serious accident is pretty low. If we're lucky we can get out of this with minimal damage.

IMHO, that makes a bit of sense but it's an awful risk to be taking. The downside of losing that bet is just too great.

 

[wk057]

I can assure you that in my case it was a total power loss. The car came to a complete halt. I had the presence of mind beforehand to shift into neutral and weave through traffic onto the shoulder as the car slowed.

I feel it necessary to point out that when a Model S loses all power to the motor it is free spinning (neutral) already. The car would not and could not come "to a complete halt," so that particular statement is incorrect. Shifting into neutral would do nothing at all.

In my case when the car said it needed service I did lose power, car was in drive, pressing the accelerator had no effect. I had ~40 MPH worth of momentum, and the car did not slow without braking. I could have gone a decent distance if the light in front of me wasn't red.

 

[stopcrazypp]

While I agree Tesla should notify P85D owners on .167 to stop using range mode or immediately push an update to revert changes based on what I see on this thread, keep in mind it hasn't been a week yet since the update has been released and the first incident reported. The affected user group is relatively small (P85D owners on .167 that use range mode might have this issue) so it may not have registered within the company as a major issue yet. If you called in about losing power, the rep may not necessarily know that you have .167 installed, have enabled range mode, or even that what you have is a P85D. The report may get lost in the general noise of power losses (which can be from a number of causes). It may seem "obvious" when you go back to this thread and connect the dots, but that may not have been present in the reports to Tesla.

This is different from the P85D delivery where they had 100% clarity of the problem.

 

[Andyw2100]

I can assure you that in my case it was a total power loss. The car came to a complete halt. I had the presence of mind beforehand to shift into neutral and weave through traffic onto the shoulder as the car slowed.

I feel it necessary to point out that when a Model S loses all power to the motor it is free spinning (neutral) already. The car would not and could not come "to a complete halt," so that particular statement is incorrect. Shifting into neutral would do nothing at all.

I don't think dmfick intended to say the car came to an --instantaneous-- complete halt. In fact in his next sentence he went on to explain that he shifted into neutral and weaved through traffic as the car slowed. (He must not have known that as you point out, the car would have just been in neutral anyway, or he wouldn't have shifted.) I think he was just differentiating his situation from the "power reduced" error message.

In both his situation, and yours, your cars did, within a short time, come to a "complete halt." They had no power. Unless they were going downhill, they were going to stop eventually.

 

[schonelucht]

I had ~40 MPH worth of momentum, and the car did not slow without braking. I could have gone a decent distance if the light in front of me wasn't red.

However, if you are on a busy highway even 70MPH momentum can be too little to safely move over. In such situations, to smoothly change lanes you have to adjust your pace to fit a gap in your target lane and that may need just a bit of acceleration. Instead you loose momentum so you have to let the car that you'd merge in front go first, making it even harder to fit in the next gap because the speed differential increases. Maybe this is less of an issue on American highways that have passing on the right, where distances are kept a little bit bigger and I am reasoning too much from the situations I am familiar with?

 

[mhan00]

This is very disappointing. It sounds like range mode is the issue right now, and this is a potentially life threatening problem. As such, I don't know why Tesla isn't notifying owners. When the issue with the fires happened, Tesla was proactive in using the adjustable suspension to raise the level of the cars to minimize the chances of running over road debris. Why can't they do something similar to disable range mode now? At the very least, they need to be telling potentially affected owners. Someone getting into a car accident and getting hurt or worse due to this would be a major tragedy as well as a huge blow to the company. OTA updates are seen as a benefit, but letting this possibly avalanche into a major situation could frame them as huge, car busting negatives.

 

[PatP]

This is very disappointing. It sounds like range mode is the issue right now, and this is a potentially life threatening problem. As such, I don't know why Tesla isn't notifying owners. When the issue with the fires happened, Tesla was proactive in using the adjustable suspension to raise the level of the cars to minimize the chances of running over road debris. Why can't they do something similar to disable range mode now? At the very least, they need to be telling potentially affected owners. Someone getting into a car accident and getting hurt or worse due to this would be a major tragedy as well as a huge blow to the company. OTA updates are seen as a benefit, but letting this possibly avalanche into a major situation could frame them as huge, car busting negatives.

I agree 150%. For me, battery fire wasn't a real issue. But this... Unacceptable. Glad my wife isn't driving a Model S with the kids...

 

[stevezzzz]

This is very disappointing. It sounds like range mode is the issue right now, and this is a potentially life threatening problem. As such, I don't know why Tesla isn't notifying owners. When the issue with the fires happened, Tesla was proactive in using the adjustable suspension to raise the level of the cars to minimize the chances of running over road debris. Why can't they do something similar to disable range mode now? At the very least, they need to be telling potentially affected owners. Someone getting into a car accident and getting hurt or worse due to this would be a major tragedy as well as a huge blow to the company. OTA updates are seen as a benefit, but letting this possibly avalanche into a major situation could frame them as huge, car busting negatives.

Let me expand on your valid and concisely expressed concerns. I've been watching this play out largely without comment (except to note that I did encounter the issue), but I'm starting to get exercised by the lack of a proactive response from TM. We know they have the ability to rapidly push new software to large numbers of cars in a short time: the response to the first battery fires proves it. We think we know that the number of cars potentially affected by this bug is relatively small, limited to 85Ds with .167 installed. So why haven't they pushed new firmware to the affected Ds that rolls back the drive unit control algorithms to the .139/.140 level, or even pushed a variant of .167 that simply disables Range mode?

I can see at least two possibilities; I'm sure there are others. Both are mere speculation, let me be clear about that.

1) Unlike the case of the battery fires, no sensational video has surfaced on social media and no negative news coverage has aired. And, so far, no one has been hurt and no car has been damaged as a result of this bug. So perhaps TM is practicing risk management at the corporate level and betting they will have a true fix pushed to the affected cars before any of those things happens. If they win that bet, the whole thing blows over and, except for a relative handful of forum users, no one is the wiser. If they lose that bet it could be bad for the company, since they have the ability to take steps to mitigate the risk to owners, and have not done so---not to this point anyway, not that we know---and the court of public opinion (not to mention the NHTSA) will not be kind.

2) More fancifully, suppose there is a more serious firmware error, so far known only to TM, which potentially affects a larger percentage of the fleet (as I say, it's mere speculation; but stay with me a little longer): TM may not have an ETA for a fix; they may not even see a path to a fix. If that's the case (and I have no evidence to suspect that it is), their hair would be on fire. And I would not want to be part of the team working---feverishly, 24/7, under immense pressure---to find a solution.


Tesla has a history of brinksmanship, of betting the company (and Elon's personal fortune) on a single roll of the dice, but I sincerely hope those days are long gone.

 

[Matias]

Really difficult to understand. If they would just disable range mode in D:s most would not notice anything. If someone would ask something, they could just respond "It is just a glitch, we'll fix it soon". I believe theey are not doing this, because the issue has not reached people enough high in the chain.

 

[electrish]

.... But if it was Monday morning, that was still pretty early in all this, and I'd actually be willing to give Tesla a pass on that one, as it's possible that whomever you reached in service didn't yet know what was going on with this issue.

It actually happened Monday afternoon and it wasn't a complete loss of power then, just a "power is reduced" notification. I called service around 6:30 PM that day.

... The car would not and could not come "to a complete halt," .... I had ~40 MPH worth of momentum, and the car did not slow without braking.

I agree with wk that when I completely lost power yesterday morning, it was not really a "life-threatening" situation. Even though I was going around 75 mph in the center lane of a three-lane highway, I was able to safely maneuver to the shoulder. The car was slowing down rapidly, but I still had a lot of momentum. Yes, traffic was light and it could have ended differently, but I just can't bring myself to freak out about it. It was probably more the surprise of losing all power, having red lights flash, and bells ring than any unstable driving situation.

However, I definitely share other people's disappointment about the entire scenario, which could have seemingly easily been fixed by a quick update disabling range mode on all the D's. Maybe Tesla wants to wait until they have a fix, but I agree with others that this should be addressed more aggressively.