Our Tesla Model 3 Suffered a Failure While Parked

I rented a 2018 Ford Explorer AWD with ~8k miles on it last year. It suffered a persistent &quot;Terrain Management System Fault. Service AdvanceTrac.&quot; error while parked, stranding me on a mountain for 2 days. This is apparently a shockingly common problem with Ford vehicles equipped with AdvanceTrac.<p>It&#x27;s getting tiresome that any similar issues Tesla encounters are somehow newsworthy... For example fires - according to FEMA, there&#x27;s ~171,500+ highway car fires per year and if a Tesla ever catches on fire it&#x27;s big news

To me, the scariest part of the article is the last image showing the Tesla screen: &quot;Schedule an appointment on your Tesla Mobile App&quot;. No ability to take it somewhere else, no ability to diagnose and attempt a fix yourself, you just have to hope that Tesla will fix it quickly for you.<p>I like Tesla as much as anyone else here, but that last image, imho, takes a bit of ownership&#x2F;agency away from the owner of the car. I don&#x27;t trust any company enough to have a $50k+ asset that _only they_ can work on.

Recently my bothers Ford Focus had service engine light that had come on and vehicle was shut down. He had it towed to ford. which let him know that they recently had a recall on the model and they knew the exact issue. He was neither given rental nor Uber or loaner etc. he had to talk to his insurance company which also did not include recall as a clause so he had to rent.<p>This sort of shit happens to all cars. Although Lexus has been generous with loaner as they try to push you to trade in or buy newer version on Lexus.

I was very disappointed that the author&#x27;s idea of <i>Catastrophic</i> was far less interesting than what I pictured in my head.<p>It&#x27;s definitely not the only time an expensive car has failed in the first 6,000 miles of use. Also, the author&#x27;s assumption that ICE cars don&#x27;t fail while parked is a bit of hairsplitting. This isn&#x27;t much different from any of the dozen or so times I&#x27;ve driven somewhere and discovered my car won&#x27;t start when I go to leave.

On the flip side, how cool is it that cars are now smart enough to diagnose themselves and prevent you from driving before what could potentially be an unsafe situation has a chance to occur?

Actually I strongly prefer catastrophic failures while parked to catastrophic failures while driving...<p>Of course, having a defect in a basically new car is very annoying, but that is the curse of any technology. At least with an almost new car, there is little argument about whether it is carried by warranty. Tesla will either fix it or give them a new car and then they can hopefully enjoy it.

Whilst Tesla&#x27;s engineering is impressive, their customer service is terri-bad.<p>As just one example, I was unable to start my new model 3 on a cold morning after owning it for 3 months (which in itself is horrendous). The entire system shut down and would not start. This was particularly problematic for me as I am required to get into the hospital in under 30 minutes in order to treat stroke patients. As such I ended up having to use an uber to make it to my surgical list.<p>As is typical for uber, it was impossible to get hold of a human to resolve the situation and the replies (from whatever it is that replies to you on their app) refused to help me unless I waited at my car for their service to show up.<p>When I finally got hold of someone I was told that in order to prevent this, I should prewarm the car using the app prior to using the car. No-one ever explained this to me prior to this happening.<p>I would like to say this has been the only incident but there have been innumerable problems at every point as a new owner.

&quot;Catastrophic Failure&quot; sounds a bit dramatic.

Michigan is a bit of a unique situation in Michigan, not having the ability to do many repairs in state due to laws meant to favor traditional automakers.<p>The fact that loaners are not available as readily is probably an unfortunate side effect of the Model 3’s success; however, many companies don’t offer loaners for vehicles in the price range (starting &lt;$40k), but I think Tesla should do better especially since most with options are selling for the same money as the MB, BMW or Lexus compacts.<p>Obviously being an electric car it fails as gracefully as an ICE car with a fuel system issue.

That experience certainly makes me really think about the value proposition. If I’m buying a $60k car, it breaks after 5k miles, and they can’t get me a loaner?

&gt;...the pyrotechnic battery disconnect...<p>What the?! Sounds sorta awesome.

Speculating in the failure cause here...<p>I would guess the Tesla constantly checks the isolation between the high voltage system and the car chassis. If it is ever compromised, it blows single-use pyrotechnic fuses as a safety measure (to protect a person who may have their hands in the high voltage system).<p>That event then makes the car useless till serviced.<p>Since it is a kind of &#x27;catch all&#x27; event, it happens quite frequently, so it was worth Tesla building an error message into the app for it.

I know Teslas have a history of reliability issues, but I thought they&#x27;ve gotten better recently.

I think the general level of abysmal service from Tesla these days, plus the inability to casually sever the network connection&#x2F;tracking, is the reason I will cancel my cybertruck order.

&gt;no offer of a loaner or any kind of temporary transportation<p>Why would you expect that from Tesla? Its part of every decent insurance in Europe.

Electrical fails harder than mechanical. The problem with EVs is they are 100% electrical.

<i>Not only is this the first time we&#x27;ve ever had a long-term car suffer a catastrophic failure while parked, it&#x27;s also an extraordinarily rare case of any car leaving us stranded, something unacceptable for any new vehicle, particularly one that costs $57,690 and with merely 5286 miles on the odometer.</i><p>Can anyone shed light on if this is a widespread issue, or is this an edge case? This article reads like a rant.<p>Not too long ago, you discovered out your vehicle was dead because it wouldn&#x27;t start. It would flash a light if you were lucky.<p><i>This time, there was no offer of a loaner or any kind of temporary transportation</i><p>That sucks, maybe the only notable comment in the entire article.