Happened to my friend in a 2017 or 2018 model S earlier this year. Drove through a large puddle, not like deep standing water, and after the stopped the car it wouldn’t start back. Water had gotten into the motor case and tripped a sensor. Whole thing shut down. Only fix was replacing the assembly.
This is nuts. And tbqh hard to believe. Part of me thinks the lack of mechanic knowledge around Teslas make it really easy to exploit owners. With most other vehicles, you can usually cross check with other mechanics
> Part of me thinks the lack of mechanic knowledge around Teslas make it really easy to exploit owners.
This has nothing to do with Tesla or mechanic knowledge, as actual mechanics working on non-Teslas routinely scam owners. Scumbags are just always going to exploit people without knowledge.
I know ICEs don't take well to being flooded either, but still I feel like "water ingress damaged the battery" should fall under warranty in basically all cases. Driving in rain and through puddles is in the normal operating conditions of a car, and having the battery water tight and with good self-protection sounds very doable (as opposed to making a combustion engine watertight, or corrosion, or wear-and-tear).
Believe it or not, but if you manage to damage your engine by driving through deep water that snot under warrenty either, unless you own an ambitious vehicle. There is this incredibly odd and incridibly forced mentality in drivers of "Well I was on the road and I need to get from point A to point B, so nomatter the conditions I can't be faulted for driving through them". But if you drive through deep water and damage your car that's very much your own wrong doing and your own bill at the end of the day. And if it happens that there is no way from point A to point B that doesn't have the potential of damaging your car then you need to just not go at all.
Even Tesla said it wasn't the drivers fault and there's no evidence that the drivers drove through "deep water":
> “After finally getting to speak to a manager, he told me [the battery] had water in it due to the fact the weather in Scotland has been so bad. That was the issue. They said it’s not necessarily my fault but it’s not Tesla’s to pay under warranty. He reminded me there was a yellow weather warning in some parts of Scotland,” one of the owners told Edinburgh Live.
Besides, Tesla's CEO disagrees that "deep water" is a problem[2]:
> A Tesla works as a boat for short periods of time, as an electric car has no air intake or exhaust to block & battery/motor/electronics are water-sealed. Submarines are just underwater EVs.
That doesn't actually say that the owner didn't drive it through deep water. The articles I have seen on this incident seem to very carefully tiptoe around what actually happened to the car.
"Now you listen here mister insurance man, I'd been out drinking and had to get to work in 20 minutes, the car should've been able to handle that."
"There was an overturned oil tanker and the road was on fire and it was a blizzard sir."
"While no one said the car couldn't not do that. In fact I seen it before once on the Dukes o' Hazards show and so if you don't cover it that's false advertisin'."
Seems the distinction is basically "water coming from above" vs "water flooding from below". "Damage due to heavy rain" makes one think of the former, while the latter case can be more nuanced (did you drive into a very deep puddle?)
> We *def* don't recommended this, but Model S floats well enough to turn it into a boat for short periods of time. Thrust via wheel rotation.
And here[2] in 2020:
> A Tesla works as a boat for short periods of time, as an electric car has no air intake or exhaust to block & battery/motor/electronics are water-sealed. Submarines are just underwater EVs.
Yeah probably because the whole situation is sus as hell.
If the moisture ingress is defective manufacturing, Tesla warranty would cover it. If the cause is the external environment then auto insurance should cover it. That's not to say that this would happen without someone having to argue with someone, but the fact that this obvious information is missing is a little bit too uncomfortably familiar in this style of journalism.
Without additional information, my Occam's razor says the owner of this car probably did something irresponsible. So long as this report keeps growing like a tall tale, I'm going to keep flagging it.
Yeah. Water could definitely not find a way in through teslas known to be extremely shoddy QA.
Dodge has an issue with the caravan where the rear ac lines and evaporator are completely unprotected. It’s a known bad design in the product that has costed drivers millions. Dodge refuses to acknowledge it to the point that mechanics offer a “rear evaporator delete”, which dodge will also refuse is possible if you ask them.
Does your Occam’s razor wonder why dodge refuses to cover the AC lines?
It’s not like the auto industry as a whole is know for their outstanding honour of warranty, let alone Tesla who’s known for treating customers terribly and having uniquely terrible QA.
I have a model 3 and found a few things wrong (some my own fault even) and Tesla fixed everything without charging me. They are just like any other company, depends who you get and how nice you are to them. At least they are not insurance which will fight tooth and nail to rip you off.
I was told the battery is supposed to be fully water sealed. According to Elon, "it can serve briefly as a boat." Are such statements completely worthless? Consumers are buying these cars based on these kind of statements, and Elon knows it.
Well it probably did rain, and the rain caused flooding, and then they drove through a couple of feet of flood water or it got submerged where it was parked.
If some kind of disaster happend to the car, like it being flooded, yes. But if it was normal rain that all other cars survived, I think the insurance is going to point at Tesla.
This being Europe, and the car less than a year old, it's on Tesla to prove this wasn't a defect in their car. Otherwise it's reasonable for the consumer to expect it to keep working if it rains, and Tesla is going to be on the hook for warranty. Unlike some other jurisdictions you can't really get out of warranty if you sell consumer products in Europe.
Tesla has sold 5 million cars. I think a good proportion of those will have been driven in heavy rain at some point. If this was a common problem someone would have some stats.
Speculation: I suspect somewhere inside the car they have markers that let the engineers know whether the car has been submerged. If those markers have tripped then you're out of warranty.
Because they claim the battery is waterproof, and surely, if driver actions were reckless enough to pierce the battery seal, they can show how it happened.
After all, the CEO advertises the car as almost-a-boat.
You have to read it in a normal literate fashion taking into account the very common technique of hyperbole to make the point. This kind of thing is much more common in Scotland than some other places and is well understood.
Try reading it as:
"Elon musk is very rich and can surely very easily afford to make good on this faulty product resulting in what is for us a very, very expensive unexpected bill."
It was a quote, not their own claim. Perhaps they included it to show the claimant was not very smart.
But, ok, Wikipedia says Musk is worth around $250 billion, and let's say Tesla 3 costs $35 thousand. Elon could buy a little over 7 million Teslas. There's 8 billion people on Earth, so you have a little under one in a thousand chance to get a Tesla. Not bad!
If Elon is not a fan of a lottery, he could also buy a Tesla for each person living in Kyrgyzstan...
If Musk actually placed an order for 7m Teslas, how much would that increase the valuation of Tesla and how much would it increase Musk's wealth.
Tesla sold 85,000 model Y in 2022. This would be an 8200% increase in Model Y sales. That must merit a significant bump (let's say 10x) in Tesla valuation. Let's ballpark and say this quadruple's Musks wealth. Now Musk can afford to buy 28m Tesla Model Ys which would be an 32,000% increase in Tesla sales!
Did I invent infinite money? My logic is at least as sound as the quote from that article.
He could buy 6 million people a Tesla if he sold everything and this had no side effects on the company etc. Not sure why he would do this though because of a $30k repair bill.
I've submitted the link after watching Louis Rossmann video [1] on it which was published an hour ago. The link was in the video description. I was not aware of any previous posts on HN about it.
Essentially this issue, https://insideevs.com/news/534878/tesla-models-motor-fail-ra...