# New Model 3 motor died totally



## WJR (Mar 26, 2021)

I bought a brand new Model 3 on January 3rd. After years of loving my Lexuses, I decided to try a Tesla after so many friends raved about them. For the first 9 weeks, I absolutely loved the car. And then the motor totally died last weekend. I'm now told it will take 4-8 weeks to repair. They gave me Uber vouchers while I waited 4 days to get a Tesla loaner. The loaner was a 2017 beat up Model S that was filthy and had no charger cable. (I was told "We don't wash the loaner cars.") My friends who have raved about their Teslas also warned me about the horrible customer service. That's what I'm experiencing now. Has anyone else had similar problems with faulty motors on new Model 3s that needed total replacement?


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

There have been more than one motor replaced and noted here in the forums, but it is only a handful in the 3 + years. Give it a search and you will find the threads. I think one or two weren't the best experiences, but others have had pretty good luck. The overall number of motor failures I've heard reported is very very small for the number of cars they now have on the road. I'm hoping they take care of you quickly.


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## jsmay311 (Oct 2, 2017)

WJR said:


> I bought a brand new Model 3 on January 3rd. After years of loving my Lexuses, I decided to try a Tesla after so many friends raved about them. For the first 9 weeks, I absolutely loved the car. And then the motor totally died last weekend. I'm now told it will take 4-8 weeks to repair. They gave me Uber vouchers while I waited 4 days to get a Tesla loaner. The loaner was a 2017 beat up Model S that was filthy and had no charger cable. (I was told "We don't wash the loaner cars.") My friends who have raved about their Teslas also warned me about the horrible customer service. That's what I'm experiencing now. Has anyone else had similar problems with faulty motors on new Model 3s that needed total replacement?


Sorry to hear that. But so far your experience is better than mine was. Your motor made it 9 weeks, while my drive unit made it all of one day. And even a dirty Tesla loaner is better than a gas SUV from the Enterprise across the street like I got. 😛 On the other hand, I got my car back with a new drive unit installed in under 2 weeks. 4-8 weeks is pretty sucky.

Regarding the loaner lacking a charger cable, do you not still have the mobile connector that came with your car?

Not sure what your failure mode was, but mine was some kind of sudden mechanical failure during a hard acceleration. A loud bang, then lost all propulsion, then several seconds of violent shuddering and a loud squealing noise coming from the back of the car, and the speedometer wildly going all over the place.
Tesla HQ had the local service center remove the entire rear drive unit and ship it back to California without even opening it up to see what failed, so I never learned exactly what failed. But the primary failure likely had nothing to do with the motor itself. Rather, something else mechanically connected to the motor inside the drive unit failed.

More details in this thread: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/thr...r-failure-reported.107879/page-2#post-2925264


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## sduck (Nov 23, 2017)

Faulty motors are extremely rare, but they can happen. Similar stuff can happen to lexuses and virtually any other car also. Glad you got a loaner at all - lots of service centers don't have them at all. The lack of charger cable thing - how do you charge normally? While I carry around a spare charger cable. I almost never use it - superchargers and other public chargers you don't need them, home chargers you don't need them.


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## WJR (Mar 26, 2021)

Thanks for the responses. This is how the story unfolded: I went to pull out of my garage and when I put the car in reverse, I heard a brief clunking sound. But the car reversed smoothly so I pulled out onto the street. Then an alert came on that said "Diminished power in front motor". I pulled back into the garage and pressed the alert button to get more info. The recommendation was to put the car in park, get out, re-enter the car and see if it would reboot. I did that, but when I tried to start the car again, 2 more alerts came on and the car wouldn't start at all. I tried rebooting the main screen one more time and the same alerts came up. That's when I contacted service to get it towed. 

Regarding the charger cable, as I was about to drive the loaner away, the guy said "by the way, this loaner doesn't have a charger cable." I had left my cable in the trunk of my car that was being repaired. It took the guy about 15 minutes to locate my car, retrieve the charger and give it to me, but I do have it now. 

My hope is that my car will be repaired quickly and there will be no further issues. I am disappointed in the lack of responsiveness by Tesla overall and the service team. I had an earlier paperwork issue with my California rebate, and it took 4 calls and 3 emails to get any followup or response from anyone. With all of my Lexuses, the service was always excellent.

As I said, I loved the car for the first 9 weeks and hopefully I will love it again.


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## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

WJR said:


> Thanks for the responses. This is how the story unfolded: I went to pull out of my garage and when I put the car in reverse, I heard a brief clunking sound. But the car reversed smoothly so I pulled out onto the street. Then an alert came on that said "Diminished power in front motor". I pulled back into the garage and pressed the alert button to get more info. The recommendation was to put the car in park, get out, re-enter the car and see if it would reboot. I did that, but when I tried to start the car again, 2 more alerts came on and the car wouldn't start at all. I tried rebooting the main screen one more time and the same alerts came up. That's when I contacted service to get it towed.
> 
> Regarding the charger cable, as I was about to drive the loaner away, the guy said "by the way, this loaner doesn't have a charger cable." I had left my cable in the trunk of my car that was being repaired. It took the guy about 15 minutes to locate my car, retrieve the charger and give it to me, but I do have it now.
> 
> ...


You went from Lexus to another brand. Service could only go downhill from there, unfortunately. It's part of their culture, probably the best in the business of any 5 figure car.

Sorry to hear of your troubles. The good news is this is pretty rare, so once you're fixed up, you should be good to go.

But yeah, dirty loaner cars during a pandemic? Come on Tesla. Give me a break.


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## Derik (Jul 26, 2017)

Since you do have a model S loaner.. Most of the time they come with free supercharging. So you may at least have that for the time being. 

Sucks about the drive unit, but it'll get fixed and you'll be back to loving the 3.


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## WJR (Mar 26, 2021)

Update: I picked up the car yesterday. The diagnosis was "hardware overcorrect." They removed and replaced the front drive unit, pyro fuse and 12v battery; configured to the vehicle and updated firmware. So far, so good.


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## Klaus-rf (Mar 6, 2019)

Party On, Wayne!


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

8 days is just slightly better than 4-8 weeks


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## FRC (Aug 4, 2018)

MelindaV said:


> 8 days is just slightly better than 4-8 weeks


Underpromise and overdeliver? Is this still a TESLA forum? Surely not!!


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## Madmolecule (Oct 8, 2018)

Still waiting for the first example that having dual motors provide failure redundancy. It was actually one of the reasons I chose the dual motor as when I purchased mine, the reliability was certainly a question and I was told if one motor died you could still operate on the second motor till that motor was repaired. But it sounded great but I have yet to hear of an example where is actually happened. Since that appears to be BS, it would be nice if they would offer track mode upgrade, without the bigger brakes, for us that purchased a dual motor version. I don’t even mind paying for it I just want the fun features. At minimum if they really cared about the driver experience they should add traction control if you have dual motors.


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## TomT (Apr 1, 2019)

Needsdecaf said:


> You went from Lexus to another brand. Service could only go downhill from there, unfortunately.


Yep, nothing matches Lexus customer support and service, unfortunately... Telsa could learn a lot from them.


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