Tesla Model 3 Owner Discovers Car Was Delivered Missing a Brake Pad
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
If you can deliver a car without a brake pad, that speaks to epic quality control failures (EDIT: A comment in the article points out the green "quality control" mark that is obvious on the caliper, which should indicate that everything was assembled properly - so things are seriously broken if it can be assembled wrong and then have a QC mark applied while still being entirely wrong). I cannot imagine Honda or Toyota shipping a car without a brake pad. I can't imagine Ford or GM doing it either. I'd be down into the "Uh... I think I've heard of you once..." non-western car manufacturers before it wouldn't surprise me.
Then, the absolutely horrid service center experience of "Oh, no, you don't know what you're talking about, that's normal, and we can't fix it any time soon anyway" is just absurd.
I know Tesla likes to rag on the horrors of the dealership model, but, seriously, I can't imagine getting this treatment with a legacy automaker. Not that I worry about them forgetting to put pieces in, either.
I can. My friend drives a 2016 VW Touareg which he got used - I was present during the purchase and the previous owner told us that the coolant needs to be topped off from time to time - nothing big, but he said that the authorized service center shrugged this off as something they won't bother fixing.
There's a difference between "half a cup or so ever few months" and "I have to carry coolant around with me." The reserve tank will comfortably make up the first in any reasonable driving situation, the second is a problem.
Water pumps not weeping a tiny bit is a rather new innovation in cars. They typically use coolant to lubricate the seal, and some will get through.
Water pumps "weeping" coolant is a sign of failed seal, not by design.
The GP commenter's buddy was sold a car by someone who was trying to pass off a needed repair; likely a leaking radiator or failing head gasket if they were unlucky. If they were lucky: a bad radiator cap or a failing coolant system hose.
If they were really, really unlucky: a failing heater core.
About a litre every 4-7k km. Was like that from the start according to the previous owner. I found it unusual, because I never had to think about such things in any of my cars, including my old 2000 Corolla.
on the rare occasions we have car shopped, VW was removed from the list (along with e.g. Jeep) because of what appeared to be continually poor QA and reliability. Led us to give up on the idea of trying to go biodiesel (dodged a bullet there...).
But Tesla seems to have a really remarkable problem.
Out of curiosity, what's wrong with that?
Maybe the VW plants in America are different but my family in Germany will buy VW (or Skoda/Seat) again when the cars give up eventually. Just this time no Diesel.
This was until about 2008 when I switched to Mercedes, those too were pretty reliable until the last one, which was a recent vintage C class. Now I drive an oldie (25 this january).
I think the difference is likely just that the average backstreet garage knows all the faults on a 2005 VW Jetta and how to fix them, they have the right diagnostic equipment to plug them in and read the fault codes etc.
In the US I suspect they'd be the same with most GM / Ford / Honda cars of the same era but would think twice about touching a VW or Mercedes.
This is why vehicles that need oil changes every 15,000 mile (~24,000 km) are more reliable than ones from a few generations ago that were essentially constantly being serviced.
The first is a minor inconvenience, the second is likely to leave a lasting impression of "this car is unreliable".
Yeah but Tesla fans will defend bad stuff by pointing out not so great stuff from the competitors. In that respect you can say they're just like Apple fans.
No recall, just a ‘known’ defect. Oh, and because they know my car has a defect they made it clear that my trade in value would suffer if I wanted to upgrade to their latest and greatest model.
not even in the same ballpark.
not even on the same continent, for that matter.
These things are not comparable.
just goofy bullshit. the discussion in this thread will end up on Elon sooner or later, but the thing to realize is that Tesla the company needs it that way.
electric vehicles will definitely replace the ICE, but Tesla's not going to be Google when that happens. it'll be Alta Vista or even Minitel. buying one of these cars is just a much bigger QC gamble than it shoild be.
You realize that turned out to be a stunt, right? The car was a brand new plaid owned by a hedge fund manager who turned out to be heavily short TSLA. It was seized by his lawyers and never inspected for what the fault might have been. And the "driving itself on fire" story changed several times over the first 24 hours.
One of the weirdest things about buying one of these things and suddenly finding myself in the culture/counterculture war over the brand is how suspect so much of the coverage is.
Make your own decisions. But (especially since it happened just weeks after the refreshed S's started shipping and that we haven't heard squat in the six months since) that just smells off to me. Certainly it wasn't "driving itself around on fire", no further report on the fire exists (contra the Texas crash where the NTSB had lots of interesting things to say) and all the actual witnesses went silent (we don't even have confirmation of who was driving!)...
Just be realistic. It's almost certainly a setup.
Something very similar happened when FSD beta was released. Not two weeks in the NHTSA had a weird-sounding report leaked to the media claiming behavior (that the steering couldn't be overpowered) that the hardware can't produce. Then the next release, we all had an annoying waiver where we had to allow Tesla to save and upload non-anonymized data for any safety-related incidents. And... no more weird reports!
This company just drives people completely bananas, and I genuinely don't know why. The actual cars are fantastic.
Tesla wants people to pay the sticker price without being able to haggle and wants to keep all the profits for itself.
VW can deliver EVs for a similar price even with a dealership network. Although, they also started to block haggling by demanding customers to place their orders online via their car configurator. As long as you sell it as innovation, people will jump on it, even if this innovation is costing them more money.
It turns out dealerships don’t extract equivalent money from every customer. It’s not about haggling skills it’s simply a question of leverage on the part of a dealership. If they both have plenty of inventory and know you’re happy to walk somewhere else then they will take their thin slice of the transaction and move on. If however inventory is tight or your unlikely to walk then prepared to get screwed.
It’s not even about credit or haggling skills, plenty of seriously up market dealerships for exotics financially screw their customers on a regular basis.
A dealer being willing to sell a company's cars serves as some assurance that the car manufacturer is stable, reputable, etc.
This all came into being during the big automotive industry boom in the 20's when car frames/powertrains were made by manufacturers and then a "coachworks" company would put a body on that..and both powertrain and coachwork companies were often in business just long enough to get some cars out the door before customers discovered poor workmanship, assemblies not designed to be repaired, non-standard fastener sizes and so on. It was common for people to buy a car, drive it home several states away (in an age where there was no interstate highway system!) and discover that their car was falling apart.
Oh hey, what does Tesla have problems with? Poor parts availability, warranty issues, long waits for repairs...
I wish I were exaggerating when I say Tesla was telling Model S owners that water getting inside the main drive unit (which contains not just the electric motor but the motor's power electronics) because of a faulty seal on a speed sensor was the customer's fault because they drove the car in heavy rain.
There is little distinguishing Elon Musk from the shysters in the 1920's that all these pesky regulations were written to address.
When I was writing software for dealership stocking (19 years ago now), it was pretty clear to me that there’s no good reason dealerships exist, as states could also make laws that covered the manufacturer.
It made sense when manufacturers didn’t know how to scale out end consumer services, like marketing, financing, repair, etc. But now in the 2000s and 2020s, all the manufacturers have their own distribution and financing arm as well.
It turns out that people want to buy from manufacturers: “it’s a Ford dealership”, “it’s a Toyota dealership” as opposed to “it’s bfung’s cars”. The extra indirection and separation of legal entities actually make a worse user experience.
In addition, to be able to use the manufacturer’s brand, the dealerships new car pricing are all subject to the manufacturer, so no arbitrage opportunities can be made, except for getting suckers. The incentives of the dealership has skewed toward pushing services and used cars as that’s where they make money now.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vQQEE7Pk... (from reddit https://old.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/wiki/index/msrptra... )
How would that be the case? Let's say the manufacturer is in Oregon. Why would laws in California apply to them at all?
I suppose if you change US law then it might be possible. But if so I would anticipate a major shakeup and secondary effects you wouldn't expect.
“[e]ach year, the physical presence rule becomes further removed from economic reality”
That ruling is therefore not inherently limited to sales taxes and opens the door to lemon laws etc. At least assuming the purchaser is in their home state when the transaction takes place.
Meanwhile, all credit card companies operate out of SD to avoid the usury laws limiting interest in the various other states. It's a very narrow opinion. Or, to put it another way, ground your argument in finance laws not in sales tax.
What if I sell to citizens of California and ship them cars, but we do all the business in Oregon?
Sales taxes are a special exception with specific federal laws and Supreme Court rules.
Have no illusions though, I wouldn't buy a tesla either.
Mach-e using Electrify America is probably the next best. But has issues.
Porsche/VW don't really have a good experience, and the others are even worse.
Tesla figured out early on that they have to sell an entire system, not just a car. Depending on 3rd parties to make that happen is foolish when it affects the core viability of your product. As the legacy OEMs are finding out.
Being sold a "lemon" has been possible for years, even with the traditional dealership model; that's why so many US states have "lemon laws" specifically to deal with that scenario.
Actually it's a term of some precision, and that's not it. "Lemon" laws define the problem as a car with an inherent defect that can't be fixed by the manufacturer or dealer within some reasonable amount of time (often "three attempts", depending on statute). The purpose of the law is that consumers shouldn't be on the hook for expensive but faulty products.
This isn't a lemon by any of those laws. They fixed the brakes and the car is fine now. It's fine to make pronouncements about Quality Culture or whatever, but lemon statutes aren't really at issue here.
Did they? The latest status I get from the article is that the ETA was pushed back again to January 19.
Gotta say, with the new car and its full warranty, we have felt like kings in comparison to past experience. Anytime we need any amount of maintenance we get an appointment and then whatever it is is fixed free of charge.
Maybe we got lucky, but the dealership has definitely delivered on its promise of complete warranty coverage.
I know many consider buying a new car some kind of financial cardinal sin, but I’m sold on it now.
Out of curiosity (and fear), I looked up used 2007 Highlander this morning on SFBay Craigslist, and there was plenty of inventory and they looked like a reasonable bargain, around $6-10k for one with relatively low miles considering they are 16 years old.
Maybe prices at dealerships are way up? Or people want newer cars and those are crazy expensive?
I am certain my friend who just paid way too much for a newer used Toyota is a moron in such matters.
By ordering and taking the bus for a few months, buying a car from the factory was the best deal.
I usually buy used cars and maintain them myself to a good degree, but that's only on the premise that you really don't lose much value on them from years ~5-10. If the price halves over that time, I might as well lose a similar amount from years 0-5 from regular depreciation and have warranty coverage.
I used to maintain my cars myself, including doing belt services and such when due, and even a couple engine and gearbox rebuilds. But the older I get, the more I can't get up the motivation. It's so nice to just take the car in to a trusted mechanic and have them do it. Recently started using a vacuum oil evacuator to do oil changes through the top though and boy is that quick and easy. Best $100 I've spent in a while.
Highlanders have always been good to me, I've heard of them lasting to 500-600k miles without major problems and still work fine.
Since I drive about 5k miles per year, I'm hoping mine will last me 80 more years. That's reasonable, right? :P
Inability to supply and fit a part that is literally designed to wear out is unacceptable.
They are also required to conduct what's called a PDI - Pre Delivery Inspection - before the customer sees or touches the car.
The car is prepped for sale, and this includes a number of things. Sometimes cars have spacers installed in the suspension. Someone plugs in a diagnostic tool and tells the car's control modules that the car is no longer being stored/shipped, so it can enable all the stuff slowly drains the battery like memory settings, keyless ignition RF transmission, alarm sensors, etc. There's also a cosmetic inspection, where any defects in the paint are taken care of by the dealer's in-house detailing/car prep staff.
A big part of the PDI is going over everything safety related and making sure that nothing happened to the car as part of it being shipped. That includes a test-drive. Usually half an hour or so at a variety of speeds, where the test-driver makes sure every single part works.
I assure you, the person doing the PDI would notice a missing brake pad, even if the dealership mechanic who does the mechanical PDI somehow missed "there's a brake pad completely missing."
one of the numerous things I had to do was test drive every single vehicle.
Yes a dealership would have caught this issue before the customer -- absolutely.
Google suggests that you should:
GM received a single report from a mechanic of a missing brake pad on a rental Chevy Sonic. They investigated, found some kind of root cause, and out of precaution recalled ~5000 Sonics manufactured around the same time for inspection. (and estimated 20-30 vehicles were affected - it'd be interesting to see how many turned up)
Tesla's response thus far is miles apart. Nothing about it gives me confidence in their QC.
Your point about “they must have the parts in the country” is a valid one, but it’s probably not going to be just a forgotten pad that they’ll need to slap in there. As a shade tree mechanic, if I’d somehow put my car back on the road without a brake pad, I’d do more than that. I doubt Tesla’s going to think differently with liability on the line.
I don't do my own brakes and don't know about the caliper, but rotor replacement is pretty routine, I thought. They usually resurface them whenever they replace pads, and replace them once they get too thin. So having no spares seems a little bit too JIT for a car company.
The throwaway effect can an does happen to any ICE vehicle easily, when the engine is not economic to repair. We should have laws covering all types and brands of vehicles to make them more repairable, but ultimately this should be easier with electric (recycling batteries in bulk is cheaper than mining more lithium)
It was a reference to an old post of mine (https://www.sevarg.net/2016/03/05/is-tesla-building-throwawa...) - and, I actually agree with you that they do have million-mile grade drivetrains.
It's just that the rest of the car is poor quality. That's fine if it's cheap and easy to fix, but it's not. You can't get the parts, you can't install the parts if you can get them because they have to be paired with the car, and, in general, they're like a lot of modern ICEs that fall apart around a running drivetrain. Except worse, because they're luxury cars and you can't even do the repair work yourself.
Can you point to a case of this?
Literally written yesterday: https://jalopnik.com/one-tesla-model-s-has-gone-nearly-1-mil...
> One Tesla Model S Has Gone Nearly 1 Million Miles And Needed Some Major Repairs
> The owner, Hansjörg von Gemmingen-Hornberg says the car is on at least its third battery. The first was replaced under warranty at about 180,000 miles. The second was replaced after about 93,000 additional miles before the third battery was installed. So far, the Model S has done more than 621,000 miles on that third battery.
>That isn’t all. The car also needed four drive motors to reach over 900,000 miles. The P85 has only one drive motor on the real axle. That means three different drive motors have failed.
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An out of warranty battery replacement is 20k or so and drive motor replacement is about 10k, so I think it's safe to say we're talking about the equivalent cost in drivetrain replacements to what? 4 engines or 5 engines in an ICE? Assuming a rather expensive engine since the Model S is technically a luxury car?
Not really doing any better than an ICE: https://www.thedrive.com/news/27940/2000-honda-accord-with-o...
(Note all of their engine replacements combined would cost less in CO2 and money than a single DU swap on the Model S)
Here's one with no replacements at all: https://www.thedrive.com/news/29982/this-2006-honda-civic-hi...
And another with none: https://www.metrostlouis.org/news-release/second-metro-trans...
There's more if you want to look.
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Technically you can drag most modern ICEs (or any vehicle for that matter) along to a million miles, but different cars are more or less likely to make it without major issues.
Tesla is not who I'm expecting to make the most million mile worthy EV. EVs are not some magical land compared to every other product in existence: Chasing new hotness so ruthlessly you consider model years an undue burden is not a recipe for a long-term reliable car.
The EVs that will do 1 million miles without major work (at the very least not needing entire drive units) will come from "boring" companies with "boring" designs.
That's a heavy-duty diesel in a transit bus. Very different use-case, and 1M miles is not at all surprising there. For tractor-trailers and other heavy truck engines, a few million miles is a common lifetime.
But I don't think your reply is meant to further the conversation, but rather to present a distraction: whether for self-satisfaction of stating the obvious or to divert the conversation from the actual point... why else would you just conveniently ignore the bulk of the comment?
So allow me to bring up more examples instead:
https://www.motortrend.com/features/million-mile-tundra-the-...
https://www.cars.com/articles/1990-honda-accord-owner-crosse...
https://www.farmshow.com/a_article.php?aid=24960
https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a28991860/the-milli...
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When you're done finding nitpicks about those we can also just look at how unreliable they are for everyone not going 1 million miles:
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-reliability-model-s-3-...
And if the common diversion to "oh that's just fit and finish stuff" comes out we can go to:
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/drive-unit-replaceme... https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/drive-unit-replaceme...
> Of the vehicles that have been reported to the Plug In America Model S owner survey, 32% of the 2012 model year cars have had their drive unit replaced at least once, 27% of 2013's, and 18% of 2014's and so far none of the very few 2015's reported. As you can see, the older cars have higher numbers. Is that because Tesla has improved the newer cars or because the newer cars haven't been on the road long enough for them to see the issues yet? To answer that question, one has to analyze the data using methods from reliability engineering. That's what the folks a Green Car Reports did; see page two of their article for more details.
Recalls are one thing, imagine there are mass production sedans from the last decade where 32% of owners needed a new engine? We're not talking about a F1 cars here, run of the mill sedans.
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Oh yeah, and you get into gems like this, where they're having so many failures that now they won't replace parts that are functionally broken because they're not broken enough...
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/drive-unit-now-they-...
Imagine taking an ICE with a rod knock to the dealer and being told "that rod knock is not loud enough and you can still drive so we're going to let it go"
(For reference a dealer would take apart the engine and find what's wrong under warranty, Tesla will send you off until it fails I guess) -
Sorry if I come off as stand off-ish, it's just such a boringly plain conclusion that I can't believe it even has to be said in so many words.
Cars do get jacked up in transit. Like "a large piece of metal road debris pierced the window and seat" bad (personal experience). So, even if it leaves the factory in pristine condition, someone at the end of the line will need to look at it to make sure it's 100%. Tesla has decided that final check responsibility falls on the end user.
Also I suspect it's more efficient for the manufacturer and dealerships to just roll all of that into the end-of-the-line inspection instead of splitting it over two locations.
>The manufacturer could run the dealership themselves.
This would work if there was a way for states to ensure the manufacturers had some serious skin in the game so they'd fear legal action.
So they have to make changes. They have to introduce the same safeguards that have been standard in their respective industries for decades. They have to raise prices. And before you know it, the only thing that separates them from the traditional companies is that stupid app.
The app is not always stupid. I can't say I am fond of Uber and its business practices but in Vancouver at least the taxi apps are lacking some vital features Uber have -- despite Uber operating briefly in Vancouver in 2012 so it was clear they will be back and indeed in 2020 Uber/Lyft indeed started. Features include easy changing of pickup point which is quite important in the warren of one way streets where I live -- as I see where the car is approaching from, I can easily walk like 1-2 minutes to the next corner to save like five minutes (seriously) of driving around after pickup. Also it works with GPS coordinates -- when I meet with friends it's often at a beach on the weekend and public transit is a bit lacking so I prefer calling a cab/uber and it's practically impossible with cabs because those want a street address, even the app. And then there's the ability to safely communicate with the driver -- and this only needs wifi which makes airport pickups so much easier because I only need airport wifi. Taxi companies couldn't build these features in eight years. Pound sand.
It's none of those, at least to them. It's literally their business model, and how they extract the behavioral surplus to turn into huge profits. And as very few people are aware of how it works, and why they should opt out, it's become the new default way of doing "tech companies." Extract all the stuff, process all the stuff, sell all the predictions from the stuff.
It's not an accident that every new app seems to be trying to collect as much as they possibly can. You're not even the product - you're just the field of raw material they're trying to collect and process.
Unfortunately, the only answer I can come up with to object is to opt out of all those systems, which leaves me a bit lacking in some areas.
Also this war on lidar, yet we're seeing these cars crash into trucks and walls, which lidar would have prevented, but lidar costs money, and as such "is bloat." Bloat is anything that keeps Elon and his shareholders from enriching themselves to the maximum degree, and if that means customers have to deal with safety issues, well too bad. The Elon PR machine smooths it over for via marketing efforts and deep ties to corporate media that will sing your song for a price. Life goes on, except for the person killed in the car.
The frequency and severity of the issues you call out feels limited to me. Sure these newcomers may end up rediscovering some of those same controls and processes that the old guard companies have in place - but they will still have pulled us forward to a different, better way of doing things in many ways. For example, I certainly prefer hailing an Uber or Lyft over dealing with rude, dangerous taxi drivers. Even if those two companies end up disappearing or putting more controls in place, I will appreciate things like using an app and being able to rate my driver to incentivize the right behavior.
I'm glad Lyft and Uber have to comply with safety regulations, but I think you're overestimating the quality of old "non-tech companies" and the quality of the services they deliver. The cab companies in my city were frankly terrible and delivered a terrible service for a lot of money.
They made a huge stink about safety, trying to get Lyft and Uber banned from operating here. They trumpeted a whole smorgasbord of safety benefits that they supposedly offered that Lyft and Uber wouldn't, but it's not like their policies and standards actually meant that when you got in a cab you didn't face exactly the same hazards they claimed to protect you against. You still took your chances with poorly maintained cabs, drivers who didn't know or knowingly disregarded traffic laws, frequently a different person driving the cab than on the license, etc. In fact when I got in an argument with a friend about it I only had to do a Google search and, oh yeah, it seems just a few years before there was a cab driver who assaulted multiple women while driving somebody else's cab.
I'm sure everybody in town had at some point heard about that guy who assaulted women while driving a cab, but just a few years afterward, the cab companies were able to use the specter of a rapist driver to argue that we were safer in cabs! It's a cynical exploitation of human psychology. Cabs have been around forever, so we perceive them as safe, yet we're terrified when something new is proposed that has the same risks.
(Cab companies warning about the dangers of Lyft/Uber reminded me of insurance companies warning about the horrors of public health care. Sexual predators picking you up, can't go to the doctor you like, unsafe cars and drivers, massive charges if a drug or procedure you need isn't unauthorized, if you listen to their scare rhetoric, they are both reciting their own known, long-standing flaws.)
Sometimes the result of "years of experience and evolution" is crappy companies and a crappy industry that deserves to be disrupted. I don't know where you live and what kind of cab companies were there before Lyft and Uber, but from my experience you could hardly have picked a worse industry to talk about the risks of disruption.
Just today another crazy investigative article was published in the Wall Street Journal [1]. Sam Altman and others rally to defend Tesla [2]. Elon Musk is lionized and can do no harm. Criticizing Musk is like criticizing technology itself - a blasphemous act; the believers are undeterred.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Tesla,_Inc.
You must be delusional. Look at this thread, or any thread reporting on Tesla problems on Hacker News or Reddit's car forums. More than 95% of comments are critical of Tesla, many nearly hysterical in their criticism.
Any defense, or even doubt of the overwhelmingly negative narrative, is met with accusations of being a "fanboy."
Yes, there are forums that are vehemently pro-Tesla, but you're not on one right now. Stop pretending that you're in an area where "Elon Musk can do no harm."
The stock price also tells a story about what most people think.
I do concede that the tone has shifted recently, but I still don't feel that the full picture of Musk's deeds are known to most people. In my perception, he has achieved a religious status
oh please, someone already linked GM forgetting pads on 4000 cars. There was also this gem in 1972:
https://www.nytimes.com/1972/01/23/archives/young-workers-di...
"sabotage, such as breaking windshields, breaking off rear‐view mirrors, slashing upholstery, bending signal levers, putting washers in carburetors and breaking off ignition keys."
Tesla Fremont facility saw its own wave of workers sabotaging own products back when it was called NUUMI https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a5514/4350856/ It was the reason behind GM decision to close it.
It was also built by GM.
In the last four weeks a lot that holds about 2,000 cars has often been filled with Vegas that had to be taken back into the plant for repair work before they could be shipped to dealers.
That sentence from the article alone demonstrates the huge difference between that and Tesla's response. GM actually cared about these problems and tried to fix them, instead of just letting faulty products reach customers and attempting to deny responsibility.
It also wasn't "GM forgetting pads on 4000 cars". They acted on one report, recalled ~4000, and only ~20-30 were actually affected: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29951540
Somehow the car was built, shipped, etc and no BMW employee ever tried to open all 4 doors. BMW had to replace the entire door.
Of course, stories like that never hit the front page of hackernews.
I could imagine the rap thought that was what the owner was hearing.
rust buildup is also removed within the first few applications of the brakes.
if your car sounds like this get it checked before you have problems.
Was the BMW produced using automated methods hailed as the future of car manufacture?
Because I doubt any of those are true and those all, especially in total, contribute to why this is on the ground page.
I agree that these well-known wear parts parts should be standardised. There's no need for each model of car to have slightly different brake pads.
There are also entire companies like Bendix which specialise in braking systems (and may be most known for the vacuum boosters for a ton of vehicles).
(I made the same comment here but got downvoted too. Maybe by some designer who thinks they need to be "unique".)
I think this is a great example of how generalizations based on guesses are almost always wrong. If you want to guess and be right, question generalizations.
"GM is recalling 4,296 U.S.-market Chevy Sonic models—all assembled at the automaker’s Orion Township, Michigan plant, for a possible assembly issue that leaves the subcompact lacking either an inner or outer front disc brake pad."
https://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1071185_missing-brake-...
I did not do a comprehensive search, so it would be unwise to assume this only ever happened to GM, too.
I had a small accident with a Range Rover some years ago that made the side airbag in the driver seat go off. I had it repaired at an official Land Rover dealer. When I got it back I only noticed at home that the seat leather is not well in place so I removed it to adjust it. To my surprise i find the new Airbag held ok pace with with multiple rounds of strong duct tape.
So far I trust Tesla more than the legacy automakers.
That sounds suspiciously like, "We were aware of that and were hoping you wouldn't notice, but we can't get the parts. If we promise to call you later, will you stop bothering us?"
So what is it about the car that makes them so popular now? I assume you could have refused to take it and they wouldn't be bothered because they could just sell it to the next person to walk in. Is it inherent to Tesla or is it just that all cars are scarce now and hard to keep in stock.
Marketing.
> Is it inherent to Tesla or is it just that all cars are scarce now and hard to keep in stock.
Are you going to break a deal you invested so much into over a missing USB port, phone charger, and a fucked up bumper? Most people won't. They just want all that shit to be over with, so that they can drive their car home.
Elon Musk is also fundamentally incapable of staying quiet for more than five minutes, and for various reasons, has a large following of groupies, that do his marketing for him.
They are better cars overall. And you can actually buy them.
It honestly reminds me of when I was in Iraq in the early 2000s, and you'd see police chiefs and mayors with iphones. The phones didn't work on the cell network, but they were still highly sought after because it was an expensive piece of technology that almost nobody there could afford.
Regarding quality control, we had one interior trim piece that was installed with the wrong pegs and so kept falling out - fixed by a mobile tech. It also had a small ding in the front fender, which Tesla had us take it to a local PDR shop to repair. That got it to about 95% - the spot is still technically possible to find, but you need to know where it was and carefully inspect from close range. Slightly irksome, but definitely wasn't worth trying to get the whole fender replaced.
Edit: For what it's worth I also own a 997.1 911 Turbo and a Honda S2000, so I'm far from just a Tesla/electric fan. In fact I really didn't want to want a Tesla as I'm no fan at all of the company for reasons like the OP. Tested all the competitors. But they're just legitimately good cars.
That's exactly where I am. I want to go electric. I didn't like Tesla/Musk for all the obvious reasons. I test drove every electric car I could get my hands on. I decided to test drive a Tesla just for completeness. They gave me a Model Y overnight. It was amazing. I ordered one. I hope it has all its parts. Seems like a coin flip. We'll see how I feel this time next year.
But it's also fun to just mat the throttle at any moment and have the vehicle leap forward, which is the electric thing. Even with the long range, it feels like you can go from a near stop to significant speed instantaneously. (Although one downside of that is that it starts to feel slower in comparison as you build speed, whereas the 911 Turbo is the opposite.) Also the traction control system is fantastic. It doesn't have the handling of the 911 (or the S2000), but it does start and stop on a dime, even in the wet. So you can extract a lot of performance out of it, but you need to drive it differently to do so.
I've autocrossed all three cars and tracked the 911 and S2000; each requires a significantly different driving style to get the most out of it. The S is a momentum car with crazy cornering capability, so it's all early apexes and maintaining speed. The Model Y is the exact opposite. You basically want to drive in straight lines, shortest path. Brake hard in a straight line to bring the weight to the front, short, tight corner, then hammer the throttle and straighten out, and let the traction control send the torque where it can go. If you try to carry speed through the corner it'll just push (understeer). The Turbo is somewhere in-between. On a big track it's the fastest of the three, but on an autocross course the S2000 and probably even the Y, if the course is tight or it's wet, have it beat.
Is Porsche electrifying their cars? Would you get an all electric 911? Do you think electric is the future or some hybrid approach with instant electric torque replacing turbo spooling downsides?
In the short to medium term I definitely think we'll see a mix of hybrid and full electric in sports/super cars, because full electric still comes with a significant weight penalty, and the charging makes track driving difficult. I expect most standard passenger cars to go full electric pretty quickly though, and eventually all but low volume and special purpose vehicles will probably get there.
They have been producing the Taycan EV for a few years now.
It is expensive and range is OK but not great. Probably an amazing driving experience.
Porsche is way out of my price range, Model 3 LR was a stretch but I have been very happy with the car.
10 years later the iPhone is still around but its competitors have more or less died out or left the smartphone game. The only flagship Android manufacturers that compete at the same price points are Samsung and Google, and pretty much nobody else is making a smartphone that doesn't run Android.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_%22-gate%22_scandals_a...
Antennagate, Batterygate, Bendgate, Chipgate, Flexgate, Locationgate, Staingate...
And sure, none of these are as dangerous as a self driving car making the wrong move, but we can separate the context of what a phone or laptop is supposed to be good at vs. a car. For example, this brake pad issue is the Tesla equivalent to Antennagate, since nobody would expect to buy a new phone that sucks at making calls, just like nobody would expect to buy a new car that sucks at slowing down.
also, again no offense, but do you mean “pretty much nobody else is making a smartphone that doesn’t run Android”? because you started by talking about iPhones.
the first paragraph made sense, maybe you just need to clarify.
Forgetting the brands, the battle right now seems to be between ICE cars versus EV cars. I'm implying that EVs will win in the end regardless of any existing drawbacks.
> do you mean “pretty much nobody else"
Yes, thanks for catching that. That omission does make my sentence rather confusing, lol. I was trying to refer to all the other manufacturers with proprietary operating systems like Blackberry, Palm, Windows Phone, etc. that are no longer around.
Because the buying process is super simple and easy, you pick what you want, buy it, no haggling. They get it ready, you pick it up.
The cars are rated the safest on the road, have the fewest accidents per mile, practically no maintenance ever needing to be done, maybe change the brake pads every 5-10 years, battery will last 500k KM or more, autopilot is amazing, pre-warm up the car in a closed garage, and more.
I've never once had a problem in the past 3 years of owning it, it's just a joy to have and drive.
I even got an OTA update that tweaked the motors a bit and gave me faster acceleration and increased range compared to when I first picked it up, for free.
Wait, are you bragging about your car being intentionally nerfed which was then reversed “for free”?!
The kool aid must be great.
They're very popular with the type of person who genuinely believes that their Tesla vehicle will receive updates that will turn it into a robotaxi any day now, just like Musk has been promising for years.
My experience buying from them was a dream. Everything is done online and no haggling. The one time I did go in for service was also simple and took a couple hours.
Gillmore recorded the above video to send to her Tesla service advisor, who claims multiple technicians listened to the video, only to declare "the brakes sounded normal for a performance Model 3."
Watch the video. It's incomprehensible how could anyone who has some experience with cars say that such sound, while breaking, is normal. If I was Elon, I would seriously question whoever at Tesla had said so. And by that, I mean, literally just fire them, because, damn, how can one be so ignorant when it comes something so crucial to safety?
The next obvious question: If multiple people think that's "normal for a performance Model 3," how many others are being delivered without brake pads?
"See that green dot on the top of the right picture? That is an assembly inspection mark that someone put there at the factory to indicate the caliper was 100% correct and inspected. Guess that person is bad at their job."
When you build a car you do it from very precisely controlled sets of inventory, there is no way that you could build a car and have leftover parts and not know which car they belonged to at any build step.
You should do it from...
Remember, Tesla's shtick for a while was to claim that the legacy automakers were dumb dinosaurs who didn't know code, and therefore Tesla would show them by building sonic velocity lights out dreadnaught factories where there weren't any tolerances at all, and... currently builds cars on a line that's basically indistinguishable from what everyone else uses.
In throwing out everything the "dinosaurs" did, it's entirely possible they threw out a range of useful things as well like "The number of parts delivered equals the number of vehicles to be built."
That's not how it works, though. Pretty much every single item in a car, except maybe for some screws (which would be identified by a batch number, though), has a unique S/N, and they know which car is built with which part, so that they know which owners to ask to a service center if there's a recall. It's not like they just tak a part from a pile and don't precisely track what they have left.
Source: used to develop a MES for an automotive plant that manufactured brakes, airbags and seatbelts.
Ferodo DS2500 if you want a set for yourself. Drive to the track, track and home again without issues.
To be honest, what I hear is a whistling sound, not metal on metal – that kind of sound that instantly sends shivers down your spine.
However, it's not something one should expect from a factory vehicle - and if you've installed higher performance track pads yourself, you should be able to determine if it's normal. Also, they'll sound the same from all four corners - this sound just came from one corner.
Also, I don't recommend DS2500s on a street car. They're intended to be a compromise pad that works on the street and the track both, but the performance is significantly worse when they're not heated up, so the first stop of the day on a cool morning can be surprising. Better to get real street pads and real track pads and swap them. It's super easy on fixed caliper brakes.
I used some pretty decent brands and pads and found the Forodos were the only ones that I couldn't get to fade in the hills. Their friction coefficient starts at 50c so it's definitely not unreasonable like actual race pads that can start in the 125c+ range.
I only ever found them a little suprising when they had been hot hot and then the next morning it would take a bit more of a press on the peddal to pull up and the stop lights. I still always had confidence that if I stood on it they would pull up in time.
As for running propper race pads at the track, that's fine and I had the same brembos you would've but replacing the rotors I was using wasn't something I wanted to shell out for every few track days. The Forodos never had any fade issues on track and I have a picture with the back wheels almost lifting as I brake from speed cut.
No. If you don't know anything about cars please feel free not to comment. Performance brakes can absolutely be noisy but they ABSOLUTELY do not sound like metal scraping metal. I have heard all kinds of performance brakes - carbon brakes, high end drilled rotors with the hardest pads you can imagine, everything. The most alarming sound you'll hear from performance brakes is a nasty squeal. They DO NOT sound like this. You are spreading misinformation.
Sintered metal pads definitely sound like metal metal contact at low speed and even more so when they've recently been hot.
Watch the video. It doesn't sound that bad and I can understand the engineers but probably wouldn't expect that much from a "performance model"
Remember my BMW Martin, that ran pads that would make horrible sounds. However the Integra and it's brembos that used to take a beating a Ruapuna often sounded like something you would want to pull over and check out. ;)
FYI, this is too condescending by HN standards. Let's keep the discussion civil and friendly here.
Elon is first one to blame for it. Sloppy quality and disregard for safety issues that creates comes all the way down from Elon. This problem is deeply rooted in the organization, that’s only optimizing for growth, at all costs. It’s well known Silicon Valley playbook. But it’s not that great when you apply it to the cars, not some random app.
I figured it was probably because the P3D gets fixed instead of floating calipers, and fixed caliper brakes typically have some quirks. Noises being the most obvious one.
Various states have assorted laws about being in neutral on a public roadway, and while I don't feel it's a safety issue in the Volt, it wasn't something I was going to casually mention either. However, since it was brought up...
(I'm still happy with mine, but will check if my brake pads are missing)
The point was this would be picked up by the regular KPIs collected, not something that would specifically curate to failures. Think: temperature of each wheel, deceleration rate (of each wheel, again), the ESP feedback (the car would inevitably shift when breaking and so ESP would continuously kick-in to compensate), and so on. This is probably very easily detectable by the software without having to specifically design it for it.
I hate this car. I hate this car so freaking much.
The new brake pad recall for the 2012 Chevrolet Sonic affects 4,296 vehicles sold in the United States while another 577 were sold in Canada, with all of the vehicles included in this recall built between June 2nd, 2011 and November 21st, 2011 at GM’s Orion Township Assembly Plant just north of Detroit. On these recalled 2012 Sonic hatchbacks and sedans, General Motors believes that the vehicle could be missing either an inner or outer brake pad on the front end.
Https://www.torquenews.com/106/gm-issues-2012-chevy-sonic-recall-missing-brake-pads
That’s the most egregious thing to me.
> ...but luckily, GM has caught the problem and is recalling them right away…thus removing the safety risk and the cost of repairing the problem from the owners.
Quite different from the way Tesla is handling this.
In a civil suit a family's attorney found GM's supplier dramatically changed the ignition switch, and GM claimed that they had no idea why or that it even happened (which is ludicrous to anyone even proximate to the auto industry. Any time a part is revised, even slightly, it tends to get a part number suffix.)
Sonic's product manager claimed he had no knowledge of ignition switch changes. "I put my own son in a Sonic" etc etc.
Eventually the whole mess blew up to the point that Congress got involved, subpoaenaed a battleship's worth of documents from GM and...lo and behold, what comes out? Lots of emails from the same Sonic product manager about the ignition switch.
There was an NPR/APM/etc show episode about it...wish I could remember which one.
I can't believe how people tolerate replacement parts taking so long for Teslas. Tesla is the only supplier. They are choosing to make more new mostly working cars instead of fixing the ones missing things like brake pads. They could just allocate more parts to repairs.
That is the crux of the matter. It's more important to Tesla to put those parts on the line, so they can tout quarterly delivery numbers.
And now they're also seeing the downsides of incremental improvement. It's great in some ways, but for repair and maintenance not so much. At least with the "legacy" manufacturers you have parts separated by model year. With Tesla, they might have cycled through a few part models a year. That adds to the complexity of part sourcing, even before the delivery number issue.
Hm. Ok, point in Tesla's favor: who knows what dealers find in terms of missing bits and pieces on cars they pass to customers. But with direct-to-consumer there is no such middle man who has their own reputation to uphold.
Regardless, this should have never ever happened.
This makes them look really unprofessional, despite how cool Elon thinks it is.
Tesla has some bad PR, the press can't get anything out of Tesla so the story is dead out the door, and Telsa's PR team comes up with some stupid stunt to get social media trending on the stunt...problem solved. "Oh, you see that thing about Tesla?" is about their cars blinking their headlights to Christmas music, and not, say, the feds ramping up their investigation into Teslas slamming into roadside emergency vehicles.
Standard corporate "disaster management" is essentially "hide everyone, don't say a fucking word, wait to get out of the news cycle."
Usually, they throw in a lightweight apology. Saying something like: "we deeply regret the experience this particular customer had." Before they go to "no comment".
I guess Elon innovated by simply saving "apology" part :)
Why pay for a PR department when people still think you have one even without one?
0.02 - I don't think it's great that Tesla got rid of their media relations department, but I also don't think that they have people cracking the whip on holiday update deadlines so they can cover up NHTSA investigations or whatever. You don't get cool on social media by forcing it. Now, the Cyberwhistle is a different story...
(disclosure: Tesla owner, no stock held)
So basically tesla had two ways, try to buy more of this media, or don't feed the troll. I think it's smart to just ignore corruption.
All the time I have to push hard to get any attempted fix.
I’ve bought several cars, Mercedes’ and Audis from new in the past and I’ve never had any issue that required remedial work. (Or any issue at all.)
Now that there are good alternative electric cars I no longer recommend Tesla when anyone asks.
None of that is possible with Tesla's model - they basically have to get a car looking thing out the door as fast as they can, there's no dealership to cross check and the customer is left with the pieces or the option of waiting in the hope that next one will be better.
Now, I don't expect this kind of service from Tesla but my point is it doesn't matter if you are able to test drive it or not from the dealership and inspect for defects; the manufacturer should have a rigorous quality process that doesn't let these kind of slip ups to happen and if it does happen make it right by the customer.
So having a Dealer deal with it helped? As in they did the inspection for you and got it fixed? It's practically equivalent to buying off a lot if you think about it without the extra step of you doing another inspection to catch what the dealer might have missed.
With Tesla it's between you ordering and the factory shipping. No additional independent QC like the Dealership and no chance to pre-inspect.
No it wasn't the dealer that replaced the wheel but a receiving port of the manufacturer in the east coast.
You could still refuse delivery. If I were buying a Tesla I'd do a very thorough inspection of it before accepting it.
(For instance if I ordered a Model 3 now - my estimated delivery time frame is March. If I refuse that one for having issues, I am looking at June to get a new car.)
It may be more of a problem now but it's not a new thing.
During that time, I had ample time to inspect the vehicle and drive it. In fact, the Tesla rep went out of his way to do a thorough walk-through and inspection of the vehicle. I noticed a small smudge on the front, and they took care of it on the spot.
From reading forums, it's pretty common knowledge that if you notice any issues, so long as you note it upon pick-up (or in the first days or so), Tesla will happily take care of it free of charge.
I haven't used it, but the mobile app also makes it trivial to schedule service if needed (along with other options like roadside assistance).
Contrast that with normal day GM/Toyota/Honda car dealership - you walk in after maybe a 20 min drive, you inspect and test drive any car on the lot and buy the one you like the most. End of story. If the one color you like had QA issues the dealer can't fix in short time you can go to another dealer nearby. In fact that's exactly what I did recently during shortage - was still able to buy a car I like that I could inspect in a day's time.
9 years ago my father bought a new Mercedes B-class. Having been a truck driver for decades, he knows how to look at details. When he got the car he discovered front wheels brakes where different, on each wheel there was a different type of brake(I don't exactly recall the issue). Obviously he didn't accepted the car, Mercedes gave him a temporary car and repaired the new B-class at no cost.
Can Tesla learn to build a car around their computer faster than traditional car companies learn to add a computer in their car.
So far the competition is neck and neck...
When I had to take my car to the shop, and they needed to order a part, they get it the next day! I've never had to go without my car for more than a day.
I used to own a Jaguar, that I recently sold because yeah, it was unreliable (cooling system mainly). It did have an entertainment system issue, and the whole thing needed to be replaced. Oh boy, I thought, when I heard they needed to order a new entertainment system, how long will that take?
"Oh, overnight. Second day if we have to overnight it from the UK."
TSLA as a speculative instrument for trading is fine. But I am avoiding them as a consumer.
(I do brake jobs myself. It's not hard, and having "skin in the game", you'll definitely make sure to do it right.)
Yes, they are, frustratingly.
Note that he did not become curious or refuted the facts. He simply became furious that I pointed this out.
I’ve found a lot of Tesla people are like that. Rather than being comfortable with some of the facts, it seems like they don’t like it when facts don’t match the narrative.
An ICE car will never gain MPG over time. Engines produced decades ago, like my last car from 2005, will never become more efficient or produce less pollutants than they did off the assembly line. Trying to make a fleet of ICE cars cleaner is like trying to overhaul one million tiny power plants at once; it is a much, much easier job to do when there's only a handful of power plants to operate on.
Anyways, sorry about your friend, unfortunately not everyone can control their emotions when they buy expensive toys and get told off for it. I imagine he would've had the same reaction if he bought a Lamborghini and you asked him if it carried the same amount of groceries as a Rav4 or something.
Regardless, am happy to have a productive debate with you if you want to discuss EV ownership in more detail. One thing I will put out there: I don't care if you buy a Tesla, and I hate Tesla owners who consistently put down EVs from other manufacturers without even watching a review or reading the spec sheet. I just want more people to buy EVs, it doesn't matter what badge they carry.
In that case most people would say yes or no. There would be no reason to get angry unless they were insecure about their purchase.
Many modern brake pads have a simple circuit of a wire connected to the computer. The wires are designed to break when the pad is worn out so the car computer detect a voltage return of zero in that electric circuit and will trigger a warning immediately.
Hypothese 1. If the maker forgot to install the brake pad. Then we have to assume that neither the second employee nor the car computer noticed that something was wrong, and this is very strange because the computer at least -must- know it.
Hypothese 2. The pad was installed but was loose or fell later. The seller or one of the seller employees had some fun driving the car before, hit a bump or something and the pad was dislodged and fell. They didn't noticed it or tried to hide the problem.
Does not explain why the owner didn't noticed a warning in the dashboard from the minute 0.
Hypothese 3. The owner hit a bump and lost the brake pad in the first days of driving the car. Maybe without being aware of that. So nobody see the warning light because there was not a warning light to be seen. Not until later. (we could also suspect that the structure that keeps the brake pad in place maybe is fragile in this car).
There are other possibilities, but they are much less probable
The explanation is usually the simplest, they forgot to install it.
These vehicles are objectively bad: Poor design and even poorer manufacturing. Every one I've seen up close in person has numerous exterior fit and finish problems. The interiors feel very very cheap for a vehicle in their price range. They catch fire. They don't work well in extreme weather. Bumpers fall off randomly. If you think these sorts of problems don't extend to the mechanical and software components, well, I've got a Tesla to sell you.
Maybe they'd tell you they do. But wallets, and recent sales trends, speak differently. The market clearly does not value these things as much as you think it does, at least in comparison to the other features Tesla promises.
(source: happy Tesla owner, no stock held)
https://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1071185_missing-brake-...
While that might be the joke for a lot of car dealers and companies, you're supposed to pretend to give a shit about the quality of the car before you hand a multi-ton machine with a bunch of lithium to a customer.
https://www.google.com/search?q=missing+brake+pad+recall
https://www.google.com/search?q=ford+mach+e+roof+recall
https://www.google.com/search?q=bmw+fire+recall ( 1 million)
so yeah, Legacy auto is so amazing :)
[1] https://github.com/mykeln/teslaprep/blob/master/model_3_chec...
who would put up with this?
Good luck with that.
Other car manufacturers making a mistake does not justify Tesla's mistake or their handling of the situation. We are supposed to hold all car manufacturers to the highest standards instead of justifying Tesla's mistake with someone else's.
Four letters, starts with T, ends with A.
(source: Tesla owner, hold no stock)
- windshields that are actually mounted to the vehicle
- no suspension failures
- no heavy shaking at 35-40mph
- all brake pads to be present
- a dash that doesn't creak or sag when I put my hand on it
- panels that aren't so misaligned that they leak into the body, or motors, leading to motors dying and Tesla saying "it was driven in rain that was too heavy"
I'm not sure the high expectations you talk of. The Tesla, to steal from someone else in this thread, is an amazing state-of-the-art powertrain coupled to a distinctly subpar vehicle.
"You know how much energy you save by not breaking?? Think of the planet!"
"If you need to break you're not using the car as intended!" (Rip overheating macs)
They need to rebrand it the "Strive" or the "Dream" or the "Yearn" and remove Tesla branding and have separate dealers.
"Tesla Model 3 owner claims car was delivered missing a brake pad"
...because the only evidence we've seen so far comes from the owner, and Tesla has not yet had a chance to investigate what happened and provide the media with an official response. All messages, photos, and videos I've seen are from the owner.
If this is Tesla's fault, shame on the company. But we don't know for sure yet, and given how much hatred is directed at the company (and Musk, in particular) we have to consider the possibility that this could be: (a) a rare case involving unusual circumstances for a single vehicle out of a few million sold to date, or (b) a malicious hit job.
I, for one, will keep an open mind, waiting to pass judgment until there's more information about what actually happened here.
They have no communications department.
No such response will ever come - there is no mechanism to request or be provided with one.