Someone Else's Problem: The wait was long enough: leviathan's Tesla Model 3 Performance

Hm. Sure, I'll make a writeup, if there's interest. Give me an evening or two :)

Yes, please! While I don't know coding, I can at least put something like this together.
 
You guys might then also be interested in this...

 
Right, let's do an update here, because why not.

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Car has successfully passed a year of ownership and 25'000 km (in fact a fair bit over 26k now). The lease allows me 25k per year. In the beginning I was driving it way more than allowed, but apparently I drive much less during winter, and the whole lockdown has helped bring the mileage well below the allowed limit - meaning there's certainly another roadtrip or two in the car's future.

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Aggregate all the data!

I checked in with Tesla whether some sort of annual maintenance should be performed - only to be told no, there's no necessary yearly service for the 3, just keep on driving and we'll let you know when anything is due (like brake fluid after a few years iirc). Neat.

Still went in to the service center for two minor issues:

- Noises from the battery when fast-charging or rapidly gaining/losing elevation when driving in hilly terrain. It's a known issue on these cars related to some sort of pressure relief valves, and is purely cosmetic - the noise is a bit annoying and possibly alarming if one doesn't know what it is. The valves were replaced, noise hasn't reoccured since.

- Second issue is a bit more apparent: the brakes are suffering from little to no use, because in normal driving they are basically never used at all thanks to regen. Apparently this is also purely cosmetic, but there are visible corrosion "rings" building up on all 4 rotors. Technician took the car for a test drive, said it's not an issue for braking performance, and suggested to run the car for a couple weeks with regenerative braking turned down to "low" to use the brakes a bit more again, that should fix it. I did, the corrosion did improve a bit but wasn't fully fixed. I guess I'll keep watching if it gets any worse, and switch to "low" regen every once in a while to polish them off.

Other than those minor things, still very happy with the car. Got it back on summer tires now, all of the grip is back :)

Also, Tesla is apparently finally building a Supercharger immediately near Frankfurt - a 16-stall V3 (250kW) setup in Eschborn, about 15 minutes from my place. Pretty awesome, more options for fast charging are always better, and this gives me a nice opportunity to use up those referral Supercharger credits.
 
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I'm not sure if these were in there previously (don't remember seeing them) but service intervals are now in the manual.

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Incredibly minimal, fantastic. Did they tell you that they need to perform the fluid service or can any mechanic do it? It mentions cleaning the brakes, wouldn't hurt to get someone to do that and clean up the discs at the same time.
 
Incredibly minimal, fantastic. Did they tell you that they need to perform the fluid service or can any mechanic do it? It mentions cleaning the brakes, wouldn't hurt to get someone to do that and clean up the discs at the same time.
I didn't ask about the fluid services, no - will probably do them with Tesla, leasing car and all that. I did however ask about the disk cleaning. Was told that's only really relevant for countries that heavily use salt like the Scandinavian region and in the Alps, not really relevant in Germany, and shouldn't be necessary on my car apparently.

You need to do some spirited driving to fix the brakes issue. ;)
Yeah, I guess a lap of the Nordschleife will probably fix it completely :) Hmm...
 
What type of suspension does the model 3 have? Surely, there would need to be a replacement shock schedule like any other car.
 
but a normal car managed just fine over 100K km on the original set
i don't think replacing shock absorbers is mentioned in any recommended maintenance list
but tbh, i haven't looked at too many of those...
 
What type of suspension does the model 3 have? Surely, there would need to be a replacement shock schedule like any other car.

In this country at least checking the condition of the suspension become part of the MOT after 3 years, I imagine it would become part of the TUV for Germany after the same period. I imagine you could have Tesla test the performance of the suspension if you wanted to but that's not something people would normally do.
 
Shock absorbers are definitely tested as part of TÜV. For new cars, TÜV starts being necessary after 3 years, the checks are the same each two years after that iirc. So when they wear out, that's where they'll be found. They'll typically let you know when their measured response starts degrading, even before they are "gone" beyond required thresholds, so you have time to replace them before they fail the next bi-yearly check.
 
I haven’t heard of any car where the suspension bits are included in the service schedule. These things are replaced when they start clunking or when the friendly MOT person tells you.
 
I haven’t heard of any car where the suspension bits are included in the service schedule. These things are replaced when they start clunking or when the friendly MOT person tells you.

Porsche does that, all bushings too.
 
- Second issue is a bit more apparent: the brakes are suffering from little to no use, because in normal driving they are basically never used at all thanks to regen. Apparently this is also purely cosmetic, but there are visible corrosion "rings" building up on all 4 rotors. Technician took the car for a test drive, said it's not an issue for braking performance, and suggested to run the car for a couple weeks with regenerative braking turned down to "low" to use the brakes a bit more again, that should fix it. I did, the corrosion did improve a bit but wasn't fully fixed. I guess I'll keep watching if it gets any worse, and switch to "low" regen every once in a while to polish them off.
This is funny to me because i think i get this on my cars? My solution to the bug being slow is controlling the momentum so that just became my driving style so I don't use the brakes much. Glad to hear that doesn't mess the brakes up I'd feel real dumb if mine died from underuse :|
 
I've been having a first world problem with this car lately.

App and in-car display go:

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Only parking spots in front of the house where my WiFi can reach:

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Gotta keep watching and pounce when someone drives off... guess this is my life now.
 
I thought teslas had built in cellular?
 
Could you use your phone as a WiFi hotspot for the car when there is an update?
 
Yeah, done that in the past. It'll even stay connected and keep downloading while driving. Updates can be quite large though, 1-2 GB or more is not uncommon, and I only have 5GB/month of data on my phone. But if it's a feature update I really want (like when Smart Summon came out), I'll do it :)
 
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