My Terrifying Trip in a Tesla Model 3: Part 1

Editor’s note: EV Car Answers CEO and Co-Founder, Jason Fox, shares his harrowing experience in a Tesla Model 3. This is part 1 of 2.

Last weekend I was at Skidmore College, which hosts an annual family weekend. My daughter attends college there. After a special “farm-to-table” dinner the school puts on for parents, my wife and I pushed off for the hotel. But we needed to make a charging stop first.

Rear Motor Disabled

After 30 minutes at the Malta, NY supercharger, about 10 miles south of Saratoga Springs, I proceeded to merge back into the southbound 87 when my car shuddered violently and the screen on the car started rang out with the notification: “Rear Motor Disabled.” I was barely able to get the car to the shoulder of the road before it effectively shut-off.

After doing a soft reboot, the error codes cleared, and I cautiously proceeded onto the highway doing well under the speed limit until I arrived at my hotel, 10 minutes away.

A Faulty Inverter?

That might in the hotel room, I combed through Reddit, Tesla Motor Club, and YouTube and learned the issue could be anything from a software glitch to a catastrophic failure requiring a major repair. Most often, similar problems pointed to a faulty inverter, a key component in the car’s electric drivetrain. It plays a critical role in converting direct current (DC) from the car’s high-voltage battery into alternating current (AC) that powers the vehicle’s electric motors.

Powering Off: Emergency Stop

Hoping it was only a software glitch and not finding anything relevant in the troubleshooting section of the Tesla manual, we headed back to Saratoga Springs in the AM without incident. After an uneventful breakfast, we drove to a grocery store to pick up some goodies for my daughter’s dorm room. Suddenly the car made a “thunking” noise and the center console pulsated red with a warning that the car was about to power off. Luckily we weren’t going that fast and I was able to turn half-way into a parking lot before the car shut off. From the warning to shutdown it was no more than 10 seconds.

It’s hard to describe the terror you feel when the car is literally shutting off as you are trying to make an emergency stop, cars coming in both directions, oblivious to your battle. The steering wheel becomes increasingly impossible to turn and the car loses any forward motion. You realize in that moment that the car really is an iPhone on wheels and that innovative, groundbreaking software is also a single point of failure.

A Call with Tesla

I called Tesla’s service center and customer support performed a diagnostic check of the vehicle as we spoke and said things looked OK. After some back and forth, including a hard reboot, he said, not very reassuringly, that it was “probably OK to drive if I felt comfortable driving.” One of those non-answer, answers designed so the company avoids any liability in case their product breaks downs when used by their customer.

The Trip Back

After debating what to do, we dropped our daughter back at school and decided we’d make a go of it back to Westchester County, normally a 2 1/2 hour drive away. We decided we’d avoid highways so this turned the trip into a 4 1/2 hour one. Luckily it was mostly a beautiful drive through Hudson Valley backroads. But make no mistake: this was white knuckle travel from point to point. I had one eye on the road and one eye on the size of the shoulder knowing that at any moment, I might have to suddenly make an unanticipated emergency exit.

Luckily, we made it back without any further challenges. The next morning I brought the car to a Tesla service center where it sit nows waiting a diagnostic check. I’ll be back with part 2 when I know more.

Electric cars are known to be safe but this experience was anything but. Have you experienced anything like this in a Tesla or any other electric car? If so share, your story in the comments below.

THE TAKEAWAY

This isn’t something I’d wish on anyone but in fairness to Tesla, any car could have a cataclysmic failure. The difference here is that software powers every function making electric cars uniquely susceptible and dependent on billions of lines of code for their road worthiness.