A Tesla Model Y Horror Story Gave This Old Inverter Defect Case a New Name: PCS

After about a minute or so with the flashing message on the ICE screen, the Model Y just shut down. To make matters worse, his phone only had 20% of the charge left. The temperature was at around -3ºC. Exton called Tesla Road Assistance, but it took so long to answer he decided it would be wiser to call the Automobile Association’s (AA) road assistance. AA was incredibly busy that day, but they promised to send someone.

Exton had been waiting for half an hour when a full bladder urged him to leave the Model Y. That was when another Tesla peculiarity – to say the least – reared its ugly head. Without power, the Model Y doors will not open when you press the buttons that should get the job done. You have to know the emergency manual door releases. The British entrepreneur knew where they were and stressed everyone owning vehicles with electric door operation should also do that – wise advice.

On May 20, Jamil Jutha experienced the same situation as Exton: his Model Y suddenly stopped working in Vancouver. However, a blaze broke out a while after that. Jutha did not know how to use the emergency release and broke the window to leave the car. Ironically, being familiar with the system did not prevent Exton from having a broken window as well.

The frameless windows in Tesla vehicles have a protection system that lowers them a bit when you open or close the doors. That prevents pressure from making it more difficult to shut the door and avoids breaking the glass. Without power, the driver’s window got stuck in the body and fractured when Exton opened his door. That left a gap that allowed even more cold air inside the cabin while the YouTuber waited for AA.

When the tow truck arrived, the driver told Exton he could not touch the car: Tesla Road Assistance would have to take care of that. At least he managed to charge his phone to call the EV maker. Tesla logged into the car remotely and told him not to jump the 12V battery, not to put it in tow mode… in short, to just leave the Model Y alone. They would send someone to tow it.

The AA driver took Exton to the road’s 24-hour services, where he sat at a Burger King for another two hours or so, waiting for Tesla Road Service to tow his car. However, the EV owner faced another issue before reaching the warm fast-food refuge: the Model Y door closed with all his stuff inside. Exton’s only choice was to break a piece of the already fractured window to open the door and get his things before leaving.

When Tesla arrived, they met him at Burger King, got the key card, some instructions about where the Model Y was, and that was it. Exton did not go there with them. He had to travel to Scotland the following day, so he booked a hotel room in Leicester for whatever time he had left to sleep.

A few hours later, Tesla reached out to Exton, apologized, and offered to pay his hotel expenses and a loaner. The YouTuber even joked they could keep his car because the Model 3 Performance he got had free Supercharging. The EV maker also said what was wrong with his vehicle: a PCS failure. Exton said the person who talked to him was not “a million percent sure” what that meant, and even we had not heard that before, so we looked it up.

PCS is an acronym for Power Conversion System. In other words, it is a fancy expression for inverter, a component that has been failing in several Model Y and Model 3 units. Considering Hansjörg von Gemmingen replaced “11 or 12” motors in his Model S along the 1 million miles he drove the EV so far, that may be a more widespread issue than we currently know.

On April 4, ConsumerAffairs warned that the Model Y was presenting rear motor failures at a concerning pace, but did not mention what the problem’s cause was. On April 7, Tesla recalled 127,785 Model 3s in China due to a rear motor inverter defect. It has only warned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) about it, but has taken no measures in the U.S. about the problem. Dana Brems’ Model 3 had the same issue months later.

Exton’s case is the first one we hear about in Europe, but there must be way more, considering all Model Y units sold there until very recently were made at Giga Shanghai. If you think it through, it does not seem to be related to where the cars are produced. On June 26, Tesla suspended deliveries of the Model Y made in Germany because of the inverter flaw.

The final chronic issue with Tesla that this case brought up was how the EV maker investors and fans are helping reduce the demand for its vehicles. Exton looked shocked after getting “so much abuse on Twitter” from the EV maker's “fraternity.” After all, he was very reasonably mad about a pretty scary situation. If he had nowhere to stop, his car would be in the middle of the road on a misty evening with no lights. As he framed that, he is “just a customer that nearly got wiped out.” Exton said he has never been in such a “precarious situation.”

That sort of behavior is pretty standard in Tesla groups, as we have recently reported about at least two Model Y vehicles that hydroplaned due to how hard Tesla’s regenerative braking stops the cars. The owner who shared the problem had to shut comments in his thread to stop the harassment. Exton was accused of being a paid actor, a short-seller, a FUDster, and all the names Tesla investors use to prevent anyone from making any remarks about the company – regardless of being valid or not.

If Exton had a hard time with his Model Y, he suspects more vulnerable people could have died of hypothermia or from a crash. In China, Tesla made a recall for 67,698 Model S and Model X units, allegedly due to a software glitch. The EV maker said that “the feedback voltage of the power battery voltage sensing circuit may be inconsistent with the real voltage of the electric brick, resulting in a misjudgment by the battery management system." It looks like something that involves the inverter. When the problem happens, the car tells owners to pull over and shuts down, just like Exton’s Model Y.

Tesla proposed to repair that with an over-the-air (OTA) update. Instead of fixing the software glitch, the update just gives the driver more time to pull over somewhere safe. If that happens, the vehicles will have to be taken to Tesla Service Center for repair. Would that involve replacing the rear motor inverter? The EV maker did not disclose that, but perhaps some owners may want to share with us what happened. You are our guests.

Just relieved gf/dogs are not with me. In minus 3, middle of nowhere. Been 2 hours so far waiting for AA.

There’s a reason they punted so many out the door on cheap lease deals. Do yourself a favour and get a Polestar. Or anything other than a Tesla.

— TGE (@TGE_LDNM) December 8, 2022