BMS_u029 Case Tells a Horror Story About Tesla Service Centers – Conclusion

In the first part of this story, I told my readers how Atkins and his mother-in-law discovered the error message and decided to handle it. The second one was dedicated to sharing how Tesla blew it when it just installed an older remanufactured battery pack than the BEV originally had instead of the new component its customer had ordered. Now is the time to tell you how Tesla solved the issue – and to hope the BEV maker does not ruin it this time.

Atkins summed up the situation.

"The SC installed a reman pack without asking after her car was dropped off at the SC and then proceeded to pressure her (me, since I was handling communications at this point) to accept the reman battery insisting that she accept a telephone call from Ernesto, the general manager to explain the situation to her."

The retired engineer solved that in a rather simple way.

"In acting as her proxy via the Tesla app, I asked for all communications to be done via text in the Tesla app. That was when they backed down. They allowed her to pick up the car without payment and then produced a revised quote two days later for the correct new battery (ASY-HVBATTERY,90KWH, SX PN 1014116-00-C) which is the correct part that I also found on the Tesla website for her car."

After so many disappointments with a process that must have been hard enough on itself – paying almost as much as the car is worth on a single component – I asked Atkins what his mother-in-law planned to do with her Model S.

"So far, she has been driving the car with the reman battery. Tesla has not been able to provide a time when they will receive the new battery or an appointment to have it installed. I also pushed back on their last quote (that included almost $1,000 of bits and pieces to complete the installation) and asked for a discount based on their terrible customer service. Their last response was that 'management will review and get back to me.' That was May 3, and it has been crickets since."

Could that mean that Atkins and his mother-in-law plan to escalate things? I asked him about that.

"Depending on how this all works out, I may file one or more complaints against Tesla Service with the California Bureau of Automotive Repair. Going after corporate is for someone else since my mother-in-law doesn't want to be the tip of the spear for some class action lawsuit. Tesla has an army of lawyers and will fight to their last breath (in spite of the BS that Elon claims on Twitter)."

The engineer is targeting Tesla Service Center because he thinks this is not an isolated case.

"I firmly believe that customer service is a corporate strategy designed to isolate customers from Tesla employees and to further isolate management from the blowback from customers that is a result of their decisions. Tesla management knows exactly what it is doing. Tesla is also making it absurdly difficult for a buyer to assume the repair warranties (by) making some insane excuse about protecting the previous owner's privacy!! The repair history of a Tesla isn't the prior owner's medical history! Tesla has again made a corporate decision to minimize their warranty exposure by making it as difficult as possible to pass an existing repair warranty on to a buyer of the car."

Like David Rasmussen, Atkins thinks it is quite weird that the battery pack errors started to emerge after Tesla capped the voltage of the cells in these vehicles, got sued, and decided to settle the lawsuit two years later. Rasmussen is one of the Tesla owners who sued the BEV maker for the voltage cap.

"Tesla settled the lawsuit because it didn't want to reveal data in open court that it knew would be damaging to them. I suspect that the data would have revealed that thousands of batteries were in or nearing failure and that the failure warnings were being suppressed. That would have likely exposed Tesla to a lot of warranty claims for battery replacement. Tesla would have also had to explain or define how the data was used to determine a degraded battery and/or impending failure – information that could subsequently be used against them in any future lawsuit."

The retired engineer elaborated on how things could have happened.

"I'm quite sure that this was Tesla's middle finger back to the owners. They engineered the battery failures as a result of settling the lawsuit and saddled everyone with massive costs. Tesla has all the detailed data on their cars. Main batteries don't just fail – they slowly degrade. Tesla concealed the degradation to avoid warranty repairs to the greatest extent they could, and then they probably tightened tolerances or just revealed what was already a known problem to thousands of owners to force them to replace their batteries and pay Tesla to do it."

Jason Hughes stated the whole thing was probably "just crappy luck" because he did not detect anything weird with the software. The BMS_u029 and BMS_u018 errors result from routine checks that can be triggered by an update or a component replacement, such as the MCUv1 that so many Model S units received. As I wrote a while ago, the deal is that these tests should be constant to prevent battery packs from failing out of warranty. What if Tesla found a way to postpone them and hide defects until the warranty expired, as Atkins suggested? The retired engineer admits that would be pretty hard to demonstrate.

"Could any of this speculation be proven in court? Not likely, since Tesla controls the data. As an engineer, I know how easy it is to conceal and/or manipulate data to produce a desired result while making it all but impossible for any outsider to discover. Consider how long Volkswagen was able to hide the way it manipulated emission tests on its global fleet of diesel cars for years. Just plain luck discovered their deception."

That said, what Atkins recommends is that people are careful before buying a used EV, particularly if it is a Tesla.

"Anyone purchasing a 2012-2016 Tesla that is out of warranty and still on the original battery pack (regardless of vehicle mileage) should, for all intents and purposes, consider that battery to be failed and in need of replacement. Subtract the $21,000 that it would cost to replace the battery with a new one from the value of the car."

Just like his mother-in-law did, he does not recommend a remanufactured battery pack. He even challenges the component deserves to be named as such.

"I would not recommend a reman battery. They are just someone else's used battery that Tesla robbed from one owner, and will get another $13,500 plus labor to put it in another unsuspecting owner's car! They haven't been remanufactured at all – just opened up, diagnosed, and minimal internal BMS and electrical repairs performed. The cells are still original. Already there are postings of reman batteries failing after just a few months and being slow to charge on a Supercharger. If a reman battery fails right after the warranty expires, then another $15,000 or $21,000 will need to be shelled out."

The retired engineer also suggested extra care with the electric motors.

"If a used Tesla Model S has the original drive unit (or one that was made before 2016), get it inspected before you buy the car! Have the speed sensor removed (this is fairly easy to do when up on a lift) and check for evidence of water in the speed sensor cavity. If there is, the drive unit is toast – it just hasn't failed yet. It can't be repaired in place: it must be removed and torn down."

One fundamental factor about the motors is when they were manufactured.

"If the drive unit has been replaced, the buyer should confirm that it was manufactured after 2015. Otherwise, it likely has the original defects and will fail prematurely even if it has been overhauled by Tesla. Few pre-2016 drive units make it much past 100,000 miles (many far less). How long they last is largely dependent on how heavy-footed the driver was or will be. Replacement drive units should be manufactured after 2015 to ensure that they are up to date with all of the necessary mods that fix problems that cause premature failures."

This story would be the perfect example of how important it is to be able to reach out to any company and receive a mature answer. Tesla has killed its PR department, and Twitter now answers press inquiries with a poo emoji. Elon Musk controls both companies. Atkins concluded our chat with remarks about him and his management style.

"Personally, I just find Tesla's behavior to be depressing. It has made the decision to screw all the early adopters that actually took a chance and bought one of its $100,000 cars and helped make the company what it is today. I'm sure that Tesla wants all the early Model S cars with unlimited supercharging as well as other features off the road. They are just being petty and greedy – like a child would be. This isn't a surprise given Elon's personality, which has of late become much more publicly apparent. He may be a brilliant engineer, but he has the maturity and attention span of a teenage boy, and that has flowed down into the Tesla management culture. I don't say this lightly."

For the record, Musk is not an engineer. He lacks the degree and all other legal requirements to earn the title in the US and pretty much everywhere else in the world. The true engineer in this story brings up another element that would fit the Tesla CEO pretty well.

"I founded and ran an internet service company for more than 26 years. Before that, I worked as a software/aerospace engineer. Early in my career, I had to learn humility, and I can clearly see that Elon hasn't yet. He has the money to be able to stubbornly plow ahead regardless of the damage that results from the callous and hard-headed decisions that he has been making. I only wish that I had $44 billion to flush down a hole so I could continue to be an insufferable narcissist."