Tesla Adds Sounds to Owner's Manual to Prevent Unnecessary Service Requests

Predictably, the new section is called “Normal Operating Sounds.” It presents eight sound files, with two per subsection: “Climate Controls and Temperature Regulation,” “Battery and Charging,” “Driving,” and “Wheels, Tires, and Brakes.” Tesla refers to these sounds as humming, whirring, wooshing, clicking, thumping, clunking, banging, popping, creaking, and cranking. Curiously, all four models Tesla currently sells present the same sounds.

Listening to them, there are sound alerts mixed with operating sounds. As people say, if there is a warning, there is a story: Tesla must have received complaints about sound alerts, which is pretty bizarre. That may have to do with buyers that never rode in a Tesla and who just received the vehicles without any explanation about how they operate.

Some of the sounds also seem to be present because Tesla did not worry about a better insulation strategy. Sound-deadening materials tend to make the car heavier. The lower the mass, the further a vehicle can travel. In other words, more weight is an enemy of range, something that Tesla is often accused of exaggerating in its statements. Edmunds discovered that most Tesla vehicles fail to meet their EPA ranges.

The new measure is an intriguing way to tackle the high demand Tesla Service Centers currently experience. The Norwegian customers that promised a hunger strike to talk to Elon Musk said that it is very difficult to make an appointment to repair their cars, adding to multiple similar complaints.

Tesla’s best shot at solving this issue would be to improve quality control, increase the number of Tesla Service Centers, and invest in training its technicians instead of putting people that are not related to repairs in maintenance services, as it recently did. For the record, the first answer Gillmore received from technicians when she sent them a video of her Model 3 Performance's sounds was that her car was “within specs.”