My car is now dead, sitting in the garage and unable to chg

[miimura]

That minor defect that you referred to (Charging Stopped due to system malfunction), I've also got that problem. In fact, as of this evening, in exactly 30 days of having the car, I have 95 e-mails from EnTune. 31 of them are for completed charges, 3 are from charging failures and 61 are for charging interruptions (which are basically all failures in my case, maybe 2 or 3 were from me disconnecting before it completed charging). I would get the charge interruption e-mails during the first week when I was charging at 120V even after it said charging completed and when I unplugged the car to drive it somewhere. Others have said that they don't get charge interruption e-mails after it has completed charging if they unplug the car. Well, I get charging interruption e-mails so often that I've just gotten into the habit of checking the car every 30 minutes to see if it's still charging. When it fails (it ALWAYS fails at least once per charge attempt it seems - or maybe twice based on my numbers) I basically unplug, wait a few seconds and plug it back in. I wait a few minutes and then go back in the house. Sometimes it fails again right away, and sometimes it waits until I sit down. Usually after 2 or 3 of these it settles down and the car charges. If the screen estimates that it will take 2.5 hours to charge, I know that I'm going to be plugging/unplugging at least 3 or 4 times before it will complete.

Do you still have this minor problem? If not, what was done to resolve the problem? If so, then I don't know why you insist on continuing to drive the car instead of trying to get it fixed ASAP .

I haven't had the System Malfunction Error since July 17, so it's been more than a month. I have never brought it in and was planning to address this issue at the 5,000 mile service. However, if it happens again before that, I will probably take it in right away. The only other petty annoyance I have is the Charge Interrupted due to Charge Cable e-mail after the car is completely done charging (balance charge too). This happens to me only 2-3 times per month now.

My car has never failed to come Ready on the first press of the power button and I've never had the Check EV System message. (knock on wood).

If I had to guess, I would say that your car needs to have the on-board charger and the Gateway ECU replaced. However, that's just wild speculation on my part based on your symptoms.

I must say, the Toyota corporate structure is interesting. I wonder how this arrangement with Servco Pacific came about. They are selling the full line of Toyota vehicles, made in Japan and made in USA. So, they must be buying the vehicles from Toyota Motor Manufacturing directly (for US assembled cars) and bypassing Toyota Motor Sales USA. If they are buying from Toyota Motors Sales and just distributing in Hawaii, then there should be no obstacles at all to Warranty service.

 

[madcow]

A bit of success today. Kevin called and they reached out to Servco Pacific and asked them to get involved. I will take my car in on Monday and they will run some diagnostics just like they did for the other RAV4 EV that was serviced in Hawaii. They will also get me a loaner (Prius Plug In I hope).

Kevin also informed me that they now had answers for my 3 questions:

1. Current firmware is 1.3.62

2. Firmware on my car is 1.3.57

3. When did current version of firmware come out - T-SD-0050-13 Rev 1. I was kind of expecting a date, so I'm not sure what to make of this cryptic code.

 

[occ]

That's actually good data!

But prob doesn't mean much if we can't find out what our own firmware version is.

Is it pushing your luck to also ask "how" does one get the firmware version from the computer?

 

[miimura]

@madcow - I'm glad that Kevin came through for you with the firmware rev information and coordinated with Servco. #3 is probably the TSB (Technical Service Bulletin) that describes the .62 firmware. Let us know how it goes with the repair. I'm particularly curious about which parts will be replaced to address all your symptoms.

@occ - I think the only sure way to get the firmware rev from a car is a Techstream machine. That is a Panasonic rugged laptop loaded with Toyota's specialized software to interface with their 1996+ Toyota/Lexus/Scion North American vehicles.

 

[dark]

Hi Marcos,

My car just experienced a dead failure and were towed to the dealer. My dealer was very helpful to trouble shoot my car for two days. I was worry at first since they can't find the problem and I thought it is a software issue by tesla which will take them weeks to communicate and fix.

Turns out, it was caused by a lose connector from the after market alarm my dealer installed.

My impression is that the tesla and toyota ECU typically are extremely reliable. My suggestion is that it might be a hardware issue, meaning you might have electrical part that is malfunction. I wish you the best in fixing your car.

 

[madcow]

UPDATE

I took my car in to Servco Pacific on Monday morning Aug. 26. They were expecting me. It took me 10 hours to start my car so I could drive it to them and I began my attempts on Sunday morning. I was finally successful about 7pm Sunday night and I let the car run all night so I could drive it in the next day. I probably pressed the power button over 300 times (I did have to take many brakes during the day to rest my finger and my feet).

I explained to them that they should not turn off the car until they had it exactly where they wanted it to begin the diagnosis because it's rather heavy to push and that it took me 10 hours to start it the previous day. They took every opportunity to remind me that they were doing me a favor and this was out of courtesy to Toyota America.

They gave me a rather beat up 2006 RAV4 as a loaner. It doesn't even come close to what we have. I don't know how they even sell the ICE version of this car.

The Servco Pacific people said that they weren't even going to be involved in the diagnosis of the car, that they were just loaning the space for people to come in and work on it. It sounded to me like people were being flown in to work on this. During the day, I received several e-mails indicating interrupted charging attempts. I checked the vehicle location and I saw that it moved during the day. By the end of the day the e-mails stopped arriving and checked the charging status. It indicated that it was charging and it would be complete in about 29 hours (using my level 1 EVSE). This was good news in my opinion because I wasn't able to get it to charge for more than 30 minutes for the previous 2 days.

On Tuesday I called Kevin and let him know that I saw the car was charging and that I was happy to see this. I told him that Servco made it sound like someone from Toyota was flown in to work on my car. Kevin said he didn't know. I specifically asked if Sheldon Brown was here because I had read somewhere that Sheldon drove someone's car during some troubleshooting of problems (I think it was Tony's engine noises). Kevin said he didn't even now who Sheldon Brown was. I told Kevin that I would somehow like to be able to interact or speak with the people working on my car. I always make it a point to speak to the actual technicians/mechanics because you can often get way more information from them. I explained to Kevin that if people were here from the mainland they still needed to eat lunch and I'd be happy to bring them some lunch while I asked them questions.

Today Kevin called me with an update. He said that the diagnosis was complete and they identified that my car needed a part to be replaced. The defective part is a HV coolant pump. I asked if HV stood for high voltage and he seemed to think so. It looks like this part was causing the fault and it probably also explains why I couldn't charge. He said he wasn't sure how long it was going to take to have the part shipped in or who/how it was even going to be replaced. He also informed me that nobody flew to Hawaii and all diagnosis thus far was done remotely. This made me question him why it was such a big deal to have our cars diagnosed outside of California considering the fact that it had just been done, 2,500 miles away from California (but still within the United States).

I decided to bring up the fact that the loaner that I got was a ICE RAV4 and that it was given to me with no gas in it (I have a 8 mile round trip commute to my work and yesterday the low fuel light came on, after driving maybe 15 miles total). I put some gas in it, but I mentioned to Kevin that I thought I should be reimbursed for my gas expenses. He tried in a nice way to reiterate that everything that they were doing was a courtesy and that even the repair was not being handled under the warranty. He flat out told me that I did not have a warranty for my car outside of California. I understand that this might be the company line and that he is just the messenger, but this made me a bit upset and I explained to him that the last time I checked, the car was sold by Toyota USA, and I indeed lived in Hawaii, which since 1959 was a part of the USA and was covered by the laws of this country. I told him that I understand what he (Toyota) was saying but the only reason that they were saying this was because their position (no warranty outside of California) has yet to be challenged in court. I informed him that there was a large number of very happy RAV4 EV owners that were outside of California and our community of interest would not let this position go unchallenged.

If Toyota continues to provide "courtesy" service for the car, then I can probably live with this, although the situation is not ideal. I don't want to get into a pissing contest with Toyota, mostly because I love the car and I don't want the experience to sour me on it but part of me feels like it would be a good idea to make a preemptive strike and prepare for a legal battle. I'm sure that somewhere there is an attorney that would like to take on Toyota and challenge their "no warranty outside of California" policy.

 

[TonyWilliams]

I'm sure that somewhere there is an attorney that would like to take on Toyota and challenge their "no warranty outside of California" policy.

Toyota would flat lose that one.

 

[amped up]

wow, just wow. Really painful to hear that Toyota seems to be on a warpath with out-of-state buyers. It obviously isn't looking good for anyone ever wanting to buy this car, but am really getting concerned for out-of-state buyers who already purchased the car.

Would this be a different situation for out-of-state customers who lease the car? Or would they consider you to be in breach of contract since you are supposed to home-base the vehicle in CA?

 

[Blastphemy]

I'm sure that somewhere there is an attorney that would like to take on Toyota and challenge their "no warranty outside of California" policy.

Toyota would flat lose that one.

Have you read the actual terms of the warranty? You may be surprised at how air-tight it actually is.

 

[miimura]

I'm sure that somewhere there is an attorney that would like to take on Toyota and challenge their "no warranty outside of California" policy.

Toyota would flat lose that one.

Have you read the actual terms of the warranty? You may be surprised at how air-tight it actually is.

The warranty may be an air-tight representation of what Toyota wants. However, that does not mean that it complies with Federal Law.

 

[TonyWilliams]

Toyota would flat lose that one.

Have you read the actual terms of the warranty? You may be surprised at how air-tight it actually is.

The warranty may be an air-tight representation of what Toyota wants. However, that does not mean that it complies with Federal Law.

Every lawyer, including those at Toyota, think they have an winning position!! If they don't, they sure aren't going to tell you.

I think they will lose. What may seem airtight is the result of form following function. The legal team was told to put together an "air tight" defense to keep the Rav4 EV expenses in California. They put on a good show so far.

 

[madcow]

So I got my car back yesterday. The high voltage coolant pump was replaced and the software was upgraded. So far nothing has showed up in the service history, hopefully they will update this within a week or so.

They had the car for a week so I feel pretty fortunate that it was resolved rather quickly, especially considering that this happened over the Labor Day weekend. I asked both Kevin and the local Servco Pacific representative if I could talk to the person who worked on my car (to basically ask simple questions like what is the location of the part that was replaced) but they won't even tell me the person's name. So much stealth I don't understand. It's actually pretty frustrating.

Anyways, the car is fixed and when I went to pick it up, I got a lot of questions from other service people. Everyone thought the car was cool. I found out by talking to them that there are 5 RAV4 EV's in Hawaii. 2 of them on Oahu, one is the person who had their car fixed in Hawaii a few months ago the other one on Oahu is mine. The other three are owned by "some rich guy living on Lanai who has 3 of them". So, essentially, Larry Ellison (Oracle founder and CEO) has 3 of them on Lanai. I'm guessing that he probably doesn't care if he has to ship the car somewhere to have it serviced, but he's high profile enough that if he could be an advocate for this car, he could bring all kinds of attention to it and maybe that would be a good thing for out of state owners.

I just thought I'd pass this information along. So far, there are at least 2 people in Hawaii who have RAV4 EV's that have needed to have parts replaced. Oh, another thing. The car charged fine last night, but when I unplugged it this morning (around 4:45am) I got an e-mail indicating that the charging was interrupted. The car only needed to charge for about 1 hour last night at 6pm when I brought it home and I don't use a timer. I'm still wondering why I get this charge interruption notice when I unplug it when I don't think it's doing anything (there were no charging/balancing noises).

 

[miimura]

I'm glad they got your car fixed in "only" a week. Some of the earlier repairs, even in California, have taken two weeks when a Tesla technician was required.

I'm still wondering why I get this charge interruption notice when I unplug it when I don't think it's doing anything (there were no charging/balancing noises).

A lot of us get that notice for no apparent reason. I only get it once in a while. Some people get it almost every time they unplug.

 

[Charlestonleafer]

It almost seems as if out of state buyers are getting the most help from Tesla techs. I wonder if one might be better off going straight for that route. Also, if a dealer outside of California was willing to work on the car, are they even able to order parts?

 

[miimura]

It almost seems as if out of state buyers are getting the most help from Tesla techs. I wonder if one might be better off going straight for that route. Also, if a dealer outside of California was willing to work on the car, are they even able to order parts?

Somebody in one of the out of state threads said they went to their dealer's parts counter and found that all the Tesla parts they checked were in the Toyota parts ordering system. However, while the car is under warranty, most people are most concerned that those parts and the labor will be paid by Toyota.

 

[Dianne]

I also get the "interrupted" emails when I unplug... even when it's completely charged. It's OK - nice to know the notifications work and do their job!!