How a chance encounter with Tesla employees saved my 9-hour road trip

My elderly sister’s health took a turn for the worse, so I decided to drive down to see her in Castlemaine Victoria. I live in Sydney, so it meant a day on the road driving (9 hour trip from Sydney to Castlemaine in Victoria). 

I set off on my own in my three year old Tesla model 3 performance at about 7:30 in the morning. A bit of traffic getting out of Sydney but nothing to perturb me about the trip ahead.

I had already been down to Geelong once, up to the Gold Coast twice and had earlier that year driven all the way up to a cattle station 150 km north of Dingo in central Queensland. A trip down to the northern part of Victoria shouldn’t be a challenge in my EV. 

Anyway, I made it to Goulburn with ease, plugged the car in to charge for the next leg. I could make it to Wodonga with a 100% charge but decided to stop at Gundagai and charge there so I set the car to charge to 80% or so.

I’d had surgery recently and didn’t want to push myself too hard. Then my thoughts turned to food as I hadn’t had anything to eat that morning. I headed up the road to a little café not 5 minutes away on foot. 

One large coffee and an egg and bacon roll later and I was off back to the car to disengage the charger and head off to Gundagai. I pulled the plug then had second thoughts and pushed it back in again. It was at about 85% but I though I could shorten the next stop by topping up a bit more here. Got to a bit over 90% and decided to head off. Not good charging the Tesla Performance to 100% when you don’t need to anyway. 

I don’t even remember the road to Gundagai and found myself at the chargers there ready to charge for the next run to Wodonga. Plugged the cable in and oh no it would charge, no green flashing T, just blue flashing T!?

I moved to another station and tried that but no difference. Just then a Model X pulled in and started charging without issue! At Gundagai there are also NRMA fast chargers right next door to the Tesla chargers. So, I moved over to them to try but no difference. The error report on my phone said there was no power or something to that affect.

I rang the Tesla support number and spent about 20 minutes trying different things with the tech on the other end of the phone. Scroll wheel reboot, power down the car for 5 minutes, pull the charge port lock cable inside the boot, check for debris in the charge port that might be stopping the plug, open and close the charge port three times from the console screen in the car.

The tech was running out of ideas. He finally suggested that I head off to the nearest destination charger and try a destination charger. Wasn’t really keen but if that was all I could do… 

Then just as I hung up the phone the Model X people returned to their car. Four blokes with Tesla shirts on and looking concerned that I was having trouble. They asked if I was having trouble and said they were Tesla employees that had been doing training in Canberra, and could they help.

I jumped at the chance. Mobile mechanics hundreds of kilometres from the nearest Tesla shop just when I needed them. 

So, all four of them started pulling my car apart, one with laptop in had reading through troubleshooting notes trying to debug this issue. They tried various things, thinking that it was a simple problem to start with.

They tried all the simple tricks first. Then more and more complex solutions until they were starting to get apologetic and suggesting that I tell the support people just to send a tow truck as nothing was going to work.

Then one of the guys decided to try one more thing. I think they called it a 12v restart or reset. The process was as follows:

• Power down the car (there is a power down option under the “service” menu) 
• Open the frunk and remove the covers over the 12V battery
• Remove the negative terminal from the battery (we had to find somebody with a small socket set to do this as non of us had any tools) 
• Then lift the rear seat on the driver’s side and unplug the main cable 
• Leave if for 60 seconds and then revers the process 

It worked!

The car started charging normally. Congratulations all round and a very grateful me shaking hands. 

They all headed off saying we’d probably catch up at the next charge station. I was about to leave when the guy we’d borrowed the tools from appears wondering if the Tesla guys had headed off with his socket set but no it was still in my frunk.

So, after returning all borrowed things I headed of with fingers crossed that it wouldn’t happen again. And it didn’t.

The next stop at Wodonga was eventless and I headed off to Echuca to charge for the last time before getting to my destination. I went up the road to get some dinner at Echuca (nice Indian restaurants there) and on my return the guys were there charging and wondering how I got in front of them. Beats me, I had no idea. 

So, I said goodbye to them again and continued the trip without issue. 

Moral of the story, listen to the IT Crowd: “Have you turned it off and back on again?”