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To buy a Tesla Model 3, only to end up in hell

In October 2024 I decided to buy a Tesla Model 3. When I picked up the car, many of its features did not work (cameras, GPS navigation system, autopilot, software updates, etc.). It turned out to be a major issue with Tesla’s brand-new on-board computer. This is a common failure in Tesla Model 3 cars manufactured in the last quarter of 2024. The issue has affected thousands of Tesla customers. Two weeks later, the car began to lose 8% battery daily. Several drivers experiencing the same failure have also reported problems with the braking (ABS) and suspension (EPS) systems.

Tesla acknowledges all faults in the vehicle (except for battery losses, a fact on which it has not yet formally commented). The company refuses to accept a return of the vehicle without penalty, even though the problems were reported immediately. The only solution they offer is to make me wait 3 months for a miraculous replacement part. Ignored and without any type of compensation, I live attached to a car that needs a full recharge every 12 days to not die. For my own safety, and that of other drivers, I have stopped driving the vehicle.

In this blog I tell you how it happened. If you are the owner of a Tesla car, or you are thinking about buying one, I encourage you to read my blog and see up close how Elon Musk’s company treats their own customers. It is possible that if you have problems with your car, you will end up living in hell.

The road to a Tesla

It’s been over 4 years since I stopped driving regularly.

At the end of 2020, my partner and I moved to Shenzhen (China). My old car, a Renault Clio DCI 1.5, stayed in Spain. I had bought it second-hand in 2007, and it served me well for more than 10 years. I never had big problems. Upon returning from China, at the end of 2023, my wife and I went to live in Slovakia, where she is from. That’s when I made the decision that in 2024 I would buy a new car.

I’m not a motor enthusiast. I like to drive, and I have had the opportunity to take long car trips through Spain and other countries, but I know little about cars. Therefore, when purchasing a new vehicle, I decided to follow the advice of what experts call “the wisdom of the crowd”. Of the list of the 10 best-selling cars in Spain, the one that caught my attention the most was the Toyota Corolla. It is a car that I had already driven as a rental vehicle on several occasions. The decision was almost made, my next car would be a Toyota Corolla.

It was during a family gathering in August when I decided to ask my cousins, much more educated than me in the world of motors, for advice. One of them had a Kia EV6. He was very satisfied with it, so the idea of buying an electric car began to float around in my head.

I started reading blogs and online magazines about electric cars. I soon came to the conclusion that the Tesla Model 3 is, today, the best EV in terms of quality and price. It is the electric car with the lowest consumption (12.5 kW / 100 km), and it is also the best-selling EV in the world (again the wisdom of the crowd). In addition, there is the incentive of the Tesla Charger Network. After reading an article on my friend Alberto Ruibal’s blog in which he argues why the Tesla Model 3 is cheaper than a Dacia Sandero (in Spanish), I ended up being completely convinced. My next car would be a Tesla Model 3.

Buying a Tesla where there is no Tesla

A Tesla car is always purchased through Tesla’s website. If you live in a country where Tesla is officially present, you would simply go to the website and buy your car from your country (for example, Tesla Spain). Unfortunately, Tesla is still not present in some countries in Europe. That is the case of countries such as Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania or Slovakia, where I live. If Tesla is not present in your country of residence, you would go to Tesla’s website and buy your car at Tesla Europe, which is physically located in Tilburg (Holland). In short, when you live in a European country where there is no Tesla you have to import your car from Holland (See NOTE).

Importing the car from Holland implies an additional investment of time and money. More time, because you will have to complete more bureaucratic procedures to register the car in your country of residence. More money, because you will need to hire a transport company to bring your car from Holland. It is not possible to travel to Holland, get to Tilburg, and drive the car from there.

Another problem with importing the car is that, in case there is some type of subsidy for the acquisition of EVs in your country of residence, it is likely you will not be able to use it if the vehicle is imported.

I estimate that the total import costs were slightly over 2000 EUR.

NOTE: In some Internet online boards I read that it is possible to buy the car in any other country in Europe, but normally users who choose this option usually have problems with VAT refunds.

Transporting a car from Holland

I made my reservation on October 5, 2024. Three weeks later, specifically on October 31, the car was already available for pickup. I then contacted a vehicle transport company, Tradisa, to organize the delivery.

Incidentally, just when the car was arriving, I was in Spain. Therefore, Tradisa suggested me to contact DriveTesla.sk. This is a company in Slovakia that is dedicated to importing Tesla cars. They offer services such as vehicle purchase, registration, insurance, etc. I contracted several services with them: insurance, car registration and deposit service (in addition to winter tires). On November 4, Tradisa dropped the car off at DriveTesla facilities and three weeks later, once I was back in Slovakia, I went to Bratislava to pick up the car. It was Friday, November 29. After almost 2 months since the reservation, the car was finally in my hands!

But not everything was going to be good news. One of DriveTesla’s staff members warned me: “By the way, the cameras are not working. Probably it can be fixed by updating the Operating System.” I didn’t know it at the time, but my nightmare was about to begin…

Hands on the wheel

Making the jump from a 20-year-old Renault Clio to a Tesla Model 3 is not trivial. I’d driven automatic cars before, but at least they had a physical gear-shifter! :) For 45 minutes, one of the DriveTesla staff members taught me the gist of how the car worked. We also took the opportunity to try to update the Operating System and solve the cameras problem, but the download got stuck halfway through. It seems like I wasn’t going to be able to fix the cameras, but did I really need them? “My old Clio didn’t have cameras, I’m not going to miss them”, I thought.

I was expecting a long trip, so before hitting the road I decided to take a few laps to practice. I practiced until I felt comfortable. Before leaving, I looked up my destination on the car’s GPS navigator. Bad luck, the GPS didn’t work either. “What difference does it make? My old Clio didn’t have a GPS navigator either. I’m not going to miss it”, I thought again. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, looked for my destination on Google Maps (a small town in the middle of Slovakia where I would meet my wife), and this time, I hit the road.

On the way it started to rain. I remembered what I was told me during the instruction: “the Tesla Model 3 has a windshield wiper that comes into operation automatically when it starts raining”. It was raining and raining, but the automatic windshield wipers didn’t kick in. On the steering wheel hub, there is also a physical button to activate the wipers manually. I had no choice but to start pressing that button, and continue doing it often because unfortunately it wasn’t raining, it was pouring. From the Tesla’s main screen, it’s possible to set the windshield wiper speed. However, I prefer to not take my eyes off the road when I drive. After a long time of almost continuously pressing the button, I discovered that the speed can also be set by pressing the button twice in a row very quickly.

After an hour and a half of driving, I stopped the car to rest and stretch my legs. That’s when I understood what was happening. Since the cameras were not working, the automatic windshield wipers did not work either. Paying more attention to the information screen, I realized of several notifications warning that other functionalities in the car were not available. For example, lane departure detection, sleep detection or emergency brake. That is to say, everything that depended on the car’s cameras didn’t work, including Autopilot obviously (but luckily it didn’t occur to me to try it lol). Another thing that didn’t work was syncing with Spotify. I mean, I managed to pair Spotify from my phone to the Tesla, but when I started playing music, the song stopped after 10 seconds. This always happened, regardless of which song.

Even so, I still had hope inside of me all this could be solved by updating the Operating System. Because we already know that hope is the last thing ever lost and we human beings are forever optimists.

A broken car

On Sunday December 1, when I got home, I tried to update the Operating System again. No luck. Same problem again, the download hung halfway.

The next day, I gave it another try with the same result. So on Tuesday, December 3, I gave up completely and opened a ticket, through the Tesla app, at the Budapest Service Center (my closest Tesla Service Center). I described all the technical problems I had observed in the car so far:

After four days without receiving a response from the Budapest Service Center, I texted them again. On the sixth day, terribly worried, I called Tesla Customer Service. After a long wait, I managed to speak to an agent. As I was describing the problem, he already knew what the issue was about. This article, authored by Fred Lambert for Electrek, explains the problem in the car: Tesla is having major issue with its self-driving computer inside new cars. The article describes a fault present in many of the Tesla Model 3 manufactured in the last quarter of 2024. A short circuit when calibrating the cameras leaves the new on-board computer, known as HW4, unusable.

“The problem is linked to a new version of Tesla’s HW4 (sometimes called AI4) onboard self-driving computer. Internally, some refer to the new version as AI4.1. The computers are short-circuiting.”

And then it continues:

“Tesla drivers are reporting computer failures after driving off with their brand-new cars over just the first few tens to hundreds of miles. Wide-ranging features powered by the computer, like active safety features, cameras, and even GPS, navigation, and range estimations, fail to work.”

These are exactly the problems that I had observed in the vehicle, along with other additional dysfunctions such as the inability to update the Operating System and the data transfer problems in Spotify.

The article also explains that Tesla does not have replacement stock for the new on-board computer, and is making its customers believe that the car is drivable in this state and poses no risk:

“One source said that Tesla service is being told to play down any safety concerns related to this problem to avoid people believing their brand-new cars are not drivable. It’s unclear if Tesla reported the issue to NHTSA despite the fact that the broken rear-view camera goes against federal safety regulations, which should force a recall.”

“Tesla service is currently being overwhelmed by the issue, and Tesla is pushing service appointments to next year.”

On December 10, 2024, I received a response from the Budapest Service Center confirming the problems in the vehicle and that the on-board computer had to be replaced. As the article points out, they informed me that at the moment they did not have the part in stock and they did not know when it would be available.

Confirmación Budapest

Exactly one week later, I received a message in Hungarian from the Budapest Service Center letting me choose a date for my appointment. The earliest date, February 28, 2025.

Fecha cita en Centro de Servicio de Budapest

Almost 3 months of waiting to, hypothetically, repair the vehicle. Apparently, Tesla considers OK their customers to drive vehicles with the following features not working:

Renault Clio vs Tesla Model 3

The Electrotek article cited above was published on December 15, 2024. Until I read it, I wasn’t fully aware of the impact of the breakdown. Especially, the part that affects the braking (ABS) and suspension (EPS) systems. In fact, I kept driving the car and joked with my friends that I had an Analog Tesla. That is, on the outside the car looked like a Tesla Model 3, but on the inside it worked like my old Renault Clio DCi 1.5. Let’s compare:

  Renault Clio DCI 1.5 Tesla Model 3 (Analógico)
Cameras No No
Software updates No No
Autopilot No No
Automatic windshield wiper No No
automatic lights No No
Lane departure detection No No
Sleep detection No No
Emergency brake No No
Surveillance (Sentry mode) No No
Spotify Yes (external) Yes (10 seconds)
Price 6,600 EUR 35,970 EUR

In fact, a 20-year-old Clio DCI is slightly superior to this Analog Tesla Model 3. It is true that the Clio does not have heated seats and steering wheel, but that does not justify the price difference I think.

The comparison may seem humorous, but it reveals something obvious: a Tesla Model 3 is superior to other cars for these and other features. These functionalities are not extras in the vehicle, they are an integral part of it, and have a cost for which customers pay. Some of these features are essential in a Tesla Model 3, such as GPS navigation or the camera system. Why should I take risks, whether or not I’m going to hit the car, when parking it? Planning a long-distance trip is much more difficult without GPS navigation since I have to schedule the stops myself to recharge the car and I cannot preheat the battery. When I charge on a Tesla charger, I do not know the cost since this information is only available in the GPS navigator, etc. I have left out of the picture the problems, reported by other users, in the braking (ABS) and suspension (EPS) systems, but without a doubt, they pose a risk to the safety of drivers.

But this story doesn’t end here. The worst was yet to come…

Doctor, my car is losing battery. Is it serious?

It is expected for an EV to lose battery while it remains parked. There’s even a technical term for this. It is called vampire drain or phantom drain.

The vampire drain is the discharge that occurs in an electric car while we are not using it. It is something similar to what happens with mobile phones. Even if we are not using a cell phone, it loses battery unless it remains plugged in. The same thing happens in an EV. I don’t know what the average expected battery loss value is for a Tesla Model 3. During the 3 weeks the car was parked in Bratislava, the battery went from 83% to 79%. That is, 4% loss in 3 weeks. I think it’s a pretty reasonable number.

In addition to vampire discharge, EV owners need to be more aware about the care and maintenance of their vehicle’s battery. For example, the usual thing is to charge the car up to 80-85%, and never leave it below 20%. If the car falls below 20%, it is recommended to recharge it immediately. Electric car batteries, unlike laptop batteries, do not have a memory effect. Therefore, the battery is not damaged if the car is charged from 20% to 50%, for example. On the other hand, Tesla recommends charging the battery up to 100% at least once a week.

I don’t know whether it was a coincidence or not, but just when I charged the car for the first time to 100%, the battery started to drain. I charged the battery to 100% and just 4 days later, without having used the car, the battery was at 83%. That means, the car had lost 4% battery daily. Just that day, my wife and I had planned a long trip to the High Tatras.

While driving, my wife was searching the Internet for information about what could have caused this sudden battery loss. «Could it have been the cold?» The car sleeps in a garage, and although it was winter the temperature never dropped below 0 degrees. It is true that extreme temperatures (very high or very low) can affect the battery, but Norway has the highest number of EVs in the world per person. Common sense tells me that it must be colder in Norway than in Slovakia. Therefore, it couldn’t be the cold. Another possibility could be some feature that had been left activated. It is known that the Sentry mode of the Tesla Model 3 consumes 1% every 2.5 hours. That means, if you inadvertently leave Sentry mode activated, the car can lose almost 10% of battery in a day. But Sentry mode was not activated.

Either way, this unexpected setback was a huge inconvenience to our trip. Arriving at our first stop, we had to spend all of our time finding a Tesla charger before resuming our journey. Fortunately, one recharge was enough to get me back home without having to stop again.

As soon as I returned, I went to charge the car. This time I decided to charge it up to 82-83%. This happened on Saturday December 21, 2024.

Christmas in hell

The next day, I was flying from Budapest (Hungary) to Porto (Portugal). It was a bumpy flight, and I ended up arriving in Porto on Monday morning. Upon arrival, I opened the Tesla app to see if the car was still losing battery at 4%. My surprise was huge when I checked the battery was at 69%. That is to say, the car was losing battery at a greater pace than expected, around 8% daily!! A chill ran through my entire body.

I was going to spend approximately a week in Spain. On December 29 I would take a plane from Vigo to London to spend New Year’s Eve there with my wife and some friends. Until January 2 I would not be back in Slovakia. I did a quick calculation. With a battery loss of 8% per day the battery would end up being consumed between December 31 and January 1. Once I had made this calculation, the first thing that crossed my mind was to cancel my trip to London and make a 3000 km trip to Slovakia to charge the car. It was an absolutely irrational thought. I was putting my life, well-being and relationships with family and friends before the needs of a car. I had bought a car so I could move around more freely. But now the car was conditioning me. My life and my plans revolved around an object. I didn’t have a car, I had a tamagotchi with wheels. I had to take care of it, I had to see if it had slept well, and above all, I had to check if it still had battery left.

Going back to my senses, I looked for a plan B. I called my wife, who was still in Slovakia, and told her the bad news. The idea was to somehow charge the car enough so that it wouldn’t die before returning. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy for her because she hadn’t driven in years. In addition, she didn’t have much time since she was taking a flight to London that same day. Even so, with the help of a friend, she managed to charge the car up to 98% before leaving.

I spent Christmas calling Tesla and trying to figure out why the car had started losing 8% battery daily. I remember that on Christmas Eve I managed to speak with Tesla Spain. When I asked whether it was normal for the car to lose 8% of battery daily, the agent on the other end of the line answered: “I don’t know”. I was stunned. Now I really didn’t understand anything. “Was it within expectations that the car would lose 8% battery per day? But, who could live with a car like that?”, I thought. In my phone call with Tesla Spain, I insisted that they speak to the Budapest Service Center so that they could get back me. I had notified them immediately when I saw the car was losing battery, but I still had not received a response. I also sent an email to DeliveryEMEA (my only contact when purchasing the vehicle), demanding either a replacement of the vehicle or a full refund of the amount, since the car was defective from the very first day I laid my hands on it and now there was this huge battery problem. I also tried to contact the Tesla Sales Department, without success.

The days I went through were not pleasant at all. My head was constantly spinning around the car. Every day since December 23, I started sending a screenshot to the Budapest Service Center showing how the car was losing 8% battery per day. I asked them directly, repeatedly, what was causing this problem. But I never received a response. They had deliberately decided to ignore me. To this day, and as I write these lines, I am still waiting for the Budapest Service Center to explain to me what the battery losses are due to. I continue sending screenshots daily.

Informe diario pérdida de batería

Epilogue

When I returned to Slovakia, the first thing I did was to charge the car. Then, I called Tesla again. On the other end of the line, an agent told me the battery losses were due to previous problems already existing in the car. I insisted that the Budapest Service Center confirmed this diagnosis, but as I have explained previously they have never done so. I asked for solutions or mitigations to this situation. The only solution they gave me was to keep waiting for that miraculous replacement part. There are no contingency plans, no replacement vehicles, no compensation for these problems.

The lack of management and planning at Tesla left me greatly disappointed and in disbelief. A car that is known to be defective should be evaluated at a mechanic immediately. Making a customer to wait 3 months for a proper diagnosis or replacement part is unacceptable. Forcing thousands of customers to drive a dysfunctional car, which depends so much on technology, is not only unacceptable but also irresponsible. It poses a serious risk to your safety, that of your companions, passers-by and other drivers. Forcing someone to live with a car that loses 8% battery a day is like forcing someone to live tied to a chain. Even charging the car to 100%, the battery does not last more than 12 days. I can’t go on vacation for 2 weeks because otherwise this car would die.

During my conversation with the Tesla agent, I asked whether the Vienna Service Center could handle my case more quickly. The agent told me that he could not check the waiting times of the centers, and suggested me not to switch Service Centers as I would lose my turn. All Tesla’s customers have their hands tied, even though they do not know it yet. I have absolutely lost my trust in this company, and the worst of all is that I feel like a prisoner of it.

I came to the conclusion that, even if Tesla were able to fix the problems in my car, I would not like to live within their walled garden. I don’t want to plan my life around the ineptitude and inefficiency of a company, which also ignores me and in a banal way puts my life at risk. On January 5, 2025 I called Tesla Netherlands Sales Department to request the return of the vehicle and a refund of my money. Nobody picked up the phone on the other end of the line. Finally, after several calls, I managed to talk to an agent from another department. I requested a refund of my money since the vehicle was delivered broken and now the battery problems were added. The agent was not sure whether I was entitled to a full refund since the car had more than 100 km. He was also not sure whether I could leave the car in Budapest or should I transport it back to Tilburg. He promised me that on Monday, January 6, 2025, someone from the Sales Department would contact me. We agreed on a time, between 4 and 6 PM. After almost a month, I’m still waiting for that call.

All of this can be summarized in a single sentence: The Head of the Department of Government Efficiency is the CEO of an disfunctional company.

Since the battery problems occurred I have stopped driving the vehicle. Even more so, after reading the article by Daniel Murias for Motorpasión (in Spanish). I consider it a risk to drive the car in this state. And I don’t think I should risk my life, or the lives of other people, to find out whether the car’s braking or suspension systems are working properly. This should be done by a mechanic, either at a garage or a Tesla Service Center. But this is Tesla, and it seems like no one is behind the wheel.