Why is there no remote diagnostics on my AGT?

[AltadenaAir]

On Saturday I received a dashboard message "Drive System Warning - Contact Customer Care". I did, and they have me do a hard reset, which did not clear the error.

I've worked on network-connected software since 1995. The only time my software asked the user to contact support was when the software couldn't reach the servers to log it's own support request and error message. (Yes, we generated user messages, too, but meaningful data was contained in the message sent to the server and kept in the local logs.)

My 2012 Model S had this capability. And it had the capability for the support team to log in and look deeper into the functioning of my vehicle. In December 2012, my early VIN vehicle (374) experienced a drive system failure. A seal between the motor and the gears had been mis-installed and failed, allowing hydraulic fluid to seep into the motor. Sensors in the motor detected this and shut down my car.

I was on my way home in the tow truck when Tesla called me. They had logged into my car and preliminarily diagnosed the problem. That was nearly 12 years ago.

(Side note: I was traveling in the left lane of a five lane freeway at 75mph at 6:00AM in traffic. The car started rapidly losing power and beeping at me and I was forced to try to get to the right side and an exit in a car that was rapidly slowing. It was a scary experience. As a result of my feedback, though, Tesla changed the behavior of the car to not reduce power in this case, but to strongly alert the driver to pull over. They realized it is safer to let the driver get off the freeway and cook the motor than to reduce power to protect the motor, which will no doubt be replaced anyway.)

Today, when I talked to my Service Center about my Drive System Warning, they could not log into my car. They had no other information but what I, a flawed human reading a generic and low-information message, could relay to them. I'd like to know more about the error, how serious it might be, how safe the vehicle is to drive, and what the likely time course of the error is - is it going to get worse and strand me somewhere? Is it a traction battery failure? Am I taking other risks? Please give me information to make decisions. How about, say, a numeric error code with more details?

They say they can't send a mobile technician to plug in and pull logs or get status. And they don't have a loaner to drive here. So I'm supposed to take 1/2 a day to drive to and back from a service center. Or I can get my car towed, and hassle with an ICE rental.

I want Lucid to succeed. To do so, they need to up their game in their software team.

 

[borski]

There are. Service doesn’t have access to everything, but engineering does.

My LCA has not worked since 2.4 came out, the engineers have spent the last week or two diagnosing why, and now I have a mobile service scheduled Friday for service to fix it since the engineers figured out what was wrong, remotely.

That is how it is supposed to work; but not for a drive system warning. Diagnosing remotely doesn’t really matter in this case, as whichever of the two most likely problems it is necessitates you taking it into service regardless.

 

[tonybot]

There are. Service doesn’t have access to everything, but engineering does.

My LCA has not worked since 2.4 came out, the engineers have spent the last week or two diagnosing why, and now I have a mobile service scheduled Friday for service to fix it since the engineers figured out what was wrong, remotely.

That is how it is supposed to work; but not for a drive system warning. Diagnosing remotely doesn’t really matter in this case, as whichever of the two most likely problems it is necessitates you taking it into service regardless.

I am not sure if you can share more, but if you are able to, could you share more details of the repair? I would have assumed that an issue created by the OTA will be fixed by pushing another update. Curious if the failure is at a level where a service tech need to visit? Any insights you can offer is very much appreciated.

 

[AltadenaAir]

There are. Service doesn’t have access to everything, but engineering does.

So, why do both CC and the SCs say that there is no remote diagnostics? That said, I suspect you are correct and they can indeed look at my error messages and internal systems status remotely.

I certainly understand that the likely scenarios for this error message will require repairs that can be done only in the SC. But that's not what I'm asking for.

I need information to make an informed decision about how urgently I need to deal with this. If service were painless and instant, I would certainly take my car in for service.

But it isn't easy to take my car in (half a day wasted), or to be without my car for extended periods of time (no guaranteed loaner). So I want to make good choices about when I take it in, how much hassle I am willing to deal with, traded off against how much risk I am taking by not dealing with this problem immediately.

SC's are busy places. One SC in the area told me they don't have a repair sIot available until October. I don't want to take my car in and have it sit there for several days in a service queue. I'd also like to have confidence that they have received the necessary parts before I take the car in. The last time I went for repairs, I lost several days because they wouldn't order the parts until my car was there. I understand why that might be the case in some situations, but in cases where the information is available in the car's data systems, it would be better for the customer if Lucid would: (1) remotely diagnose the problem, (2) deliver the needed parts, (3) schedule my repair so that they can start work the moment I bring the car in and so I can therefore experience minimal inconvenience.

If it is true that the most likely repairs require either a motor or a battery, I would like to have the right component in the shop before my car goes in. That does not seem like too much to ask.

On the other hand, if the diagnostics indicate that there is an imminent failure, or things much get much worse very quickly (say, while I am driving), then I might want to reduce my risk and tolerate a longer period without my car.

But those are choices that I, the customer, should be able to make for myself. All I am asking for is information to make those choices. And I am not so naive as to expect that the information they give me will be perfect, and will include caveats like "probably" and "may not". To create some hypotheticals, imagine the following two scenarios:

"Your battery has a single bad module. The module will be isolated if it fails completely, but you will lose a 15 percent of capacity." For that scenario, I am definitely going to wait until the parts arrive and I can conveniently schedule the repair and a loaner.

"Your motor is overheating. In our experience, this problem tends to get worse very quickly." For that scenario, I would probably bite the bullet and take it in tomorrow.

The current situation - no information to make decisions - inconveniences the customer, possibly a great deal, just because Lucid's software tools and policies do not make it easy for someone to look at my car remotely and provide me more information about the failure.

That's just not good customer service.

By the way, @borski, are you certain that Lucid Engineering can look at my car? 'Cause if that is true, then my next question would be "Why don't they?"

 

[borski]

I am not sure if you can share more, but if you are able to, could you share more details of the repair? I would have assumed that an issue created by the OTA will be fixed by pushing another update. Curious if the failure is at a level where a service tech need to visit? Any insights you can offer is very much appreciated.

Sounds like there is a component on my car that has a bad software config, or similar. Doesn't sound like the OTA created it, but rather that the OTA bubbled it up as a problem. This OTA is a huge release, and you might notice that it has better utilization of all the cameras and sensors, etc, just based on the visualization alone; it's fairly obvious. Any underlying issues that were there but didn't crop up due to the sensors and cameras being underutilized are now bound to pop up. I don't think that's a bad thing, but it's the drawback of having so many varied components and whatnot across different cars. Gravity should help a lot with this since it will be much more standardized.

Anyway, a mobile service tech is going to swing by and either fix it or grab some data for the engineers; I'm not sure which it is yet.

 

[borski]

So, why do both CC and the SCs say that there is no remote diagnostics? That said, I suspect you are correct and they can indeed look at my error messages and internal systems status remotely.

I don't know; I am not them.

I certainly understand that the likely scenarios for this error message will require repairs that can be done only in the SC. But that's not what I'm asking for.

I need information to make an informed decision about how urgently I need to deal with this. If service were painless and instant, I would certainly take my car in for service.

It is urgent. This error message is not intermittent, and indicates a failure. I'm not sure what else need to be made more clear. You should have your car towed to service. You should not drive it there.

But it isn't easy to take my car in (half a day wasted), or to be without my car for extended periods of time (no guaranteed loaner). So I want to make good choices about when I take it in, how much hassle I am willing to deal with, traded off against how much risk I am taking by not dealing with this problem immediately.

You should have your car towed to service.

SC's are busy places. One SC in the area told me they don't have a repair sIot available until October. I don't want to take my car in and have it sit there for several days in a service queue. I'd also like to have confidence that they have received the necessary parts before I take the car in. The last time I went for repairs, I lost several days because they wouldn't order the parts until my car was there. I understand why that might be the case in some situations, but in cases where the information is available in the car's data systems, it would be better for the customer if Lucid would: (1) remotely diagnose the problem, (2) deliver the needed parts, (3) schedule my repair so that they can start work the moment I bring the car in and so I can therefore experience minimal inconvenience.

If it is true that the most likely repairs require either a motor or a battery, I would like to have the right component in the shop before my car goes in. That does not seem like too much to ask.

Feel free to provide that feedback to CC.

On the other hand, if the diagnostics indicate that there is an imminent failure, or things much get much worse very quickly (say, while I am driving), then I might want to reduce my risk and tolerate a longer period without my car.

But those are choices that I, the customer, should be able to make for myself. All I am asking for is information to make those choices. And I am not so naive as to expect that the information they give me will be perfect, and will include caveats like "probably" and "may not". To create some hypotheticals, imagine the following two scenarios:

"Your battery has a single bad module. The module will be isolated if it fails completely, but you will lose a 15 percent of capacity." For that scenario, I am definitely going to wait until the parts arrive and I can conveniently schedule the repair and a loaner.

"Your motor is overheating. In our experience, this problem tends to get worse very quickly." For that scenario, I would probably bite the bullet and take it in tomorrow.

The current situation - no information to make decisions - inconveniences the customer, possibly a great deal, just because Lucid's software tools and policies do not make it easy for someone to look at my car remotely and provide me more information about the failure.

That's just not good customer service.

You should have your car towed to service. Nobody is going to tell you anything else. Even if they knew what the exact problem was, after a drive system warning, there is zero chance they are going to accept the liability of saying 'eh, but it should be safe to drive' because if it isn't, and something bad happens, that is on them now. You should have your car towed to service.

If this were "right camera failure," then sure - that is a different story. But it isn't. This is a drive system warning, and you should have your car towed to service.

Lucid has plenty of diagnostics for plenty of things, much of which is accessible over the air. In fact, this was something Peter explicitly highlighted and made a big deal of at the Technology and Manufacturing Day on Tuesday last week.

By the way, @borski, are you certain that Lucid Engineering can look at my car?

Yes.

'Cause if that is true, then my next question would be "Why don't they?"

They do. If necessary, usually while it is in service. But in various situations, they have asked customers to ensure they have connectivity so an engineer could debug a problem remotely.

 

[tonybot]

Sounds like there is a component on my car that has a bad software config, or similar. Doesn't sound like the OTA created it, but rather that the OTA bubbled it up as a problem. This OTA is a huge release, and you might notice that it has better utilization of all the cameras and sensors, etc, just based on the visualization alone; it's fairly obvious. Any underlying issues that were there but didn't crop up due to the sensors and cameras being underutilized are now bound to pop up. I don't think that's a bad thing, but it's the drawback of having so many varied components and whatnot across different cars. Gravity should help a lot with this since it will be much more standardized.

Anyway, a mobile service tech is going to swing by and either fix it or grab some data for the engineers; I'm not sure which it is yet.

Thanks for sharing! Hope it gets figured out for you this Friday!

 

[AltadenaAir]

You should have your car towed to service. Nobody is going to tell you anything else.

Actually, they didn't say that. They asked me to drive it in for service.

And leave it there. Without the availability of a loaner.

 

[borski]

Actually, they didn't say that. They asked me to drive it in for service.

And leave it there. Without the availability of a loaner.

Fair enough. Once they suggested that, if you said you’d rather have it towed because it has a drive error, I’m certain they would have obliged.

Alternatively, you can call your closest service center directly.

 

[Lucken]

There are. Service doesn’t have access to everything, but engineering does.

My LCA has not worked since 2.4 came out, the engineers have spent the last week or two diagnosing why, and now I have a mobile service scheduled Friday for service to fix it since the engineers figured out what was wrong, remotely.

That is how it is supposed to work; but not for a drive system warning. Diagnosing remotely doesn’t really matter in this case, as whichever of the two most likely problems it is necessitates you taking it into service regardless.

So if your car was used as the guinea pig in determining what went wrong with LCA, the new software fix should be dubbed ‘Borski 2.43’.

 

[borski]

So if your car was used as the guinea pig in determining what went wrong with LCA, the new software fix should be dubbed ‘Borski 2.43’.

Haha I’m happy to help find bugs. As a software and security guy, I’m a bit more accepting of them than the average person, and I like to live on the bleeding edge, provided the car never actually makes me bleed.

Thus far, I haven’t had any issues with that.

 

[AltadenaAir]

Circling back after the problem was resolved.

Per my original title, "Why is there no remote diagnostics". I posted that because both my usual SC and Customer Care told me they could not provide any insight into the source of my (very general) error message. They also could not promise a loaner. I tried another service center and got the same answer. But I persisted, reached out yet again to CC, and eventually I was contacted by another nearby-ish service center and they were much more helpful.

They were able to look at the underlying error in my car, and determine that the problem was a single battery module had fallen out of spec and was causing the error. The repair is a complete battery replacement. Now that I knew the error, I could act much more rationally. I wasn't overly concerned that this failure would "get worse" with my driving, and I wasn't planning any big trips where getting stranded would be a big deal.

So I asked them to order the replacement battery, which they did after sending me some DocuSign paperwork. I asked them to let me know when the battery was scheduled to arrive and a loaner was available.

I was able to get a loaner (they drove it to me at home!) and get my car fixed with relatively little downtime or hassle.

I still am not happy that I had to persist on getting good failure information, and only one of three service centers figured out how to do that (or that this would affect my decision). But now I'll probably preferentially call the more helpful SC.