(car charge port clattering)
- What do you do with your electric car
if you are not even able to charge it?
- I was just listening to Kelly Clarkson.
(relaxed music)
- [Dan] Okay, so tell me what happened.
- So I was just driving home from yoga
and then all of a sudden I got this warning message,
"Charge port disabled.
"Charging unavailable."
I was listening. - Were you tryna charge
somewhere?
- No, I was just listen to Kelly Clarkson.
(car charge port clattering)
- Well, that doesn't work.
What do you do with an electric car
when your car won't charge,
or even allow you to charge
because the charge port won't open?
Okay, I'm gonna try to push the button on mine.
Sometimes that opens up the port.
So watch this, when I push this button.
This opens, does your open?
- [Leslie] No.
- We 130 miles range left in this car,
which is nice but how much do you actually wanna drive
if you can't charge it?
I called Tesla Service.
They had me reboot the car in two different ways.
There's like a three-minute power-off and then there's also,
you push the little buttons on the steering wheel
and it goes off.
Neither one of them helped because if you look down here,
we are still, "Charging port disabled," 130 miles.
The weird thing is this happened while Leslie
was just driving down the street,
we weren't trying to charge or anything
and it just all of a sudden went out.
One thing that they said it might be is the fuse,
and so if it's the fuse that's an easy fix.
If it's not that then it's something bigger
and they're going to have to tow this car
to Las Vegas, Nevada, two hours away,
and we're gonna be without our car for a little bit.
On this, one gas-powered cars win.
This is real life,
this is what happens when you have electric car.
Is it still worth it?
At this point, yes.
Tesla Roadside wants to troubleshoot through somethings,
so they're walking me through how to somehow pry open this.
- [Support Agent] So we just want to actually
apply some pressure in, on the very edge of that.
That part of the door actually, kinda,
swings into the vehicle.
And as you apply some pressure in on that
- Oh. - then the pointed end
should start opening.
- Oh yeah, that's easy. (car charging port creaking)
- Okay. - Okay.
- [Man] When you are able to get that plugged in,
I'm not sure if that fully resolves your issues though,
but what happens when you do plug the vehicle in
and try and start charging it.
- Okay, give me a minute.
Let me grab the charging cable and plug it in.
(upbeat music)
Okay.
It is being jammed, I think I need to
pull down on this lever in the back
and then stick it in, 'cause won't go in.
Hold up.
(car door rattling)
(car charging port clunks)
Okay, got it plugged in.
No lights are coming on, nothing's happening.
- [Support Agent] Okay.
So the charge cable or the wall connector
that you have installed, are there any lights on that cable?
Or a portion of it, like a green light?
- [Dan] Yeah, the green lights on it.
I actually grabbed it and plugged it in fresh,
just to make sure.
- [Support Agent] And then,
with the door open and try and plug-in,
there's still no light on that charge port?
- No, no light at all.
- [Support Agent] Got it, okay.
And you have your key fob with you?
- Yes, I do.
- [Support Agent] Press and hold down
on the rear trunk button on your key fob, for a few seconds.
- Two, three, four, five.
And nothing. - Yeah, something shoulda
happened by then, but nothing else happening?
No lights coming on, nothing at all?
- [Dan] No, nothing.
- [Support Agent] Okay.
That was a couple of steps that we could take,
but if that's not resulting in anything
then we just get everything coordinated
to get it down to service then.
- How much do you think that'll cost
to tow it all the way down there?
- [Customer Service Agent] No, car repair says it's,
you are still under warranty.
Right? - Yes.
- Almost positive the vehicles under warranty.
Yeah, okay. - Yep.
- [Customer Service Agent] So that
shouldn't charge you anything.
- That's good.
What do you do with your electric car
if you are not even able to charge it?
(mellow upbeat music)
There she goes.
They're towing the Tesla.
- That's so sad where? - Where?
- [Dan] It won't charge.
- Really? - So have to sent it
all the way to Vegas to figure out why it won't charge
and then get it back to us somehow.
- Oh, no. - Oh, good luck.
- Bye-bye.
Goodbye, Tesla.
Have a nice ride.
This is probably the first time when I've been like,
"Yeah, should of had a gas powered car,
it wouldn't have this issue."
Yes, I know it's free, Tesla's gonna take care of all the
hassle with it, but it's a very strange thing to happen.
Again, this videos gonna continue
when I find out what the heck is wrong with it,
and how long it takes for them to fix it.
Let's see.
It's been six days since the Tesla was towed
from our house to the service center in Las Vegas.
I haven't heard any updates.
On my phone it says that the car
only has 12 miles of range left.
Every day it's been getting up to
120, 130 degrees inside of the car
but it's not cooling itself.
Because it's below 50 miles range,
it just won't cool the car.
But it's still having phantom drain,
every single day because of the heat,
as it tries to keep the batteries cool.
I'm a little bit worried that it's gonna get to zero
and the batteries are gonna have some major issues
because it's at zero for a while
and they're not cooling the batteries
in that extreme Las Vegas heat.
I also don't understand why it's been six days.
I haven't heard a phone call, I haven't had a text.
I've spoke to them on day one about this
and I haven't heard any updates or anything from Tesla,
so I'm a little discouraged.
So I'm at the airport right now.
I'm gonna call the service center
and just see what they say.
And I'll put you guys on the line
and we'll find out what progress they've made in six days,
when they clearly haven't touched my car
according to one my app is saying.
- [Woman] Please leave a detailed message
and we will return your call as soon as possible.
- Hey, this is Dan Markham, I live in St. George, Utah.
My phone number is.
My Tesla has been at your service center since Tuesday,
we had it towed there from St. George,
and it's just sitting there outside losing battery everyday.
I think it only has 12 miles range left
according to my app and it doesn't look like anybody's
appeared to touch it yet and work on it.
But I need my car back, it's been almost a week.
The charge port was disabled
and so they had to tow it there.
But, at minimum, I would just love to have an update
and just hear like where my car is and what's going on.
If they found any issues or whatever.
The saga continues.
Hopefully they'll call back and we can figure this out.
(upbeat music)
Look, the whole gangs here.
There's Claire, there's mama.
There's London, say "Hi, London."
(London mumbles)
Good job.
There's Lincoln, he just took a nap on the couch,
after golf tournament.
Hey.
And there's the dog, hi dog.
Say "Hi dog!"
All right so I wanted to give you an idea
of where we are at currently.
The last thing that you guys saw was I was in an airport
and I called Tesla, left them a message about my car,
I really wasn't happy 'cause it's been six days
and I don't have the car, and the battery was about to die,
which is not good for the cooling.
And while I was flying from San Jose to to Las Vegas,
I got a message from 'em.
So here's the message that we had.
- [Marlon] Hey Daniel, this is Marlon from Tesla Las Vegas,
I'm the associate service manager here.
I just got your voicemail,
I do apologize that the vehicles been missed.
Unfortunately the tow provider that dropped the vehicle off
didn't provide us with any details
that the vehicle was dropped off,
so we're unaware that the vehicle was on site.
I will make sure that this is the priority,
as far as repair goes, moving forward.
So that we'll look into it deeper and give you a
better understanding as far as
what is going on with the vehicle.
- Okay.
It's a really interesting process.
So I get it, I feel bad because
I love that the guy apologized and just admitted,
"We didn't even know we have the car here."
That's good that he admitted that.
It's kind of annoying that it's been there for a week.
I guess the breakdown in the process was
the tow truck provider not telling them that it was there,
even though I don't know where he would have left the keys.
Did he just leave it in the car?
There should be some sort of communication process.
They can't put it all on the tow truck driver,
that's just a guy that gets paid to drive a car
to a location and drop it off.
That's where we're at right now.
Today is my birthday, happy birthday me.
We are tryna decide where we're gonna go for my birthday
and we're either gonna stay around town
and just have an overnight date, Leslie and I.
Or go to Las Vegas and have a date there.
And so because the car is there,
and I got this text message from them this morning saying,
"Good morning Daniel, we are proceeding with the repairs
"to your vehicle this morning.
"We will reach out to you again this afternoon
"with another update.
"Have a great day!"
That leads me to believe
there's a good chance that it's gonna be done today.
If they're just repairing the door
and a couple little things.
They're fast enough, once they get working on a vehicle,
that it should be done by this afternoon.
And so we're gonna go stay in Vegas
and just have fingers crossed that the car will be ready
tonight or tomorrow morning so that we can
drive both cars home tomorrow.
So, all right, maybe I'll show you a little bit of Vegas,
so this video isn't all just me talking about my Tesla.
Here's the party in Vegas, for my birthday.
(upbeat music)
All right, we made it to our room in Las Vegas
and good news on the ride, we got a text
and then we got a phone call from Tesla Service
and they were very, very apologetic.
As soon as they realized that they had the car today,
they fixed it all in one day.
It's fully charged and ready to go.
They said that the tow truck driver never left a key there.
Yeah, they say he didn't leave a key.
They didn't put in the night drop.
He just dropped the car off there and then left.
And so that car has just been sitting there.
And they said, "Yeah, since you sent it without a key
"we didn't know that we were supposed to get into it
"'cause there was no night drop."
I definitely gave them a key.
And so they felt bad again,
they said they're gonna put in a service ticket
and hurry and get us a new key,
- Okay, we don't, nice. - and, for free.
Which is nice. - Very nice.
- So we'll have another key, thank you Tesla.
The good news is, we're already here at the Wynn.
We just got here, we're not that far away.
We're gonna go get the car.
We'll have two cars here in Vegas.
Let's go get that car and make sure that we actually have it
before the saga is ended.
(upbeat music)
And we got the car!
It is here!
I talked to the head of service,
and let me tell you, he's awesome.
Like, super helpful.
Let's play devil's advocate for a minute.
Let's pretend that we believe that the tow truck driver
did not leave the key in his own car and take it with him.
I could see a scenario, that's very likely,
that the tow truck driver did his job
and put the key in the night drop without any paperwork
and then Tesla just said, "What's this key?
"Okay.
"I don't know what it belongs to,
"there's no paperwork.
"We got all the cars recorded in our thing.
"We're good."
It's possible.
So roadside assistance, originally,
they send a ticket to the service center
whenever they're sending a car.
This was sent near the end of the business day
and so it did send them that notification,
but then when the car was delivered after hours,
and the key, they checked the box,
they check the night drop every single night
and there was no key, supposedly, inside of the night drop.
Even though they received the notification
that the car is coming their way the day before,
they close everything out that day
and somehow it got closed out
and then the next day it doesn't carry over
and they had no idea.
They've already sent up a ticket to notify
that that's an issue in the process.
Tesla needs to fix that issue.
The charge port, what the heck happened?
That's the question, what happened to the charge port?
The door just had a malfunction.
It just, the charge port, like the actual piece,
they took out the entire charge port
and replaced it with a new piece of hardware.
So a new one in there.
And so whenever you see that warning on your screen
that it's disabled, it's just a warning that your car
and the brains of the system is not communicating anymore
with the charge port.
So it doesn't work.
Even if you try to plug it in, as we saw,
it's not gonna work and it needs to be replaced.
Seven or eight days later,
I don't even remember when this whole thing started,
we do have the car.
They charged it basically, full for me.
I'm at 254 miles range, so I can drive home.
And what's interesting is I asked them,
"Do you have a supercharger inside of your building?"
And they essentially have supercharging power,
that they can use, in the service center
for the cars that they're servicing.
Obviously, it's not for customers.
But I don't know why that never clicked in my mind,
but it makes sense.
Thankfully the Tesla saga is over with the charge port.
Thank you Tesla for fixing it.
This is the things that we're learning.
It's a new car company, they're doing their best.
So, see ya.
You want extra key? - I want extra keys.
- [Dan] Oh, I thought you're worried about this
random tow truck guy
coming and stealing our car - I am worried about that too.
- [Dan] He seemed like a pretty nice guy.
I think we're okay. - I know, but still.
Let's get it back still.