With the arrival of winter weather, a ventilation bug appeared in many Tesla Model Ys following a software update.
A simple personal message on a Tesla Model Y user forum, posted for help, revealed the extent of a problem initially thought to be individual.
« Good evening,
I have owned a Model Y since August 2023.
And recently, I have a defogging problem, I leave home, no fog, after a few minutes of driving, I have a fog that settles on my windshield, and it is having a lot of trouble to leave. (I had to stop altogether, or take a rag…)
Etc., etc.«
And that’s where comments from other Tesla customers poured in, revealing deep concern following an update pushed by Tesla at the end of the summer.
Does the air conditioning do nothing?
David posts a response: “ Same thing on my side since the beginning of September (…) Never had before«. I’m going to pour Randy : « It does it to me too, a little but a little less than you (well probably because I’m in the south)« . Javi : « I thought about it yesterday… even though I haven’t had this problem since 2018!« .
And it continues with Charly: “ This has been the case for about 2 months. Following an update. I hope they will rectify the situation. Tip in the meantime but not great: switch to HEPA mode“. And so on…
The first owner explains that although the defogging mode is activated, it does absolutely nothing to solve the problem. The same goes for the air conditioning, as if a source of humidity were suddenly found in the car. Thomas hypothesizes: “ This happened on a friend’s Tesla, he had water condensation in his ventilation pipes, which when the ventilation was turned on, made a big mist. His technique was to turn the heating on high for 2-3 minutes and then the classic defogging. Tesla’s response at the time was that he turned the heater on too high when parking in a cold or wet spot, resulting in water condensing in the pipes.« .
A totally ludicrous situation at a time when Tesla is selling millions of cars. Just like the help provided by Gwenael: “ When you switch to auto air conditioning, the recirculation also switches to auto, which is not great in humid weather. Just deactivate the recycling mode and you will no longer have fogging“. It is well known that the Defog mode was designed for the summer months.
This story brings to the surface Tesla’s inability to make simple things work in a car. Ok Musk knows how to send rockets into space, but GPS, heating, windshield wipers, reversing radars and others, standard equipment for decades, remain capricious at Tesla. Which is a huge point of annoyance for certain customers who, ultimately, end up returning to the historic manufacturers.
When will this defogging problem be solved? Hopefully before summer…
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