James May's Tesla Model S has failed!

now a bit back on drive tribe i made a video called something like 12 things i don't like about my tesla model s and they were all fairly minor things to be honest like the noise the boot makes when it goes up the type face used on the boot a couple of aspects of the screen and so on but i didn't know about this one otherwise i would have included it this is something i hate it's a bit boring this but i'm going to have to explain it all the tesla has two batteries it's got the great big battery under the floor which powers the car it also has here in the front the front trunk a conventional 12-volt car battery which keeps all the systems alive and the memory in the computer and all that sort of usual rubbish makes the car unlock that because i hadn't used the car for a while had gone flat and i couldn't get in now you might think well why does that battery go flat when it's got a great big battery and it's permanently plugged into the charger in my garage even though it's not being used because of lockdown very good question but what tesla have explained to me is yes the car charges conventionally through the cable and that charger also via the electronics keeps that battery charged but when the big battery is fully charged the charging system turns off and it doesn't keep topping that one up and that one eventually because it's running the computer and so on in the background goes flat i couldn't get into the car because the battery's flat so the doors won't unlock and the handles won't come out etc i can't open the frank because that is electrically operated from the key i thought the battery had run out in the key which it does quite quickly so i put a new one in it wasn't that i rang up tessa and they said you can get into the front but to get into the front without using the clipper because the battery is flat you have to pull the two emergency releases which are in the wheel arches and to get to those you have to actually lever the internal plastic trim off the wheel arch and expose these little cable pulls one on each side so you have to do both that eventually releases that then when you're in here you have to get to the battery which is buried under here which involves partly removing those two panels taking this big panel out and then taking this panel out which has some very brittle clips on it one of them has snapped inevitably and that is oh god that is still connected by bits of pipes which are part of the drain hole system to take water away if it gets under the bonnet hang on i've got to prop it up with a piece of bit of cardboard box to keep to keep it free of the crocodile clips on the charger and then when i've lifted that up you have to take this bit of ducting out which is part of the heating system and then finally you get to the battery now unfortunately i could see this end of the battery and i thought oh i can go on to there and unearth points on the car but actually that's the earth terminal i needed to get to that one the positive one so finally i'm in and i'm trickle charging the battery when it comes back to life the car hopefully will start operating again what this needs if you're watching elon musk or anybody else involved with tesla just in case this happens to other people it needs a permanent one of these charging port attached i put these on all my motorcycles for exactly this reason so that if they're parked up and i'm not using them i can plug a trickle charger in and maintain the battery condition that i could do this and i will do it wired up to the battery and that bit just sticking out there or in a convenient place make a little hole that's what it needs because otherwise to charge the battery you have to dismantle the car it was about an hour's work and frankly it's pissed me off like comment subscribe why is he making that noise run away [Music]

Channel: DRIVETRIBE

Views: 2,297,265

Keywords: jeremy clarkson, richard hammond, james may, cars, top gear, the grand tour

Id: NsKwMryKqRE

Length: 4min 3sec (243 seconds)

Published: Wed May 12 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Tersphinct]

And frankly, it's pissed me offlikecommentsubscribe.

[u/fat_charizard]

To fix the battery, you need to open the hood. To open the hood, you need the battery to be working. What a stupid design

[u/thisdesignup]

For James May to say it was an hours work makes me think it would take the average person much longer.

[u/[deleted]]

Considering those 12V batteries have a very finite lifespan, which is far less than what hopefully the life of the car is, and will need to be replaced even if you don't leave you car sitting for long periods of time.....that is an insanely stupid design.

[u/pickled-egg]

Modern cars are full of this kind of nonsense. I get it, I try to not be too much of an old man about it and I largely accept that electronics run everything and sometimes that makes things awkward when things go wrong but it doesn't stop these things being fucking annoying, especially the workarounds.

Ever tried to manually release the electronic handbrake on pretty much any car built in the past decade or so? if the battery is dead or some sort of other electrical problem is happening you might need to. Most provide the instruction buried in the users manual but it doesn't stop it being a complete fucking nightmare in most cases, especially in the sort of situations you might need to do this (outside, in snow, side of road, in the dark etc). There's also bad design in some cars, on some Subaru systems you can wind the little tool too far and cause huge problems when the power is reconnected.

I get that most people just call a guy and that's fine but it does feel like so often with modern cars you're working out ways of getting around things that should have been better designed.

[u/alphamale968]

Some bmws put the battery in the trunk. But there are still battery ports under the hood if you have to use the alligator clips.

[u/Sr_DingDong]

Literally having this problem with my friends BMW parked outside my house. Battery is dead, battery lives in trunk, can't open it without power. There's no keyhole, no emergency release, nothing... Problem is I was halfway through swapping it out when I closed the lid to go get something (I just assumed there was some way to open it, like a key hole like every car ever), so it's disconnected so I can't jump it from the front either to open it.

It's surprisingly terrible German engineering.

[u/iBeenie]

Wow that's really awful. All for a friggin battery

[u/Star_Tropic]

BMW i8 is a process to just open the hood too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxe_b2GRwok