Who is currently waiting for a drive unit replacement?

[dyyuan]

Just got my drive unit replaced at Palo Alto Toyota. Now the wife says she misses the noise : )
from 3/21 to 7/5, about 3.5 months wait.

 

[csugar21]

Just got a call from toyota that they are replacing my drive unit, car is not driveable so hopefully it will not take as long.

 

[ravisekhar]

Is drive unit same as traction motor ?

The technician called me today and told me that they need to replace traction motor ( wait time from less than 1 week to 3 months ) and also coolant pump .

My car is with walnutcreek toyota.

 

[miimura]

Is drive unit same as traction motor ?

The technician called me today and told me that they need to replace traction motor ( wait time from less than 1 week to 3 months ) and also coolant pump .

My car is with walnutcreek toyota.

Yes. The Drive Unit is the traction motor, gear reduction, differential, and drive inverter all together as one field replaceable unit.

 

[dstjohn99]

So my Rav is finally in the shop for DU replacement. A year+ of complaining plus 4 months waiting for the unit to arrive. Currently at Toyota of El Cajon. They say 2 - 3 days which tells me they probably haven't done one before, or if they did it didn't go so well. But we'll see. Driving a friggin ICE Hyundai Tucson with Texas plates for a loaner. I hope my DU noise is a thing of the past, but then Tesla would need to solve the problem, not just swap the motor.

 

[evdrive]

Just had my traction motor replaced at Toyota of of Berkeley. It was nuts, the sound was earpearcingly loud. It was driving my passengers crazy and hurting my ears. Now I have a new unit and it is as smooth as butter. No noise; It's a night and day difference and I'm back to smooth sailing.

 

[tridub]

As explained below, I think my current status is "waiting to get on the waiting list..."

I took my 2012 RAV4 EV to the local (Georgia) Toyota dealer again on Saturday, and I finally got them to agree that it was making too much motor noise at high speeds (i.e., over 45 mph). I think telling them that I had a 2014 RAV4 EV that didn't make this noise helped to seal the deal, even though they never actually wanted to drive my 2014. The service writer I dealt with this time was a real go-getter, who really liked my RAV. He had the good idea of calling the original dealer in San Francisco, who had done most of the maintenance on this car before it went to Nashville. The service tech at that California dealer confirmed that many RAV's had their Tesla motors replaced under warranty due to excessive noise. He also said this motor costs $40,000! So, I'm glad that the powertrain warranty is still in effect. My guy opened a ticket with Toyota corporate about this, and he seems confident that I will get a new motor. He had me record the noise and video on my iPhone, so he could send it to Toyota. Thanks to this forum, I understand that a lot of other RAV4 EV owners have had to make recordings like this too.

 

[dstjohn99]

Took my Rav in last Monday for the DU replacement. They said it would take 3 days and it did...funny thing is that the car sat in the exact same parking spot where I dropped it off for two days. Then they moved it Tuesday at 5pm and it was done Wed. by 11:30am. Thanks to the GPS location it was easy to tell when it was last moved as I tried to track progress.

Now I have the car back and it is sooo quiet! What a pleasure, except the Battery Temp message comes on after about 10 minutes of driving. Although it says limited output and the turtle mode indicator comes on it still performs normally. Until this morning when it went into real turtle mode and then died just as I was parking. I'm hoping it's just a poor job of flushing the battery coolant lines.

I took it back to the dealer last Friday, but the EV tech had left. They said bring it back Tuesday when he is back. One more day. I wonder if I can flush the lines and fix it myself. Anyone know the procedure for this?

 

[miimura]

Took my Rav in last Monday for the DU replacement. They said it would take 3 days and it did...funny thing is that the car sat in the exact same parking spot where I dropped it off for two days. Then they moved it Tuesday at 5pm and it was done Wed. by 11:30am. Thanks to the GPS location it was easy to tell when it was last moved as I tried to track progress.

Now I have the car back and it is sooo quiet! What a pleasure, except the Battery Temp message comes on after about 10 minutes of driving. Although it says limited output and the turtle mode indicator comes on it still performs normally. Until this morning when it went into real turtle mode and then died just as I was parking. I'm hoping it's just a poor job of flushing the battery coolant lines.

I took it back to the dealer last Friday, but the EV tech had left. They said bring it back Tuesday when he is back. One more day. I wonder if I can flush the lines and fix it myself. Anyone know the procedure for this?

Did you check the two tanks of blue coolant under the hood? If they're low, you could try just topping them off if you have G48 coolant on hand. If they're not, then the air bubble probably made its way to the pumps and they can't move the liquid any more. The cooling circuits just need to have the air bled out.

You're definitely not the first person to have this problem. You would think that the technicians would check these things. Even leaving the car ON and READY for 10 or 15 minutes would probably uncover this issue.

 

[Larry_in_Seattle]

The "Clunk" resulted in a new Drive Unit on order for me here in WA. Ordered on 9/15, will be interested to see how long it takes.

 

[dstjohn99]

Did you check the two tanks of blue coolant under the hood? If they're low, you could try just topping them off if you have G48 coolant on hand. If they're not, then the air bubble probably made its way to the pumps and they can't move the liquid any more. The cooling circuits just need to have the air bled out.

You're definitely not the first person to have this problem. You would think that the technicians would check these things. Even leaving the car ON and READY for 10 or 15 minutes would probably uncover this issue.

The motor coolant was completely empty. I took it back and got another rental car.

 

[davewill]

I've got an appointment to take mine in because my second DU is making noise. I wish they would ACTUALLY fix the problem instead of just continuing to swap the same parts.

 

[TonyWilliams]

I've got an appointment to take mine in because my second DU is making noise. I wish they would ACTUALLY fix the problem instead of just continuing to swap the same parts.

Mine second motor is quickly getting too noisy at 77,000 total miles (about 65,000 miles on the motor).

 

[michael]

We are now awaiting our SECOND drive unit replacement.

This makes me laugh at the EV purists who deride the Volt for its "overly complex drive unit that will inevitably be failure prone". Also the "Elon walks on water" crowd

 

[Kohler Controller]

I have an appointment with the local dealer (Austin, TX) to get a recording of my DU sound. Then they send it off for a decision to be made. Does anyone have any idea how they make the recording, where they hold the microphone, and under what conditions they drive the vehicle (fast or slow, windows up or down, etc).

I would really like a quieter drive train, but have no idea if mine will be "bad enough".

 

[smkettner]

I keep thinking about it. Slow speed whine is somewhat annoying and I can hear it creeping into the higher speeds.
At 37,000 miles and no extended warranty I think I may wait to be closer to the standard 60K driveline warranty expiration.
Hate to replace it now and have it come back in 25,000 just after I run out of warranty.
Or at some point it may get traded.

I know some have been swapped at least twice but are they getting better at rebuilding these things?

 

[davewill]

The word over on the Tesla forum is that for the last six months they've been fixing them properly, replacing the part that goes bad with something better. I'm hoping that this replacement will be my last...I got the extended warranty anyhow, though. The heater unit, infotainment system, or some other high ticket item could go out any time.

 

[fromport]

The word over on the Tesla forum is that for the last six months they've been fixing them properly, replacing the part that goes bad with something better. I'm hoping that this replacement will be my last...I got the extended warranty anyhow, though. The heater unit, infotainment system, or some other high ticket item could go out any time.

I just tried to search on teslamotorsclub but couldn't find it.
Do you happen to have the URL handy ?

 

[michael]

I am so astonished that a car company with Tesla's reputation can't make a dependable motor. Are models S similarly afflicted? Or is it just the motor used in the Rav?

 

[miimura]

I am so astonished that a car company with Tesla's reputation can't make a dependable motor. Are models S similarly afflicted? Or is it just the motor used in the Rav?

Tesla does engineering changes on their own vehicles very quickly. I don't think Toyota approved the change until Spring 2016 when the time to get replacements for noisy units went from 6 months to under one month. Only time will tell whether 2016 drive unit replacements will last longer than the prior units.