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by theogravity 970 days ago
I have a 2018 Model 3 and the recalibration fee for a replaced windshield is complete BS. The tech that installed my replacement said they should self-recalibrate or I can just press the recalibration button in the service menu, which I did and the car had no issues adjusting.

Safelite wanted to charge ~$500 to press that button. I fortunately went with an OEM installer and although I paid a little more for the windshield, it was less than the cost of a non-oem with the recalibration fee.
1 comments
Johnny555 969 days ago
Calibration is more than a button press, there's a calibrated target that needs to be set up (and at least some minimal skill in setting up the target correctly). Whether it's worth the $300+ that shops and dealers charge is open to debate, but it's not just a simple button press.
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theogravity 969 days ago
It was for me, and my autopilot functioned without issues after the recalibration period. My M3 windshield was replaced two months ago with a Tesla OEM one. The tech wasn't affiliated with Tesla, but had access to the OEM parts. The windshield was replaced from my garage with me observing the entire time.

To be clear, my experience is with my Model 3, not any other brand or make. I'm not saying other cars can be auto-fixed with a button press here.

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Johnny555 969 days ago
Most of the time you can probably get by without any calibration at all, but since each windshield will have slightly different optical characteristics (and maybe it's possible to bump the camera housing and move it during uninstall/reinstall), if you want lane keeping and other safety features to work as well as possible, you need the calibration.

I suspect that if you were in an accident and tried to blame Tesla's autopilot or other automation for not working, they'll come back with "We have no record of recalibration when the windshield was replaced, we cannot be responsible for safety features with an uncalibrated camera system"

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theogravity 969 days ago
I don't think autopilot works if the cameras are not calibrated. I had to also drive a certain set of miles for it to operate again.

Your response corresponds to a lot of research I did on if I had to pay the recalibration fee or not (when I initially got a quote from Safelite) - the consensus online is mixed, but I'm speaking from my own personal experience here that I did not require recalibration tooling other than to press the recalibrate service button after my windshield was replaced and drove 20-30 miles before autopilot would be re-enabled again.

Although these are Model Y instructions, they pretty much reflect the experience I had:

https://service.tesla.com/docs/Public/diy/modely/en_us/GUID-...

The document does mention "Contact Tesla only if your Model Y has not completed the calibration process after driving 100 miles (160 km) in the described conditions.", which probably means you would need external hardware calibration tooling because it couldn't auto-calibrate.

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