The web is, unsurprisingly, mildly confused about one thing to do with electrical automobiles. The Tesla Mannequin Y, a automobile famously devoid of an oil-slurping inner combustion engine, apparently has an oil filter. Electrical automobiles have oil?! Cue the collective head scratching and the frantic searches for “Mannequin Y dipstick location.”
Does your silent, smug Tesla secretly yearn for the nice previous days of dino juice and a pleasant, thick 10W-30? Not fairly, fortunately. This is not about engine oil, as a result of, properly, there is not any precise engine in the best way your grandpa understood it. Nonetheless, there’s a crucial, hard-working fluid that wants maintaining clear. That is the place this mysterious filter dutifully steps in.
This little canister is definitely a gearbox filter, working tirelessly to maintain the particular oil in your electrical drive unit(s) clear from nasty put on particles. In the end, with the Tesla Mannequin Y being touted as soon as once more as essentially the most American-made automobileyou simply needed to determine they’d preserve a few of that blue-blooded custom alive with an oil and filter, proper? Nevertheless, it seems that your Tesla is not secretly burning oil, although it’s filtering some. So sure, even your futuristic chariot wants a particular kind of oil and a filter — which is simply splendidly, hilariously ironic ultimately, is not it?
It is not on your nonexistent engine
The element inflicting all this chatter in your Tesla Mannequin Y — which is commonly mistakenly known as an engine oil filter in much less knowledgeable corners of the net – is extra precisely a gearbox filter or drive unit oil filter. Its mission, ought to it select to just accept it (and it does), is to take care of the purity of the specialised fluid swishing round inside the electrical drive unit’s gearbox.
Earlier than you ask if that is only a rebranded filter off of a Honda Accord, it isn’t. The Tesla official half quantity for this guardian of gears is often 1618882-50-B, with the previous half quantity being outdated. If you happen to’ve bought an all-wheel drive Mannequin Y, congratulations, you could have two of those filters — one for the entrance drive unit and one for the rear. Rear-wheel Drive fashions make do with only one.
This filter providers the discount gearbox, which takes the electrical motor’s insanely excessive RPMs and interprets them into usable velocity for the wheels, all whereas bathing the gears in a particular lubricating fluid – generally known as KAF1 by Tesla or particular Electrical Driveline Fluids (EDFs) -– that lubricates, cools, and protects. It is simply one other quirk of contemporary motoring — like new automobiles that do not even have dipsticks anymore – your fancy electrical automobile additionally has oil and a filter that finally wants altering.
So, why does your Tesla even want this oil filter factor?
The true job of this oil filter in a Tesla is to behave as a bouncer for the gearbox’s lubricating fluid, a task not solely not like its engine oil counterparts — although, good luck determining the place these filters are even manufactured as of late, as many oil filters are now not made in America.
As this specialised oil circulates, doing its slippery dance across the gears and bearings, the filter is there to entice any social gathering crashers. These tiny particles are the pure results of put on and tear from all these meshing gears doing their factor. Retaining this oil clear is tremendous essential as a result of, with out it, these unwelcome bits would simply recirculate, inflicting extra put on, and customarily shortening the lifetime of your very costly drive unit.
Whereas particular upkeep suggestions for the gearbox fluid and this filter can differ by mannequin and yr, the consensus is that they want altering, albeit a lot much less regularly than your previous fuel guzzler’s engine oil. Curiously, Tesla’s proprietor’s handbook for the 2020 to 2024 Mannequin Y neglects to even point out the service, whereas its service manuals, nonetheless, do present techs the right way to carry out it.
Earlier than you get any vivid concepts, nonetheless, swapping this filter and fluid is usually not a easy driveway DIY, because it requires particular instruments and software program integration. It is one other reminder that though EVs slash numerous conventional upkeep, they nonetheless have their very own distinctive, and generally surprisingly acquainted, wants.
