Complaint volume
983 consumer-submitted complaints are matched to this model year. Treat the count as a research signal, then read the actual summaries for repeated symptoms.
Complaint records
2018 Tesla Model 3 Complaints
983 consumer-submitted complaints on record for the 2018 Tesla Model 3, grouped by component category.
983 Total complaints
100 Crash reports
4 Fire reports
34 Injury reports
Complaint data reflects consumer-submitted reports. A complaint is not proof
of a defect, recall, or manufacturer fault. Enriched severity fields come
from official bulk records when the complaint can be matched by ODI number.
Buyer interpretation
How to use these complaints before buying
Complaint records are most useful when they turn into inspection points, seller questions, and comparison checks against nearby model years.
Pattern to inspect
The most common categories are suspension, unknown or other, forward collision avoidance. Use those categories as a test-drive checklist instead of judging the vehicle from the total count alone.
Severity flags
Enriched records include 100 crash reports, 4 fire reports, 34 injury reports, and 0 fatality reports. These fields come from complaint records and should be read in context.
Mileage clue
Mileage is available on 219 complaints, with an average reported failure mileage of 25,782 miles. Compare that with the mileage on the listing.
Questions to ask the seller
- Have you had any problems related to suspension, unknown or other, forward collision avoidance?
- Can I see recent maintenance and repair records?
- Has the vehicle ever been towed, involved in a crash, or repaired for the same issue twice?
- Can we also check the recall record for this 2018 Tesla Model 3?
Used-car checklist
Use these complaints before the test drive.
Build a buyer checklist to turn these issues into questions and inspection points.
2018 Tesla Model 3
Build buyer checklist Compare with other years Sends year, make, and model to pre-fill your checklist.
How severe are the 2018 Tesla Model 3 complaints?
100 Crash
4 Fire
34 Injury
0 Fatality
63 Towed
19 Medical attention
What are the most common 2018 Tesla Model 3 complaint categories?
SUSPENSION 116
UNKNOWN OR OTHER 82
FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 73
ELECTRICAL SYSTEM 49
AIR BAGS 42
SEAT BELTS 39
SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 34
STRUCTURE 27
STEERING 26
AIR BAGS,SEATS 20
983 total complaints on record
Latest complaints
| Date | Component | Summary | Severity | Mileage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 2022 | UNKNOWN OR OTHER | There was a recall for the Model 3 trunk harness on Dec 21, 2021. Manufacturer Recall Number: TBD NHTSA Recall Number: 21V-00D Recall Status: Recall Incomplete I attempted to schedule a service appointment with Tesla to remedy this situation but they rejected my appointment. It has been more than 6 months and they still have not reached out on fixing this recall. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | VISIBILITY/WIPER | Tesla no longer automatically turns on headlights when the automatic wipers are enabled, this used to be a functionality of the vehicle. The ability to turn on headlights is extremely difficult and requires going through multiple screens while driving, something that is extremely dangerous. Tesla also does not allow you to turn on headlights with voice command. Proposed Fixes #1) Restore functionality that turns on headlights when wipers are enabled #2) Same as #1, but as a preference setting that requires a driver to enable that setting #3) Allow a driver to turn on headlights via voice command. If there is a safety concern that the voice system may turn OFF headlights, disable the ability to turn OFF but enable the ability to turn ON. Long story short the vehicle needs to automatically turn on the headlights when the wipers are on. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | SEAT BELTS,LANE DEPARTURE,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Since I purchased this car new in Sept 2018, the car has had a "front Left safety restraint system fault". It has been fixed over 3 times and it is going for the 4th time now. The car is going out of warranty this year and I am afraid I will be stuck with the bill if it happens again. Even though all the fixes have been free so far, it is an ongoing problem Also, the known phantom breaking, just add to the numbers. it is more than common. I almost see it coming when going under overpasses because of the shadow. The computer must see it as an object. I have inquired about the lane departure warning and they keep saying it is just a software issue. If it is activated at any point during the drive, then it says that "lane departure warning" is not long available and may be restored on the next drive. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | UNKNOWN OR OTHER | Intermittently, the main screen that has the map will go haywire, making navigation with the map impossible and putting safety at risk. Even after rebooting the computer (while driving), the issue can persist, making it very difficult to know what speed I'm going due to the issue as it is very distracting. I have video of the latest incident available. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Ghost braking hard and want refunded for full self driving because it’s not there | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | AIR BAGS,BACK OVER PREVENTION | This car was hit in a T bone on March 15th 2022 by a Toyota RAV4 on the driver side , the driver side was completely smashed and the car spun 2 times and came in the middle ramp. In spite of this heavy impact there were no airbags deployed , after several follow ups with Tesla I have no answer so far. The car was deemed total loss last month and even after consistent follow ups I have no answer from. Tesla. The impact was very heavy that my wife had whiplash and she went through chiropractic treatment for 2 months .. I’m very worried as the impact was so bad that this is a fatal flaw in Tesla and they do not have the airbag curtain deploy to protect the driver side at all - my wife was lucky and she is alive but this could happen to anyone .. I need an answer from Tesla and I found I could get it through this website and need the right measures take so that no one will get injured or cause life in any accident in future | Crash: Yes Fire: No Injuries: 1 Towed Medical attention | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Driving today on I45 between Dallas and Houston on beta autopilot I was traveling at the speed limit of 75 with much room to the next car, maybe 1/2 mile the car suddenly did a panic breaking for no reason. I took control by the time it was at about 30 mph and got back up.to speed but I'm positive the car behind me was alarmed. No damage or incident but it was quite alarming. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | AIR BAGS,SEAT BELTS | Driver Side Supplemental Restraint system reported an issue and need for service. Service department blames faulty electrical harness under the seat. A search of the web shows this is a common failure, leading me to believe that it is a design or a quality control issue. Tesla declines to repair under warranty because warranty expired 610 miles prior to notification. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Autopilot failed and crashed into another car while changing lane didn't detect coming in left lane and tried to changed and crashed into it. It put everyone in the car in life threatening risk | Crash: Yes Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Every time we have it on autopilot on the tollway, we experience phantom braking at the same location regardless if we are going south or north. It is dangerous if there is a car behind us. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Going down an undivided single lane each way roadway at 55 MPH car suddenly hard braked and car behind me almost hit me. Most of these I don't report since it's normal for Tesla FSD or adaptive cruise to be incapable of maintaining reasonable speed for a day trip - this was worse than usual and almost resulted in an accident. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Cruise control was engaged at 70mph. Auto without warning while traveling suddenly started severe braking. Driver was only guiding steering at the time ( foot did not touch brake). The dual lane highway was level and straight. There were no other vehicles in sight. The skys were overcast so there were no shadows. There were no overpasses. I have had this happen several times when autopilot is engaged but never when just cruise control activated. Sudden braking like this at high speeds could cause a vehicle following this auto to rear end that could cause the loss of control of this vehicle that would cause a life threatening event to occur. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | The optional "Self Driving Option" we purchased for an additional $8,000 when we purchased this vehicle has never worked properly. The adaptive cruise control will brake for no reason, often multiple times per mile. It seems to be affected by shadows on the road and the vehicle mistakes these shadows for obstacles. The "Self Driving Option" will abruptly jerk the steering wheel in the direction of oncoming traffic and violently disengage. My wife and I find it to be unusable. Multiple service requests to Tesla have resulted in no actions. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | UNKNOWN OR OTHER,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | The recent full self driving update that was received approximately one week ago has resulted numerous, substantial, and dangerous Self driving errors. The Vehicle struggles greatly to understand lanes and has on multiple occasions suddenly and without warning jerked the wheel to completely change lanes and then re-jerking the wheel to change back into the Original Lane. There has also been a shocking increase in phantom breaking while driving at highway speeds which is unsafe because other nearby drivers may slam on the brakes. The behavior of the vehicle has a times been so erratic that I could’ve gotten a ticket from an officer. Finally, the vehicle increasingly does not understand lanes and has several times veered into a left turn lane despite having a follow vehicle and despite being on a navigational Straight path, subsequently the vehicle then suddenly jerks the wheel back into the correct lane. This all happens very quickly and is not preventable by the driver even when hands are on the wheel and the driver is fully alert. I love my Tesla car. It is the safest car in the world. However, I feel very strongly that the company has been negligent and has definitely not been safety testing updates appropriately before wide release. I strongly recommend that guidelines be put in place to require Tesla to publicly report the number of FSD disengagement‘s every week. I also feel strongly that Tesla needs to permit drivers to roll back software to a prior version of full self driving. In addition, in order to send a video directly to Tesla regarding self driving errors the driver presses a video icon; however, this prevents the driver from storing the video and sends the video directly to Tesla. Therefore, drivers have to make a decision between documenting the dangerous error for themselves or to contribute to fleet learning. Each time videos pressed video must be saved to the usb drive too. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,SERVICE BRAKES | PHANTOM BRAKING!!! Ever since purchasing the car in March 2018 and right up to the present, when using AUTOPILOT or more recently FULL SELF DRIVING (FSD), especially at highway speeds, the car will suddenly start significantly braking and slow down for no justifiable reason. This is dangerous enough that if the vehicle behind me is not paying attention, they could rear-end me. It’s totally unpredictable when this will occur, but it does happen frequently at highway speeds. This is a very well-known problem, but even after dozens of software update releases, Tesla has been unable to eliminate or even reduce the frequency of Phantom Braking. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | On June 1, 2022, we left on a roadtrip to CA from UT. Our Model 3 kept having incidents of "phantom braking," in which the Traffic-Aware Cruise Control and Autopilot systems would suddenly, inexplicably cause the car to slam on the brakes, and sometimes even flash a "red" steering wheel and an alarm with a warning that there was an object ahead —when there was NOT! This happened at least a dozen times en route on Highway 95 in Nevada, and continued to happen throughout our roadtrip on other highways until we returned home one week later on June 8, 2022. I have experienced this problem several times over the past year, and numerous other owners have already submitted similar complaints to NHTSA. Indeed, the TACC and AP behaviors are now significantly WORSE than when we first took delivery of the car over 4 years ago in April 2018. It is as though the car suffers hiccups, spasms, Tourette's Syndrome without any warning. I fear that one of these times we will be rear ended by a car behind or to the side of us. I can only speculate as to why this has started to happen, but suspect it is because Tesla decided to stop using its radar sensors a year ago and now only relies on its cameras. These incidents truly frighten my wife to death, so much so that she wants me to get rid of the car. I can't say I blame her, as the problems with the car's TACC and AP systems are now making it unsafe on our highways. If Tesla doesn't restore reliable, dependable, safe TACC and AP in the near future, I will get rid of the car. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | I was driving on a one way street when the car suddenly stopped. I was not at an or close to an intersection. There was a pedestrian waiting on the side of the road, standing between cars. He was not in my way. He was not even close to the vehicle. The car sounded audible warning and came to a complete stop. I believe this was the reason the vehicle stopped. This is the 2nd time since my 3 year ownership that this has happened. I provided Tesla with time stamps of the event during my service visit. They told me this is normal function of the vehicle. Just reporting this in case there is a more serious underlying issue that warrants additional investigation. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Our model 3 was purchased with Tesla’s “full self driving (FSD)” software installed in 2018. Throughout our entire ownership period, whenever FSD is active, there are specific locations known to us - mostly at certain points on freeways - where the car will “phantom brake,” in other words suddenly decelerate the vehicle very rapidly and require *immediate* driver intervention. For instance, there is a freeway interchange ramp that passes under a bridge and doglegs to the left. The car will always phantom brake about 200 feet before it reaches the bridge. This has been happening for years, and we’ve reported this defect and this specific location to Tesla many times. There are other locations known to us as consistent phantom brake triggers, but there are of course times where this occurs when we are not expecting it as well, and that’s when it’s most dangerous. We believe it may have something to do with the car’s sensors when they sense certain shapes or objects while the road is also curving slightly, as this is the most common phantom brake scenario for us. Again, this has been happening since we purchased the car in 2018. It occurs randomly at least a few times a month, and it *always* occurs in certain locations. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | I received access to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system in late 2021. In the lead-up to that access, Tesla used a series of driver scoring metrics to select which users would get access first. Consistently, my metrics for forward collision warnings would show as alarmingly high, despite never coming within remote striking distance of another vehicle. On more than one occasion, a vehicle passing in other lane or turning left but in the other lane tripped the warning. At the time this registered as a red flag but more a bug of the evaluation system than the car’s recognition software. As time with the FSD suite has gone on, and subsequently with every new update, the phantom braking problem a number of users have described has plagued my experiences. Numerous times I’ve been driving with FSD engaged on two lane roads with no cars, shadows, animals or distractions of any kind around only for the car to suddenly and rapidly decelerate. Additionally I’ve received warnings repeatedly, without explanation, that the emergency braking system is disabling itself, then the warning will clear without any indication it’s either become reactive or is still disabled. Further, I’ve noticed through the new blind spot camera feature Tesla has released that my left rear-facing repeater camera can be blinded by the flashing of the embedded turn signal in the housing - but only the left signal, the right is not. This has led to, on more than one occasion, FSD disabling itself while active with little or no warning. I’ve listed the approximate date the first phantom braking occurred, but all of these problems have been an ongoing issues for months. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | I was using Enhanced Autopilot on Tesla Model 3. It breaks automatically in middle of road for no reason even when there is no object in front of it. Its a life threatening situation because the vehicle behind my car will not have enough breaking distance and time at high speeds. It happens almost every month and specially under the reflection of bridges. I complained to service center and employees just ask exact time when it occurred and if exact time is not provided than Tesla employees does not do anything to resolve the issue. Looks like Tesla is putting many lives in danger. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL | While using the adaptive cruise control plus autopilot, car suddenly and rapidly slows to stop. At each instance, there are no cars in front of me or any other obvious obstruction to cause the car to rapidly deaccelerate. It only happens on the freeway at freeway speeds. It is shocking and unnerving. When I quickly take back the control, I can bring the car back up to speed. So far, there has not been a car close behind me to cause a rear-end collision, but that is my fear. This has happened sporadically since I got the car, perhaps ten times total. The form asks for a date, but there are multiple across years so I put the approx latest date. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | NHTSA forced Tesla FSDBETA to remove “Rolling Stop” behavior at clear intersections. This has caused me to be continually honked at, drivers aggressively passing my slow FSDBETA car. The decision by the NHTSA has caused my car to be more UNSAFE by impeding proper traffic flows. NHTSA should be focused on improving safety and not traffic law enforcement. This complaint is directed at the improper decision and solely on the NHTSA to lift the guidance to Tesla. As a customer I now feel my car is unsafe to drive due to your decision. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | When driving on local roads and the interstate the card suddenly brakes for no reason when using auto pilot or full self driving. Sometimes it seems to be triggered by shadows from trees or other objects on the road and other times for no reason at all. I have been going 45 mph and the car suddenly braked to 30mph. I have been on the open interstate doing 70 mph when the car will suddenly and violently brake when there is a car on your bumper and this is very dangerous. If you dont keep your foot over the gas while driving and force the car to speed up it will cause an accident bc it will brake until the car is stopped probably. Somone needs to look into tesla and the phantom braking on auto pilot and full self driving. i have owned this car for almost 4 years and over the last 1 year this has gotten progressivley worse when they switched from using the radar sensor in the front to camera only vision called tesla vision. it is unsafe and im sure it's causing accidents today and needs to be investigated since Tesla cant seem to fix it. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE,LANE DEPARTURE | Multiple instances of phantom braking and slow down while driving on Traffic Aware Cruise Control (TACC) and/or Autosteer mode of the Autopilot feature. In addition, the lane keeping assistance feature gives phantom warnings even though the car stays in the lane. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Driving while on cruise control, the car will phantom brake. That is, it will apply the brakes: - when a vehicle is way way out there in my lane and not a potential problem. - when two vehicle are close on each left and right side lanes, but not in my lane. For instance, when on 3 lane road with all lanes going the same way, vehicles on my left and right sides out in front of me but not in front of me, the car will suddenly apply the brakes. These are just the most common instances. I get lots on incidents of the vehicle unnecessarily applying the brakes when on cruise control. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |