Complaint volume
427 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
2020 Tesla Model 3 Complaints
427 consumer-submitted complaints on record for the 2020 Tesla Model 3, grouped by component category.
427 Total complaints
50 Crash reports
2 Fire reports
24 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 forward collision avoidance, unknown or other, vehicle speed control,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 50 crash reports, 2 fire reports, 24 injury reports, and 2 fatality reports. These fields come from complaint records and should be read in context.
Mileage clue
Mileage is available on 73 complaints, with an average reported failure mileage of 12,664 miles. Compare that with the mileage on the listing.
Questions to ask the seller
- Have you had any problems related to forward collision avoidance, unknown or other, vehicle speed control,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 2020 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.
2020 Tesla Model 3
Build buyer checklist Compare with other years Sends year, make, and model to pre-fill your checklist.
How severe are the 2020 Tesla Model 3 complaints?
50 Crash
2 Fire
24 Injury
2 Fatality
35 Towed
24 Medical attention
What are the most common 2020 Tesla Model 3 complaint categories?
FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 72
UNKNOWN OR OTHER 34
VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 24
SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 18
SUSPENSION 17
AIR BAGS 14
STEERING 14
VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL 14
STRUCTURE 13
ELECTRICAL SYSTEM 10
427 total complaints on record
Latest complaints
| Date | Component | Summary | Severity | Mileage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 2022 | STRUCTURE | MY ROOF GLASS CRACKED FROM INSIDE OF THE GLASS THAT IS SANDWICH TO IT. THEY REPLACE THE ROOF GLASS FOR FREE. A FEW MONTHS LATER, WHEN I PULL INTO A PARKING LOT AT AN ANGLE, THE WINDSHIELD IS CRACKED FROM INSIDE OF THE GLASS JUST LIKE THE ROOF GLASS. NO DAMAGE FROM OUTISDE AND INSIDE OF THE GLASS. BUT TESLA WANT TO CHARGE ME FOR NEW WINDSHIELD. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Sep 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | I was driving on a deserted highway on Interstate 395 heading from LA to Mammoth Lakes. There were no cars behind or in front of us. I first put the Tesla into Auto Steering mode, and things were fine for a while. Then I experienced "phantom braking" with no warning. The car started to brake on its own, and then I disengaged auto steer and drove manually. About 30 minutes later, I put the car into simple "cruise control" and things were fine for a while. Then again with no warning, the car started to hit the brakes. I disengaged the cruise control and took over again. In both cases, there was nothing around us. The weather was clear and sunny. This shouldn't be happening. There was a recent Tesla software update where Tesla apparently discontinued its use of 'radar" for the auto steer and is only relying on the car's cameras. I don't know if this is the cause of my recent phantom braking, but this is concerning to me as it is a safety problem especially if there were any cars behind me. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Sep 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | The forward collision warning censor gives an absurd number of false positives. I have Tesla insurance, and the insurance rate is HEAVILY affected by forward collision warnings. Nearly every day, one is triggered with -nothing- in front of me. I mean empty road ahead. Or, a car is about 7 car lengths ahead of me, they begin to slow down to make a turn, begin their turn, and nearly exit the lane. Without slowing down, and still 3 car lengths ahead, I get an angry forward collision warning and a major increase in insurance with -zero- risk of accident. It seems to happen most frequently at low speeds | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Sep 2022 | POWER TRAIN | The contact owns a 2020 Tesla Model 3. The contact stated that while reversing or driving forward, while depressing the accelerator pedal and adjusting the seat, the vehicle independently shifted to park abruptly. There were no warning lights illuminated. A software update was previously completed. The local dealer was not contacted. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was contacted and suggested a reboot and service on the vehicle. The approximate failure mileage was 20,000. | Crash: No Fire: No | 20,000 |
| Sep 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,SERVICE BRAKES | The other driver hit the rear of my tesla model 3 which cause the car accelerate fast about 40-50 miles, the brake is not working either. I can not brake or slow down the car. | Crash: Yes Fire: No Towed Medical attention | Unknown |
| Sep 2022 | UNKNOWN OR OTHER,VISIBILITY/WIPER | Tesla software version 2022.24.8 that I currently have installed has switched off the vehicles equipped forward facing radar. I can't find any method to undo their software update, I'm unable to find a way to contact a person via their website. I've lost control of my lights and wipers when the vehicle is using Autopilot. Both of which are set to automatic leaving me the driver with absolutely no way to turn them off short of turning off Autopilot which I've paid money for. I'm unhappy that a vital safety feature that I'd paid for (radar) has been switched off by the manufacturer without any means whatsoever to turn it back on. I do not want their software overriding my decisions as the driver, radar needs to be on and I the driver need to have full/complete control over lights and wipers. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Sep 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES | The car has regenerative breaking where the car is supposed to slow down when you lift your feet off the accelerator. Since a new update, some times (10%), when you lift off the accelerator the car does NOT slow down and will maintain speed. This inconsistent behavior is extremely dangerous and you don't know if the car will slow down or not. Tesla refuses to acknowledge this is an issue. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Aug 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | The car has randomly braked multiple times, for no reason at all. Maybe shadows or mirages? | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | UNKNOWN OR OTHER | Body control module failed. Car locked my wife inside the car when the power for the entire car shut down. Managed to get her out. Car was towed by Tesla to their repair facility in Pensacola FL on 6/22/22. It has been there since with no ETA on repair, they cannot get body control modules to repair the car. This was a previously known defect (see article https://hackaday.com/2021/02/11/tesla-recalls-cars-with-emmc-failures-calls-part-a-wear-item/ ). Tesla staff in Pensacola said they had 6-7 cars at their facility with the same exact issue. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE,LANE DEPARTURE | On or about June 15, while driving my TeslaI received a notification from my Tesla that the automatic Emergency Braking was disabled. There were also notifications that Autosteer was unavailable, and so was cruise control. I made an appointment with a Tesla repair center for repairs to the car under warranty. My initial appointment was postponed to enable remote diagnosis. On July 6 I brought my car to a Tesla repair center. After looking at my car, Tesla informed me that the car had no then current alerts or faults. They "were able to confirm this is known firmware characteristic. Tesla is working to to resolve this in a future firmware update." It's not clear to me what they are saying and whether this was a false positive from the firmware error reporting system or a transient fault that they could not reproduce. In any event, the fault reporting and the failure of Tesla to repair its firmware for a 2 and 1/2 year old car is a concern to me. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,UNKNOWN OR OTHER | The contact's husband owned a 2020 Tesla Model 3. According to a police report, while traveling at 70 MPH, the vehicle veered across three lanes of traffic and hit a light pole. The contact was wearing a seatbelt and the air bags deployed upon impact. The paramedics arrived at the scene; her husband was intubated and taken to the hospital. Her husband was pronounced brain dead due to injuries suffered in the accident and passed away two weeks later. According to the police report, witnesses stated that no effort was made by her husband to avoid or slow down prior to the collision. The contact disputes this claim and stated that her husband was not a reckless driver and would not have intentionally hit a light pole. The contact believed that the cause of the accident may have been related to a mechanical failure and would like an additional investigation conducted about the accident. The vehicle was towed to an independent tow yard and destroyed. The manufacturer had yet to be notified of the failure. The failure mileage was unknown. | Crash: Yes Fire: No Fatalities: 1 Towed Medical attention | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | LANE DEPARTURE | the recall NHTSA Recall Number21V-00D has NOT been fixed by Tesla on my car. I have scheduled service multiple times and they continue to deny availability of parts to repair. This is frustrating! How can this manufacturer have all the parts for nee car sales and not for a government mandated recall?? Can you do anything?? Please, advocate for me a tax paying consumer. Raul Martinez | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Phantom braking: While driving down the highway for no apparent reason the car brakes and one time we had a car behind us that almost hit us. This is very dangerous and Tesla need to fix this asap. This has happened multiple times since around March 2022. The passengers in the car are slammed forward without any warning. Today was the scariest because we were almost rear ended and my 6 year old granddaughter was slammed forward. This is unacceptable. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Cars computer froze and I was stuck in cruise control. Hitting the brake would not disengage. Pressing up on the stalk would not disengage. I could manually slow/accelerate the car with the brake/accelerator but after letting off the car would continue on at that speed while everything else remains frozen. No turning signal function. I was afraid to attempt to stop the car fully as it would not disengage. Screen eventually went black and reset after what felt like forever. Functions returned to normal. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE,LANE DEPARTURE | The Tesla lane assist and adaptive cruise control failed while I was driving on the highway (I-295 in DC). I have not paid for the full self driving, so I was using the autopilot every Model 3 uses by default. The car skidded into the barrier on the side of the highway and tore up the back left tire and scraped the car. Autopilot was engaged but the car didn’t slow into the turn. I started to slow it down manually by down clicking the knob on the steering wheel, but it lost control even though autopilot was on the entire time. I’ve driven on autopilot on that highway hundreds of times. Autopilot always slows down on its own going into a turn. I was paying attention and am a very attentive driver. But autopilot normally would never have a problem with a turn like that, so I didn’t want to hit the brakes or do anything to disengage autopilot at the last second. I thought that would make things worse. I took over manually once it hit the barrier, obviously. At that point, I kept it from veering back into the other lane so that it would not hit the car next to me. Normally, there is more traffic ahead of me when I drive in that lane at that point on 295, so autopilot slows down because there are cars directly ahead of me. In this case, there were no cars ahead, so the autopilot didn’t reduce speed until later than normal. But I have been using Tesla autopilot for almost 3 years. It normally works quite well. The issue here seems to be that the autopilot does not see far enough ahead. Even though a sharp turn was coming up, it did not slow down at all until it was very close to the turn in the highway. The reason I am reporting this now is that Tesla ignored me when I reported it. I brought it in for service, and it cost me $1500 for Tesla to repair the wheel after the crash. But Tesla didn’t investigate the failure by the autopilot, or pay for it. And I saw on the news that you are investigating autopilot failures, so I thought you should know about this one too | Crash: Yes Fire: No Towed | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE,LANE DEPARTURE | On 6/18/2022, nearly all visual based safety and convenience features of my car ceased to function randomly. I was given errors/warnings on the screen that cruise ("autopilot") control was unavailable and that automatic emergency braking was unavailable. I drove the vehicle manually to my destination, and after sitting overnight, it magically all worked again. Software on the car at the time was 2022.16.1.1. I am filing this compliant because since obtaining this vehicle in March of 2022, the "autopilot" system has been a constant area of concern. Tesla really needs to get this system working, or perhaps be forced to reduce its functionality (like just have a normal speed based cruise?) until its ready. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Autopilot regularly will panic brake (phantom brake) it also will often randomly change the set cruise control speed from 70 to 35 or from 75 to 35. This is a dangerous system that should not be allowed on the road. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | UNKNOWN OR OTHER | Car was stopped at a red light. All of a sudden car speeds up & was out of control despite applying brakes | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | The car suddenly brakes when the accommodative cruise control or full automatic driving is engaged. This happens at random times when driving on the highway. The braking is sudden and severe requiring driver intervention. Only happens with cruise control or full auto. Has happened several times since the car was purchased. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | My car when passing under signs or on two lane undivided roads will hit the brakes very aggressively. It’s difficult to reproduce and catches me and other drivers by surprise. The car didn’t do this during my first year of ownership, but now it happens several times a week. This will happen when using cruise control and autopilot. To me it’s rendered both features unusable. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | While traveling on highway with Full self driving engaged car would occasionally brake and had to quickly press on the gas pedal for fear a car would hit me from behind. This seemed to happen when I approach an overpass but not most overpasses and typically happens once or twice during highway trips of about 80 miles on NJ garden state parkway. I had not reported this to Tesla or had the car checked for this issue and report it now seeing that there were formal reports filed on this issue to NHTSA. I do not recall whether any warning lights or audible alerts occurred during these incidents. First occurred after I took possession of car a couple of years back. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | I was driving on highway 205 near Tracy CA. I was in the left lane approaching a left curve in the road. The right lane to me was occupied by a semi with "wide load" on the back. It was in its lane and just ahead of me. As we both approached the curve in the road, my car experienced a "phantom brake" episode thinking it was going to hit the truck. Again both our vehicles were in their respective land and the truck was not crossing over the line. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | In moderate city traffic, the emergency braking system sounded and engaged prematurely and harshly. I was not using any automatic driving features and was driving “manually.” A vehicle in front of me stopped, and I intended to slow then stop in a reasonable fashion. I have 25 years’ driving experience, and am well-experienced to do this safely. The emergency braking system suddenly engaged at about 25 mph, grinding my car to a halt. The driver behind me was not expecting such a short stop, and rear-ended my vehicle. No one was injured in this crash. My seatbelt trigger deployed, which tripped the pyro fuse, rendering my car undriveable. I could not move my car off the roadway and caused traffic clogs. The repair bill was roughly $9000 for my vehicle. The weather was clear, the street was dry and the sun was near high noon. | Crash: Yes Fire: No Towed | Unknown |
| May 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | I have reported multiple times that the car suddenly brakes in the middle of the express way with no apparent reason. This issue is known as phantom braking. Tesla postponed the diagnosis of the car multiple times and I was told by the service department that the problem was going to be fixed by replacing the radars when I left the car on May 16, which they did not do. The last events of phantom braking occurred multiple times and even I continued stepping on the accelerator, the car continued to engaging with the emergency braking. This is a safety issue and the company has failed to fix it | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| May 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | "Phantom braking" issue is very real and very dangerous on my vehicle. Problem occurs while operating the car with Autopilot engaged such that the adaptive cruise control is in operation. Problem happens with or without also having the auto-steer function engaged. Problem is that the vehicle will suddenly, very unexpectedly slam on the brakes. This can cause the driver of the vehicle to go into panic mode and for obvious reasons is also very dangerous for vehicles that are following the malfunctioning Tesla. Sometimes, this sudden, hard braking occurs when a vehicle coming toward the Tesla makes a left turn in front of the Tesla at a VERY far away and VERY safe distance - so safe that the driver of the Tesla is caught completely off guard when the Tesla decides to slam on the brakes. And cars behind the Tesla are also caught off guard. Other times, this "phantom braking" happens for no apparent reason at all - totally out of the blue. I am now very leery to use the autopilot feature, even though that was one of the vehicles biggest selling points. I am positive that only reason I have not been rear-ended is I have quick enough reflexes that I have been able to push my foot on the accelerator quickly enough to over-ride the sudden braking before the car behind me hit me. I have called Tesla's service department about this issue. They do acknowledge the issue, although in a vague manner as if they are reluctant to fully admit how prevalent and serious the issue is. I've asked if there are any adjustments I can make to the various settings that might reduce this problem. The representatives that I spoke with had only anecdotal experiences from conversations with other customers complaining about this problem. My Tesla has several control settings which could be related to this problem. They are not well explained in the owner's manual, plus some settings appear to overlap or conflict with similarly named settings. Confusing! Many incidents, so is date is not specific. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |