Complaint volume
650 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
2021 Tesla Model 3 Complaints
650 consumer-submitted complaints on record for the 2021 Tesla Model 3, grouped by component category.
650 Total complaints
45 Crash reports
5 Fire reports
16 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, service brakes,forward collision avoidance, 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 45 crash reports, 5 fire reports, 16 injury reports, and 5 fatality reports. These fields come from complaint records and should be read in context.
Mileage clue
Mileage is available on 42 complaints, with an average reported failure mileage of 18,076 miles. Compare that with the mileage on the listing.
Questions to ask the seller
- Have you had any problems related to forward collision avoidance, service brakes,forward collision avoidance, 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 2021 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.
2021 Tesla Model 3
Build buyer checklist Compare with other years Sends year, make, and model to pre-fill your checklist.
How severe are the 2021 Tesla Model 3 complaints?
45 Crash
5 Fire
16 Injury
5 Fatality
38 Towed
18 Medical attention
What are the most common 2021 Tesla Model 3 complaint categories?
FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 199
SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 57
VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 53
UNKNOWN OR OTHER 41
VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 33
ELECTRICAL SYSTEM 21
VISIBILITY/WIPER 12
VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL 11
SERVICE BRAKES 10
UNKNOWN OR OTHER,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 10
650 total complaints on record
Latest complaints
| Date | Component | Summary | Severity | Mileage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | In cruise control or autopilot, the car will apply brakes randomly and without warning. It is extremely scary to have it slam on the brakes for no reason. Luckily no one was behind me, so I wasn’t in danger of causing an accident, but the problem is constant enough I cannot use the cruise control nor autopilot. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | While in Autopilot, with adaptive cruise and lane assist active, the car will randomly brake despite there being no object or vehicle in front of it that would require braking. It has happened over a dozen times over the past 6 months, primarily on two-lane country roads (where I've stopped using Autopilot) but also at least three times on the expressway. Despite no potential collision incidents ahead, the car abruptly braked and I had to disengage Autopilot to resume normal speed. Luckily in all cases there was no car directly behind me. On more narrow two-lane roads, I know twice the car has perceived a stopped car on the shoulder as a hazard and has abruptly braked, but most incidents have been on open roads with no obvious hazards ahead. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | While driving with cruise control engaged the vehicle will suddenly brake without reason. I have almost been rear-ended multiple times. My wife had things thrown off of seats and onto the floorboard. When I wrote to Tesla they said this can be normal and gave me excuses including lighting problems and semis too close. Frequently this happens with no one around with no lighting problems. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | While using cruise control on a highway, the car suddenly braked for no reason that I could detect. This has happened 3 or 4 times and I have stopped using cruise control for fear it will reoccur. I reported this to Tesla but was told I would need to take the car to Santa Barbara. I live 90 miles north and traveling to Santa Barbara is not feasible right now. You ask for dates below and I don’t know the dates other than that the incidents occurred between October and December 2021. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE,LANE DEPARTURE | The Traffic Aware Cruise Control and Auto-Steer are easily confused so that the vehicle does unexpected things like suddenly slowing down, even heavy breaking, or disengage steering control while in a corner next to semi-truck. This commonly happens when driving at higher speeds, 70 MPH, on the freeway. Suddenly slowing down at such a high speed is dangerous when there are cars following me as they don’t expect a sudden slow down when they can clearly see there is no reason for our car slamming on the brakes. In my observation this problems occur most frequently at higher speeds and when approaching a semi truck or overpass. It is especially worse when going through a corner. Sometimes the center barrier seems to cause sudden slowing down. Also, driving in a corner on the freeway while driving next to a semi truck has caused the auto steer to suddenly disengage which in itself was not dangerous since I had both hands on the steering wheel, it certainly startled me which could potentially be dangerous. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | STRUCTURE | The front latch on the front trunk was replaced due to a fault about a month ago. It has since opened on its own completely while parked. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | PHANTOM BRAKING When cruise control is engaged (not auto steer or full self driving) the vehicle will intermittently slow down or apply corrective braking when no hazard exists. This happens more frequently on 2 lane roads but also happens occasionally on multi-lane freeways. On a 2 lane road, my vehicle will either slow down, brake or break HARD when anything larger than a SUV is coming from the other direction at normal speeds and in his lane. I have also experienced this when there is nobody for 1+ mile in front of behind me. If there are cars behind me, I find myself covering the accelerator and ready to floor it in case my car suddenly slams on the breaks. This make cruise control very unsafe and stressful. I have another Tesla vehicle doing the same thing and will post separately on that one. Thank you. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | In the process of slowing down for traffic, the brake pedal floored by itself and the brakes locked. There was no longer any contact between the foot and brake pedal. If not for the brake locking, the car would have been able to stop in time and avoid a rear end collision. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Since we received the car in November 2021 on two lane roads when meeting large profile vehicles like semi's or UPS it gives us a collision warning and hard brake, which in heavy traffic scares us of a rear end collision. It happens on both cruise and autopilot. Have been in touch with Tesla and they say everything is working correctly. They say they are trying to correct the problem but It's been four months and we are still scared to use the cruise on two lane roads. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | “Phantom emergency braking” problem while cruise control engaged. Occurrences are unpredictable as to causation. Examples of emergency braking include: - no apparent reason: no vehicles nearby, no obstacles in road - cresting a hill - bridge overpass - highway overhead signage - vehicles on side of road - vehicles crossing highway but at a distance that is not dangerous - passing large vehicles on highway This problem causes anxiety driver. could likely create a very dangerous scenario for vehicles following behind should emergency braking engage | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,UNKNOWN OR OTHER,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Phantom braking. The Tesla brakes without warning or provocation when on cruise control. On two lane roads brakes deploy forcefully every time a semi truck is traveling in the on coming lane. It does not have to be on a curve. It is every time a large truck is in the opposing lane. On 4 lane divided highways, it will forcefully brake (from 75 mph down to 40 mph in seconds) climbing small hills, patches of tar on the roads, shadows, off ramps, side roads and for no apparent reason. I have almost been rear ended when a car is following closely and it happens. I have recorded these incidents , reported to Tesla, taken the vehicle for diagnostics and they have no answer and imply that occasionally it may happen however, it should not be an issue. IT IS A DANGEROUS PROBLEM and an accident waiting to cause serious injury. I drive daily with my job and it happens every day. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | I was driving down the freeway at highway speeds. A motorcycle passed me in the left lane. My car sudden slammed on the brakes at freeway speeds and if a car was following me closely I would have been hit. The motorcycle did not cross my path and I was in no danger of hitting it. I was using cruise control at the time. This has happened more than once. Usually it is when a motorcycle is around. I have stopped using cruise control if I see a motorcycle on the road. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | I received delivery of a Tesla Model 3 Long Range vehicle on Oct 25, 2021. On nearly every occasion that I use the “autopilot” cruise control feature, one or more phantom braking events occur. When this happens, my vehicle decelerates rapidly and without warning with enough force to thrust my head and upper torso forward. In all cases, there is nothing in the road and no perceivable road condition to warrant this behavior. Fortunately, no one has been close behind me yet when this has occurred since it would surely result in a rear end collision. There appears to be no consistent pattern: it happens on sunny and cloudy days; day and night; highway and surface streets. I have gotten into the habit of leaving my foot resting gently on the accelerator when in autopilot mode in order to react quickly to these events and hopefully avoid a collision. On Dec 17, 2021 I mentioned this issue during a service appointment at my local Tesla dealership. The response was that this was a common and known problem with Model 3’s and would be hopefully worked out in future software updates as the system “learns”. Four software updates later, the problem has not been resolved and in fact seems to be occurring more frequently. I believe this phantom braking problem is a serious safety issue that Tesla should immediately address. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | The automatic braking system performs pretty well on interstate highways. However, on two lane highways and secondary roads, heavy braking occurs for no apparent reason and with no warning resulting in several near misses for rear end collisions. I can solve the problem by not using cruise control; but, cruise control prevents me from unintentionally speeding. Either this unintentional heavy braking needs to be technologically resolved and/or I need to be provided with the option to switch to conventional cruise control in which I set the speed and determine when the cruise control is deactivated. THIS ISSUE HAS OCURRED DOZENS OF TIMES DURING MY 5 MONTHS AND ~10,000 MILE OWNERSHIP. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Cruise control will slow abruptly without notification or apparent reason. Driving in the middle of the desert on an interstate with cruise control activated and the vehicle will suddenly apply emergency braking for no apparent reason. No other vehicles in close proximity. No crossroads, overpasses or entry/exit ramps in close proximity. Braking event occurs every time cruise control is initiated and occurs several times in one session. This is a critical safety hazard and needs to be addressed immediately. If a large truck was following close behind, they would not be able to slow in time which could have deadly consequences. Tesla shows no concern to fix this critical flaw in an expeditious manner. This needs to be investigated and corrected immediately before someone has to pay the ultimate price. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Forward Collision Warning and Automatic Emergency Braking system failed/malfunctioned. The car is in a Tesla authorized body shop for inspection. The airbag deployed and prevented any injury but the accident did put my life and others at risk. The car was inspected by Tesla's authorized body shop. There was no warning lamps, messages, or other symptoms of the problem prior to the failure. The car was brand new, and I believe a possible explanation is Tesla taking out the radar and replacing it with Tesla vision. I tried to contact Tesla for an investigation but no response. I received a 30k bill to fix the car, and Tesla did not take any responsibility. Here is the footage: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sat1w5i0gl6bwsr/2021-12-20_10-56-45-front.mp4?dl=0 | Crash: Yes Fire: No Towed | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | While on autopilot I experience regular abrupt phantom breaking around semi trucks. This has nearly caused several accidents. I will be going from 60 mph to nearly full stop. This is incredibly unsafe and I no longer feel comfortable using this feature around semi trucks. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Phantom braking occurs intermittently since vehicle purchase while operating autopilot cruise control. My Tesla suddenly brakes without any vehicle ahead to warrant this action. Cars following me could easily slam into the rear of my car. Luckily that has not yet occurred. I have not noted any associated warning lights or alarms. I am awaiting replacement of the car computer (prompted by needing to reboot computer repeatedly), but this has been delayed several months due to parts unavailable. Consumer was unable to use cruise control because of the numerous times car brake mysteriously while driving on a freeway. Consumer reported the issue to Tesla and Tesla stated it was a bug immediately when it occurs. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Sudden/phantom braking of Tesla Model 3 with no apparent obstacles in sight while on adaptive cruise control both with and without auto steering. First noticed on a trip from SF Bay Area to San Diego in August 2021 at mileage about 2,000 miles. On a longer trip from the Bay Area to Colorado in October 2021 with mileage about 5000 miles, we further tested it on desolate stretches of highways with speed limits from 65 to 85 MPH. Over the course of the trip, the problem occurred over 20 times. We turned off all the automatic driving functions and have not used them since October. We prepared a detailed spreadsheet of all the incidents. See attached. In November, we reported the sudden braking problem to Tesla, along with the spreadsheet. They could not use the data I provided and asked me for more recent timestamp of the braking problem. I refused to test the car on busy Bay Area freeways because it was simply too dangerous. After much back and forth, they decided to test drive for themselves. I informed them that the problem was sporadic and would need to test drive for at least 2 to3 hours. On the first service appointment, they drove for about 15 miles and determined that they could not replicate the problem but would recalibrate the cameras. On the second appointment, instead of recalibrating the cameras as promised, they did another test drive. Again, they only drove for 15 miles and determined that they could not replicate the problem and asked that I contact them if the problem occurred again. I believe this problem is extremely dangerous and have not turned on the autopilot features since October. During my interactions with Tesla service employees, they seem to act as though this is the first time they heard of the problem. I don’t believe Tesla is treating this problem seriously enough to take immediate action and needs the attention of NHTSA. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,UNKNOWN OR OTHER | When pressing the horn in the center of my steering wheel, it only activates when certain regions are pressed. When pressing certain regions of the wheel, such as the bottom half of the wheel, a switch is heard clicking, but the horn does not activate. This issue has been reported elsewhere on forums with videos e.g. in one case where the left portion of the wheel's center area did not activate the car's horn. I have discussed this issue with my local Tesla service center on four occasions and demonstrated it to the technician. But the issue is never addressed and I have now been told that bringing up the defect will incur fees from the service center. https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/model-3-horn-issue-check-the-left-side.137767/ ^Here, there are at least 47 reports of the issue occuring, based on the thread's poll. I wouldn't mind this issue terribly much, except there has now been 3-4 separate incidents where I have had to use the horn in an emergency situation (e.g., when another car is changing lanes without noticing my car next to it). During these incidents, I was either unable to activate the horn, or only able to activate the horn in a delayed manner as I worked to activate the horn by pressing it in a specific manner to enable it. My own video of the issue: https://imgur.com/a/dpXv7sT | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,VISIBILITY/WIPER,BACK OVER PREVENTION | Since the V11 user interface update, when you put the car into reverse, the rear camera sometimes does not show up, or often shows up only after a delay. Sometimes the delay is just a second or two, other times it is a minute or seems to hang forever. Today I was parked in front of my kid's school dropoff zone, and needed to back up after they got out to leave. When I went into reverse the cameras were just black and stayed that way. This was especially worrying in this scenario since small children could be walking behind me that I wouldn't be able to see without the camera. This was never a problem until the V11 user interface update, which also causes other safety problems, by burying important functions behind menus. For instance you now have to dig into a menu and reach all the way to the right side of the screen to operate the wipers, you have to dig into menus to operate basic climate control functions that used to be immediately available, etc. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Tesla is phantom breaking for no reason. It could cause me to be rear ended by another car. This is happening more and more to me. Tesla purchased in Oct. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | When traveling on a two-lane highway, oncoming traffic - especially larger vehicles such as semi trucks - cause the car to think it is going to hit the oncoming traffic and engages the brakes and sounds the forward collision warning. If the driver is not quick, there is danger of being rear-ended due to the sudden and unexpected braking. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | While driving up SR95 in AZ at 65mph, the car suddenly provided an audio alert and then slammed on the brakes. It felt as the anti-lock may have engaged. When control was regained, I glanced at the screen and it appeared that it believed a person was in front of the car. There was nothing in front of the car at the time except the road and its common tar-snakes. All safety features were manually turned off to resume the drive. Though within seconds of turning on cruise control, it would start braking and being erratic forcing me to not use the basic cruise control. This was NOT while Autopilot was engaged. At the time of the main incident, cruise control wasn't even engaged. I was in full control of the vehicle and the throttle. But I could not override the braking. Thankfully the person behind was far enough not to be a major risk, but that was luck. Had anyone been following at your average distance, it would have been a rear end collision. This system is NOT safe and I will be looking at replacing the vehicle on this incident alone. I had experienced phantom braking often in the past, but never like this one where it panicked and slammed on the brakes so hard as to cause pain in my wife's shoulder due to the belt. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | The car makes sudden braking when cruise control and/or autopilot is engaged. It’s very frustrating as the car thinks it’s emergency braking because of something in front of the vehicle but the sensors are misreading the stopping. It’s very scary. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |