Complaint volume
1019 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 Y Complaints
1019 consumer-submitted complaints on record for the 2021 Tesla Model Y, grouped by component category.
1019 Total complaints
85 Crash reports
6 Fire reports
22 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, vehicle speed control,forward collision avoidance, service brakes,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 85 crash reports, 6 fire reports, 22 injury reports, and 4 fatality reports. These fields come from complaint records and should be read in context.
Mileage clue
Mileage is available on 98 complaints, with an average reported failure mileage of 16,683 miles. Compare that with the mileage on the listing.
Questions to ask the seller
- Have you had any problems related to forward collision avoidance, vehicle speed control,forward collision avoidance, service brakes,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 Y?
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 Y
Build buyer checklist Compare with other years Sends year, make, and model to pre-fill your checklist.
How severe are the 2021 Tesla Model Y complaints?
85 Crash
6 Fire
22 Injury
4 Fatality
63 Towed
14 Medical attention
What are the most common 2021 Tesla Model Y complaint categories?
FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 280
VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 72
SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 70
UNKNOWN OR OTHER 64
VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 44
ELECTRICAL SYSTEM 34
SUSPENSION 30
FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE,LANE DEPARTURE 29
STEERING 26
VISIBILITY/WIPER 19
1,019 total complaints on record
Latest complaints
| Date | Component | Summary | Severity | Mileage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 2023 | ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,SERVICE BRAKES | Tesla Y Unintended Acceleration! Driving my Tesla I got a phone call that did not show up on screen then 1-3 seconds later my car took control of itself and rapidly accelerated. I had NO control with no steering or brakes. Powerless inside an accelerating vehicle! The car then crashed up on the median through a private community light post and into a tree. The car did not stop until the battery was severed and destroyed by the tree. All airbags went off and all glass shattered. There was no prior warning at all. Insurance adjuster deemed the car a complete total; not worth repair. | Crash: Yes Fire: No Injuries: 1 Towed | Unknown |
| Jan 2023 | SERVICE BRAKES | phantom braking | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jan 2023 | STRUCTURE | Rear doors are stuck and locked shut, the known defect is on youtube with experts explaining this safety flaw where the door handles get stuck and locked and now TESLA REFUSING TO SERVICE. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jan 2023 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | While driving on cruise control, the car slammed on the brakes out of nowhere. It was terrifying and we were almost hit from behind. There was absolutely no obstruction or any reason for the car to slam on the brakes. We do not feel safe having our young children in the car. We have notified tesla of the issue many times and they refuse to fix it. This car is unsafe and someone, a Tesla driver or members of the public on the road with this car, is going to be killed by the phantom braking . What is the NHTSA waiting for? Please force a recall. Clearly Tesla doesn’t care. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jan 2023 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | I was driving on a large, multi-lane, divided freeway (5 south Interstate just before Anaheim, CA in Orange County, California) and using adaptive cruise control (not autopilot) to maintain my speed in the mid 70s MPH. It was around 9pm PT and there was very light traffic. The next car in front of me was at least 100 feet ahead of me and there weren't any cars on the left or right of me. All of a sudden the car started decelerating really quickly, and by the time I pressed the accelerator to counteract the deceleration, the car was at roughly 60 MPH. There wasn't any indication as to why the car decelerated so suddenly, and there wasn't anything that I could see that might have caused the cruise control to react that way. Thankfully there wasn't a car close behind me - if there had been, it's possible that the trailing car could have hit me and caused an accident at high speeds. I've read online that there are quite a lot of reports of "Phantom braking" from Teslas, and from the descriptions I've read, my experience seems to be exactly the same. I hope that NHTSA and Tesla can work together to get to the bottom of this and prevent these types of scary incidents from ever happening again. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jan 2023 | UNKNOWN OR OTHER | Heatpump failed which caused a lack of cabin heat and in warmer weather would have caused charging issues due to lack of cooling possibly leaving me stranded. This had a warning on screen about loss of cabin conditioning. This happened over a mountain pass and caused the cabin temp to drop to 25F with two kids in car seats. This could be a really bad situation, luckily we had blankets and such to keep warm for the last few hours of the drive. I believe this was caused by an earlier TSB with sensor replacements and a software change done earlier in the life of my car for heatpump issues. This most likely caused wear on the pump and caused it to fail prematurely just out of warranty. The system was replaced by Tesla at significant cost and confirmed metal shavings in the system from the heatpump. I requested to keep the parts and still have them if further investigation is necessary. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jan 2023 | ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,UNKNOWN OR OTHER | The driver side window doesn’t roll all the way up when trying to close it automatically with one button push. It goes partially up the side and then will automatically roll down. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jan 2023 | UNKNOWN OR OTHER,SERVICE BRAKES | Autobraking works sometimes and it doesn't many a times consistently. Also, there is a bad smell that keeps coming regularly. Not sure where that is coming from. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jan 2023 | STEERING | If you turn the steering wheel in a Tesla Model 3/Y all the way to either direction then apply light force the car will slowly start to push back with a lot of force till the wheel reaches about 45°. At that point if you try to turn the wheel in either direction you will be unable to as it completely locks up for a few seconds. This behavior will happen in any gear including park with the vehicle on. In my case I was backing up onto a busy street and was waiting for a gap in traffic with my wheel turned all the way. At this point it had begun pushing back then when I finally backed out I was unable to turn the wheel the opposite direction and ended up blocking traffic for a few seconds. This was a very terrifying situation and had the potential to go a lot worse. This is a serious safety concern that affects all Teslas and needs to be addressed. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jan 2023 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE,LANE DEPARTURE | Jan 13, 2023 at 7:02AM PST. While using adaptive cruise control with lanekeeping, I was driving in second lane from the right at a constant speed. There was plenty of room in front of me- no car nearby. As I was slowly passing the car to my right, another car that was behind the car to my right began a normal lane change to its left into my lane behind me. For no reason, my car began to slow down suddenly. Video footage of cameras on my car show the moment when the front of my car pitched down because it was suddenly slowing down. The rear camera view shows when my car's brake lights illuminated for no good reason. I immediately intervened and accelerated back to my highway speed so as to not contribute to the car behind me running into me or having to suddenly brake itself and leading to a problem for yet more drivers. These video files I am linking to show the incident 14 seconds into each video. https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0kGqkRUiGD9Mw9 I've experienced many examples of this phantom breaking since upgrading to 2022.44.30. I wish my car had a feature to enable simple, old fashioned, cruise control so I could use it on highways. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jan 2023 | UNKNOWN OR OTHER,LANE DEPARTURE | I was using the new version of the full self driving on surface streets. It was my second time using the system (yesterday was the first on the freeway and it seemed odd). Today it sped up and veered towards a car parked in the middle lane. I grabbed the wheel and thought it might have been an innocent error. Then a few minutes later the car took control again and tried to turn (quickly) into the side of a FedEx truck. At that point I knew the first miss wasn’t made up in my mind. I’m so glad I was paying attention, both would have been serious car damage - though not likely to be deadly because they were at low enough speeds. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jan 2023 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | I was driving on highway 395 in California on Jan 6th in the afternoon. It was a very clear day. I was driving north on the 2 lane portion of the road north of Adelanto and Kramer junction with cruise control on set to about 72. With no cars in sight in front of me the car hard braked with no cars in front of me. I disabled cruise control and later enabled it again. It happened again. I contacted Tesla and they determined there no hardware issue with the car. I am afraid to use cruise control now in the car. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jan 2023 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Multiple phantom brakes in a day with nothing in front of the vehicle on an interstate. Terrified drivers behind as a result. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jan 2023 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Car sufferers from “phantom braking” and will aggressively brake while adaptive cruise control is engaged for no apparent reason. No “regular” cruise control is available to over ride this. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jan 2023 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | When driving with Autopilot enabled, the brakes suddenly and sharply come on when I crest a hill. It's very disorienting and could be dangerous if the road is busy. The Autopilot should not be beta tested on consumers and other drivers like this. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jan 2023 | SERVICE BRAKES | Power Braking Assist Reduced error intermittently appears followed by problems braking. I asked Tesla Service Center to repair but they have not done so, nor have they explained what is wrong or how they will fix it. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jan 2023 | STEERING | While driving, suddenly power steering failed. Impossible to steer for my wife who was driving, I am barely able to steer it. Shut off the veh and let it sit for a couple of hours and it started working. Have had it happen 3 times. Scared to drive it. Extremely hazardous situation. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jan 2023 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | I have experienced phantom braking numerous times with this car so I plugged in an arbitrary date below. Fortunately it has generally been on rural, open roads where there was nobody close behind me, but there have been at least a couple of times where there were cars behind me and the braking came close to causing accidents. It is also terrifying when it does happen and has nearly caused me to lose control of the car more than once as I attempted to compensate for the abrupt braking. I understand that you are already investigating this issue with these cars so you know the details. Generally it happens when I am on 2-lane roads that don't have good dividers. The cruse control seems to mistake oncoming cars in the opposite lane as being cars in my lane and it will slam on the brakes. It also seems to be triggered by highway mirages and shadows. I have managed to capture the issue on video at least once. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jan 2023 | UNKNOWN OR OTHER | In a rainy day I drove Tesla Model Y (AWD) on highway 1 in the Raleigh NC area. The highway 1 is under construction. There are only two lanes open with cement barriers on both sides. While I was driving on the left lane, the car suddenly lost control and slide to the right. I tried to hit break and turn left to avoid the SUV on the right lane, but my car end up turning 180 degree and driver side rear-end hit the cement barrier. Fortunately no injury and no other vehicles involved in the collation. It was raining but not hard. I don't understand why the AWD Tesla would suddenly lost control and slide to right. I can't remember if autopilot was on or off. I tried to request data from Tesla but was denied. Their email indicates only California registrant can request data. I believe the Teals driving and EDR data can really help to confirm if it was a weather issue or not. I have dashcam video ready to upload. | Crash: Yes Fire: No Towed | Unknown |
| Dec 2022 | VISIBILITY | The contact owns a 2021Tesla Model Y. The contact received notification of NHTSA Campaign Number: 22V702000 (Visibility) however, the part to do the recall repair was unavailable. The contact stated that the manufacturer had exceeded a reasonable amount of time for the recall repair. The manufacturer was made aware of the issue. The contact was stated that the driver’s side window would independently roll down while turning the steering wheel. A technician from Tesla reset the computer however, the contact was unsure if the repair addressed the failure stated in the recall. The failure mileage was unknown. Parts distribution disconnect. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Dec 2022 | UNKNOWN OR OTHER,VISIBILITY/WIPER | Regarding a Tesla Y, 2021with 10,000 miles; Durging a recent cold spell, winter driving conditions, the A/C Compressor/Heat Pump failed causing the windshield defrost to cease functioning, causing the visiblity to become poor to none at all, requiring that the vehicle not be driven on the roads until the weather cleared and even then, the driver or pasenger (if avalailbe) has to wipe down the wet windshield from inside to acceptable visibility standards. We did not get in an accident as we quickly abandoned the Tesla Model Y and obtained a ride from another vehicle that had a working windshield defroster. We understand that this has been a problem in Canada and is the subject of a Canadian recall. We contacted Tesla, sent them the computer code "VC front-a447 Cabin Climate Control Issues-requires service" and were advised that they were familiar with this problem and scheduled a repair which included the removal and replacement of the A/C Compressor/Heat Pump and the 'Supermanifold' at a cost of $1,993.55. We were advised that no 'Recall' was associated with this pariticular VIN and nor was there any warranty but this would be a 'customer pay' repair. After exhausting all efforts at writing and calling in an attempt to have a clear defect leading to a safety violation addressed voluntarily by the manufacturer we feel we are left with no alternative but to ask the Goverment to look into this issue for the safety of others who may drive a Tesla with a heat pump in cold weather and very dependant on the proper operation of a windshield defroster (which the heat pump does) for safe visiblity, crucial to proper operations of a motor vehicle, on the public highways. Thanks in advance for looking into this. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Dec 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Phantom braking | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Dec 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Tesla "Traffic Aware Cruise Control" occasionally unnecessarily applies brakes aggressively for no apparent reason when cruise control is in use. This presents a hazard to other driver's who may be behind the Tesla. This phenomena is well known to Tesla owners who have repeatedly posted about it in Tesla's Owners Forum. It is often referred to as "phantom braking". There is no option for the Tesla owner to disable the "Traffic Aware" aspect of Tesla's cruise control I believe Tesla could resolve this problem with a simple software update which would allow the Tesla owner to use cruise control normally without the "Traffic Aware" feature. The "Traffic Aware" feature is part of Tesla's problematic "Auto Pilot" feature. However, my Tesla is not equipped with "Auto Pilot". My Tesla is available for inspection upon request. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Dec 2022 | STEERING,SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | I was driving on the freeway, no one was near me (I had full control of the car, it wasn’t on autopilot) and the car’s brakes deadlocked while I was traveling high way speed and then made a sharp left turn which caused me to crash into the center divide and then hydroplane across the entire freeway uncontrollably | Crash: Yes Fire: No Injuries: 1 Towed Medical attention | Unknown |
| Dec 2022 | STEERING,SERVICE BRAKES,LANE DEPARTURE | 11/29/23: vehicle begins to flash warning alerts (e.g., traction control disabled, lane departure warning unavailable), then power steering stopped working, and brakes pulsed violently when used (almost like ABS was active). Software update was available shortly thereafter, assumed this would remedy the situation. 12/5/23: same problems recur (loss of power steering, odd braking behavior, vehicle alerts). Vehicle was towed to Tesla for service. Tesla was able to ID the alerts in the vehicle history but could not identify the root cause. Took the vehicle one extended test drives, but was unable to cause the problems to recur. Tesla is unable to identify any further actions to prevent recurrence. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |