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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | The vehicle was on cruise control (NOT auto-pilot). Driving on Freeway approximately 82 mph when the vehicle slowed to 60 mph instantly numerous time within my 160 mile drive. There were no vehicles in front or beside me. There were no obstacles in the roadway or on the side of the road. Sunny day with no clouds. There were no warnings lamps or messages that would indicate the car was going to brake. My safety was put at risk if there was another driver behind me, I could have been rear-ended. It Could also had been very dangerous if there was adverse weather. Tesla was not able to recreate the problem and never found any problems with the vehicle. This was not the first time we took the vehicle in for phantom braking. Tesla blamed the driver. I was also told by a tesla representative the the vehicle can brake unexpectedly by sensing a shadow on the road from a cloud. Apparently there is no way to disable this feature. The vehicle has been deemed unsafe to drive by our senior management as this is not the first time this has occurred and Tesla has not remedied the problem. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE,LANE DEPARTURE | On a roadtrip between California and Wyoming, the adaptive cruise control, full-self driving, and emergency breaking engaged for absolutely no reason on dozens of occasions - what I understand is termed "phantom breaking." This was so bad that on Sunday, July 10, I noted each severe incident. Some of these occurred with absolutely no traffic in the road, some during busier periods. In each case, it was scary and dangers -- to the point where my dog went flying off the seat. While this was an issue throughout the road trip, I only noted incidents on July 10, but please be aware this happened on many other days as well. Here are the significant incidents on July 10. Please note there were less severe incidents on this day that I didn't note because it would have been too many to count. 12pm mountain time just outside Idaho Falls, ID -- car braked with no warning from 70 MPH to 60 MPH 2pm mountain time - 77 miles outside twin falls, ID 256pm mountain time - right outside twin falls 408pm mountain time - heading south from Twin falls towards Nevada -- the car braked three times in rapid succession 447pm mountain time - heading south past Jackpot NV 450pm Mountain time - same 420pm Pacific time - 16 miles north of Wells NV, braking multiple times in succession 524pm pacific time - just west of Wells, NV, sudden braking from 85 mph to 65 mph 643pm pacific time - half way between Wells, NV and Winnemucca NV | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | While adaptive cruise control was engaged on highway, it would disengage and harshly break even though there was nothing ahead as an obstacle. If there was a vehicle behind, it would have created a significant change of collision. During a 5+ hour drive, this occurred 20+ times. It seemed to occur when cresting small hills where visibility was somewhat limited ahead and when there were few cars ahead. In a few occurrences, there was a warning chime, but in other cases, it disengaged and braked silently. This just happened yesterday, so it has not been inspected by Tesla. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | My car is experiencing phantom braking nearly every time I use cruise control. It only happens when there are no cars or other obstacles in front of me. It happens at various speeds. The braking slows the car to a stop within seconds if I don’t immediately disengage the cruise control, even at highway speeds. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | STEERING,ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Going 40 MPH on CA 210W in left lane. Full Self Driving available on vehicle but no autopilot/lane assist activated at time of incident. Steering wheel locked up completely; I was unable to turn the wheel at all so I ended up drifting across 4 lanes of highway (miraculously didn’t hit anyone) and ended up under a semi. Car airbags did not deploy and system did not detect a collision. Contacted Tesla to ask about the cause of the accident multiple times; never got an answer. They had us pull the USB in glovebox and see if anything is on there but there wasn’t even though dash cam was activated. They “escalated” the ticket to a supervisor and have been ghosted ever since asking for an answer. We scheduled a service appointment to have them check out the vehicle and they canceled it. It is a miracle that I did not die; I have severe PTSD from the incident which has affected my career negatively. I would like Tesla to take accountability for things like this; it’s scary that they don’t and threaten legal action instead. | Crash: Yes Fire: No Injuries: 1 Towed | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Phantom braking during normal highway travel at high speed, multi accuracies in one trip. The braking made vehicle travel speed dropped from 70MPH to 50MPH suddenly and pose great danger. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | I was driving on I5 north with autopilot enabled at 75 mph and the car decelerated rapidly to 45 mph. There could have been an accident if someone were behind me. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2022 | STEERING,UNKNOWN OR OTHER | The car suddenly stops responding with the entire system seems to be shut down. I cannot access any controls including lights, brakes and any other safety features. I reached out to tesla regarding this and even sent them a video showing the same. They are not responsive at all and seem to not care about this. The car had sidetracked due to no visibility (Wouldn't consider a crash but almost one)This happened multiple times and is really a big safety concern. We were in the middle of woods when this happened and my wife was alone the other time. I would really appreciate if you expedite this issue and get us a solution. The image below is taken when the lights were on but eventually they were gone. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | I own a 2021Tesla Model Y. I took possession of it on August 7, 2021, in Santa Barbara, Ca. Ever since, I have had thousands of instances of automatic emergency braking (phantom braking) episodes while using cruise control or autopilot. On January 26, 2022, I had 47 episodes, in just a couple of hours. This is typical. My latest incident of phantom braking occurred on June 27, 2022. In August 2021, I was promised by Tesla that a software update would be issued soon to remedy the problem. It still hasn't. I'm very exasperated. I understand Tesla was supposed to give you information about this issue on June 20, 2022. I am anxious to hear about Tesla's response. Furthermore, I sincerely hope the Tesla has told you they are fixing the problem. Has it? Please let me know of updates and proposed fixes to Tesla's phantom braking. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | STEERING,POWER TRAIN,SERVICE BRAKES | Steering wheel locked up and would not let driver navigate off-ramp from freeway. Car attempted to force driver to merge into a stopped lane. Auto-pilot features engaged in screen but they were not manually activated. Car attempted to cause an accident. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL | Was at a drive through and took foot off the brake and barely put any pressure on accelerator the car went out of control — sudden acceleration.. First time this has happened with this car. Was definitely not working properly. Less than a second was at full Speed. Had to swerve to try and avoid the car ahead of me. Entire left side of car is crushed and torn apart. | Crash: Yes Fire: No Towed | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Driving on major interstates across Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah, there were several instances of so-called “phantom braking” — while using Adaptive Cruise Control, with no other cars or obstacles in front, the brakes were rapidly applied, decelerating the car from roughly 75 MPH down to around 60 before I could manually press the accelerator pedal to override the behavior. Not only is this dangerous for myself, but could easily cause an accident if people are following closely at highway speeds. If Tesla’s camera-only system (as opposed to radar) can’t do the job, they should at least provide an option for a non-adaptive cruise toggle that would hopefully work around the issue. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | ELECTRICAL SYSTEM | Every two weeks or so, the screen goes blank. When parked, you can do a vehicle reset and after 2 or 3 tries the screen with turn back on and the car is able to be driven. Sometimes, the screen will go blank while driving. This will require the driver to pull aside, power down the vehicle, and try to reset it. This is a huge safety issue when the screen goes blank when driving. Tesla says there's nothing wrong, or try a reset, or the next update will solve it. When there is a bug like this on an EV it is a huge safety issue. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | We just completed a 6500 mile round trip road trip from So Cal to Toronto Canada and back. 5/24/22-6/12/22 During the trip we used the "Auto Pilot" with and with out "Auto Steering" Not Full Self Driving. I lost count of how many times we encountered "Phantom Braking" with the car at highway speeds. My guess would be at least 50 times. It got to the point where I would not use Auto Pilot especially when there was heavy traffic at full highway speeds. My deduction on why this is happening is that the Tesla cameras are "Infrared" sensitive and it seemed that the car was applying the brakes when it would see the heat waves off the hot road surface. Also in early morning one day the sun was directly behind us and the cars shadow was directly in front of us on the road surface and it kept applying the brakes thinking it was another car. In slow moving bumper to bumper traffic going 30MPH or less does not seem to initiate the "Phantom Braking". But at highway speeds it is super scary and dangerous when this happens. ;( | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | STEERING,ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,ENGINE | On June 28th 11:50pm with 174 mile range, my Tesla Model Y LR died while driving on fwy 5 with my 10 year old. I barely had time to exit, it gave me warning “PULL OVER SAFELY” “VEHICLE SHUTTING DOWN”. I barely made it to off-ramp, my car completely shutdown at the end of off ramp. Could not put it to neutral, me and my 10 years old had to exit the car immediately, called tow truck via tesla app. Tow truck showed up in 20 mins, can was not drivable. This could have been much worst, if I was not able to exit and my car stuck on middle of the freeway at night. This is a huge safety concern. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | The vehicle randomly applies hard brakes. This makes cruise unusable and presents a safety issue for cars behind. I was almost hit from behind when my Tesla applied brakes on interstate going from 65 to 35MPH. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES | My vehicle brakes suddenly for no apparent reason. Happens usually on highway, usually when on self driving or auto navigation mode but also in cruise control rarely. It will go from 65 or 70 mph to 35-40 mph all of a sudden without warning without any vehicle close by. I notified Tesla multiple times. They said “it happens”. They asked me for exact date time location, I gave it, it still happens so I gave up and don’t use self driving much I cannot now tell you exact date time but if it happens next time I can keep records | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | UNKNOWN OR OTHER | I had the Tesla on autopilot on interstate I-80, it was raining. The car was in the middle lane. It suddenly started to slide to the right and hit a truck in the right lane. I tried to regain control of the vehicle and hit the brake hard, but it did not seem to work. Tesla clipped the truck and continued to slide off into the guard rail. | Crash: Yes Fire: No Towed | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | -Auto pilot (adaptive cruise control). Yes it is available for inspection. -Vehicle unexpectedly slowes down on highways (when using cruise control) at an unsafe rate when there is nothing in the path of the vehicle. This has cause multiple instances of vehicles almost rear-ending me due to the rapid deceleration. -I have asked a Tesla Service Center representative about the phantom breaking and they stated it was a known issue and that was being worked on. -No, the vehicle was not inspected by the manufacturer since we were advised it was a known issue. -There is no warning lights or sounds before the vehicle suddenly brakes. I suspect that hills, shadows, on coming traffic on two lane highways are some of the causes for the phantom braking. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | There are 4 issues to report for our Tesla Model Y: 1) On the highway, our Tesla often presses on the brakes and slows down by itself when it should not be doing so. This occurs when we have adaptive cruise control on. We’ve noticed that at the time of the slowdown, the Tesla misreads the highway speed limit. For example, the Tesla will read the speed limit as 70 mph, then all of sudden without warning, the Tesla will suddenly read the speed limit at 40 mph, which then causes the Tesla to break and slow down by itself, when the speed limit is actually still 70 mph. This can happen several times on a single highway trip. Aside from the shock we receive as a driver as our vehicle slows unexpectedly, this could cause a rear end collision if a car is following us too closely from behind. 2) When we use adaptive cruise control and the steering assist feature, the car does not recognize to slow down on highway off ramp curves. I monitor the speed around curves, though if a driver is not aware of the issue and expects for the Tesla to take the curve slowly, this could cause an issue. In particular, if there is a big curve, I’d be concerned of the Tesla losing control and going off the road, due to speed. 3) The car will often provide a frontal collision warning, even if there is no car or object in front of the car, while it's in motion. This can lead to confusion for the driver or possibly hard breaking, which could cause a rear-end collision, if a car is following too close behind the Tesla. Also, the Tesla driver may swerve unnecessarily to avoid an object that isn’t there, which could cause a collision. 4) The Tesla is advertised as being able to travel over 300 miles on a single charge, however, the conditions for this to happen seem incredibly difficult to meet, as mileage is usually far less than this. This can cause drivers to overestimate how far they can drive, which could lead to cars urgently pulling of the road to prevent stalling where traffic is. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | This is my sixth complaint to you. I own a 2021Tesla Model Y. I took possession of it on August 7, 2021, in Santa Barbara, Ca. Ever since, I have had several thousand instances of automatic emergency braking (phantom braking) episodes while using cruise control or autopilot. On January 26, 2022, I had 47 episodes, in two hours. This is typical. I was told immediately following my purchase last August that there would soon be a software update to remedy the problem. There hasn't! I have had five appointments with the Tesla service center, and they continually say "we can't fix it, only the software engineers can". The braking episodes are dangerous! I implore you to hold Tesla accountable and demand they fix the problem immediately. PLEASE! | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | LANE DEPARTURE,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | I was traveling early morning before sunrise over the tehachapi pass towards Mojave in California. Someone had lost a camper shell from the top of a pickup truck in the lane. It was still dark outside. I saw the obstruction in the road but the car cameras did not pick it up. I pulled into the left lane to try to get around the camper shell. The lane assist pulled me right back into the camper shell which tore down the side of the car doing 10k in damage. The car never recognized impact or an accident. I have the videos from the cameras of the car. The lane assist, as far as I know, only doesn’t activate when the turn signal is used, which I did not have time for, as I had less than 200 feet between me and the camper shell. | Crash: Yes Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE,LANE DEPARTURE | Several instances of emergency braking applied without warning or obvious need during multiple driving sessions. This results in an unexpected rapid vehicle deceleration. Fortunately no other vehicle was following close enough to represent an imminent safety hazard though it is easily plausible this could happen. Typically the issue occurs when traveling uphill or around a bend and encountering traffic in an oncoming lane, structures (bridges) or dark shadows. The unexpected emergency braking has also happened when adaptive cruise control or autopilot is engaged while overtaking large vehicles on the left (tractor trailers in the right lane). I have also noticed several erroneous lane departure warnings despite turning off these notifications on the dashboard. They are more a nuisance than safety hazard so far but would like to completely silence them entirely. These issues have yet to be reproduced or inspected by the dealer, police, insurance or other investigator. No warning lamps or indicators were active at the time the braking or lane departure warnings were observed. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | using autopilot adaptive cruise control, the vehicle on several occasions but mostly on non median highways the car for no apparent reason brakes hard. vehicles around me especially behind are put in danger by my sudden, hard braking for no apparent reason | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | I was driving to and from mammoth lakes California. Middle of the day, clear weather, with no other cars within thousands of feet if me. I put my vehicle into adaptive cruise control (not autopilot) and several times during the drive the brakes would slam to the point of reducing my speed from around 70 mph to roughly 40 mph very quickly. It was extremely happened and was repeatable but with no known reason. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |