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 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | While using the adaptive cruise control on the highway, the car abruptly slowed down from approximately 70 mph to less than 55 within a few seconds before I was able to push the gas petal and reaccelerate. This has happened 3 other times in the last several weeks and I am now afraid to use the cruise control. Whereas no accident occurred, if it happened when another car was following me closely, it could have easily resulted in a crash. Each time this has happened, there were no other cars nearby so I don’t know what the car ‘saw’ and was reacting to. The date entered below for the incident is the most recent occurrence. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | The car ‘phantom’ brakes all the time. It is so bad that I cannot use the cruise control. I’ve had several instances where vehicles following me almost hit the back of my car because my car braked so hard. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | While I’m adaptive cruise control or Autopilot the vehicle has phantom braking which occurs. Vehicle will slam on the brakes for no apparent reason. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES | When car was in "traffic aware cruise control" on open highway it has multiple times unexpectedly braked hard when there were no vehicles or objects in front of it. Once there was a car behind me so I had to accelerate hard to avoid being rear ended. Once it may have been reacting to an oncoming truck in the opposite lane. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,ENGINE | My wife and I were driving south on Interstate-93 in NH on Superbowl Sunday. Traffic was heavy and we were traveling about 65 mph when our 2021 Model Y Tesla started beeping and the following message came on the screen - “PULL OVER SAFELY, Vehicle shutting down”. My wife was driving and had just enough time to cross over three lanes to get into the breakdown lane before the car came to a sudden stop. The car did not want to restart. We called the Tesla service center and they were about to order a tow truck but we asked if there was a ‘ctrl/alt/del’ type option. She had us select Safety>Power Off. When our Tesla came back on everything was seemingly normal so the service center said ‘this is very rare’ and that it should be okay to drive. We drove another few miles down 93 and luckily took an early exit ramp because the car shut down again at the bottom of the ramp. My wife and I restarted the car again and managed to limp home in some sort of “Power reduced” mode (i.e. painfully little acceleration). This was potentially a very dangerous situation! Luckily we were able to safely get into the breakdown lane but there wasn’t much time to spare. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Phantom braking. I have had numerous incidents of phantom braking, and can reproduce the problem at will on a particular stretch of road. It happens regularly on city streets, occasionally on Interstate highways. It is sufficiently unreliable as to be worthless. I reported the problem to Tesla online in a service request, and was told that the problem will be or has been solved with software. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | When driving with the cruise control on, the car suddenly and rapidly brakes for no apparent reason. Nothing in front of the car. Problem has happened multiple times. Very hard Braking that if someone was behind us it would likely have caused an accident. We no longer use the cruise control because we are afraid of it causing an accident. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | This issue has happened numerous times since I’ve taken possession of the car. The vehicle perceives a potential collision when no such potential collision exists. The car will suddenly brake while traveling down the interstate at high speeds (maximum speed limit). Fortunately, no one has been so close behind me that this has resulted in an accident, but it is only a matter of time. I took it in to a Tesla dealership this week to have it looked at. Despite the adjustments made at the dealership, it happened again on my drive home from the dealership. I feel this automatic breaking system is unsafe. It also breaks suddenly at sharp turns or curves in the road, even at low speeds. It doesn’t anticipate the turn and thinks the driver is heading straight into an obstruction. Part of the issue is learning to think like a computer and learning to anticipate what the computer thinks is happening as opposed to what the human driver thinks is happening. It requires constant vigilance. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Car slams on brakes at inappropriate times. Ex: 1. When a car makes a left turn across my travel lane several blocks away. 2. When a vehicle moves into my travel lane, going the same direction, several blocks in front of me. 3. For no reason I can discern. Cars behind me often honk. Could easily rear end me. Thankfully hasn't happened. You are welcome to inspect it. Don't think service center has tried to replicate the braking. No accident so not reports. Just very scary, thankfully. No warning lamps, etc. Anticipating question about dates, happens randomly, but pretty frequently. At least weekly. Speed also variable. Sometimes 35, sometimes 70, and in-between | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | VISIBILITY/WIPER,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Wipers have frozen down in place. Car is garaged and the buildup was from the road and not parked accumulation. New car <7k miles. Phantom breaking on the autopilot system where it will slam on the breaks always at some points on a commute and when driving in some conditions such as oncoming opposite side of road traffic at night with headlights on. The car will momentarily and to an extreme degree sometimes slam on the breaks. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | When using autosteer or adaptive cruise on I5, our car performed a phantom brake that cause the truck behind us to nearly flip over in order to miss hitting us. We were not in the lane by the divider, there were wide open lanes in front of us to the left and right by half a football field and no overpasses at the time. We slowed from 69 to about 39 before I could correct the braking. This happens so often we do not feel safe using the cruise control at all. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | UNKNOWN OR OTHER,SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Phantom braking has occurred multiple times randomly when autopilot and cruise control are activated. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | The car randomly brakes hard when the cruise control is on. It’s intolerable on roads with a lot of tree shadows or even clouds. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Multiple Emergency braking events basically everytime a semi passed during auto pilot and some phantom braking when only using traffic aware cruise control... Lucky to not get rear ended | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Phantom braking. Vehicle slams the brakes on as soon as it sees an approaching vehicle in the opposite lane. Cruise control is unusable on two lane roads. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | On multiple occasions the car triggers emergency braking when no obstacle is in front of the car, often at high speeds. The car is not equipped with radar, and relies entirely on camera-based adaptive cruise control. this is a safety risk and possible rear end collision cause. Due to the lack of radar, the vehicle also accelerates to desired speed slowly when using adaptive cruise control while on interstate. Often times resulting in traveling under the speed limit for an extended amount of time, causing a safety hazard. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Car braked for now reason when the entire roads in front was clear and there was a car behind me. It was a hard brake which scared me and my family. That was very very close to being in an accident. Need compensation from Tesla for going through such an incident after paying so much money for the car. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | UNKNOWN OR OTHER,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | These issues occur w/ no warning, occur randomly, in all conditions. Issue 1. Vehicle randomly slams on the brakes with no obstructions or vehicles in front. This occurs at highway speeds as well as neighborhood speeds. I'm worried about being rear-ended. This occurs daily. Issue 2. Vehicle thinks oncoming traffic is in same lane and attempts to emergency stop. Issue 3. Upon changing lanes, using auto lane change, vehicle serves back I to lane for no reason. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | While using adaptive cruise control on I-25 making round trips between Albuquerque and Ft Collins, I have experienced numerous (dozens) phantom braking events. They are so frequent that I have stopped using adaptive cruise control. Almost all of these events occur when there is no traffic and no discernible reason for braking. In many cases, my first response is to look in the rearview mirror since I'm worried that if someone is behind me it would cause an accident since the stop is very unexpected. To date, there has not been a close call. The stopping varies between slight hesitations causing 1-2 MPH decrease to dramatic decreases of over 20 MPH. I have made numerous 'bug reports' using my voice in the car immediately after many of the events. I also scheduled a service call but was told that they examined the software and could find no problem. There is no warning of an impending braking event. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | Multiple phantom braking incidents using cruise control on 2 lane roads when there is no hazard | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | On a cross-country trip from Washington, DC to Oklahoma City on Feb 5th and 6th (Saturday and Sunday) I tried to use the "adaptive cruise control" for the first time. Terrifying. The car would be driving along at 80mph, and then it would suddenly slam on the brakes, seemingly without provocation... with a 30-35mph sudden deceleration (absolutely nobody/nothing in either of the lanes in front of me). This was not while using the "full self-driving" feature, as I did not pay the extra $10k for this functionality, only the adaptive cruise control. Another very disturbing thing was that when the adaptive cruise control was enabled, it would not allow me to turn off the windshield wipers... and every so often the wipers would just start frantically wiping despite only a small bit of rain hitting the windshield (again, disturbing, as it is very startling when it happens out of nowhere). Needless to say, after this happened 5 or 6 different times over these two days, I turned off adaptive cruise control and kept it off. Tried to contact Tesla service, but they kept dodging the issue so I stopped trying. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | We have had multiple incidents from July through Dec 2021when the vehicle is operating in cruise control and brakes hard for no good reason. Most of these are on highway 86 between Tucson and Sells. For some of those incidents there was an oncoming school bus, which may have been the visual trigger. For others we do not know the cause. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES | The contact owns a 2021Tesla Model Y. The contact stated that while driving at approximately 72 mph on autopilot when the vehicle suddenly activated the braking system. The contact took the vehicle off of autopilot mode causing the vehicle to function correctly. The contact had not informed the dealer. The vehicle had not been diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was not made aware. The approximate failure mileage was 7,000. | Crash: No Fire: No | 7,000 |
| Feb 2022 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | At 55 MPH on clear day, with visible lines the car automatically braked when an on coming truck passed nearby causing near rear end collision. I have two good videos of this if you wish to see actual conditions. Dealer acknowledged problem but said there was no fix and I should turn off automatic braking. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Feb 2022 | UNKNOWN OR OTHER,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | I am aware that NHTSA is investigating Tesla over the emergency braking issue when using its advanced features. When I have read articles about this they always reference auto pilot or full self driving. I wanted to make sure you knew that this issue also impacted adaptive cruise control. When I brought my Model Y home in August of last year I quickly learned I could not safely use the adaptive cruise control. I live in rural NE Iowa, and mainly drive on two lane roads. If I was on a downhill slope and meeting a vehicle with any kind of height to it the car would activate emergency braking, even though the other vehicle was completely in its own lane. It appears to me this issue has gotten better as updates have been issued the last six months and I have started to gingerly use cruise control again. It is common in the winter here to have tall piles of snow in parking lots. I also noticed on a sunny day I could drive right up to one of these piles when parking. It was striking that that huge pile of snow was invisible to the vehicle. Any other time I approach a barrier (e.g. pulling in to my garage) it gives all manner of warnings and a visual indication of how far you are from the wall. This issue would be much more dangerous if an analogous situation occurred using Autopilot or FSD. It is my understanding that for the 2021 Y Tesla went to just a camera based system (dropped LIDAR). I don’t know if that is what caused these problems or not. The car is a joy to drive. BUT, Tesla’s habit of releasing updates and features to the masses before they are fully tested is dangerous in my opinion. There are more Tesla’s on the roads these days, at some point the accidents are going to add up. The ability to update systems that control how a car is operated/functions is relatively new. I would offer that the processes around how these updates are managed should be the subject of a separate investigation. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |