2018 TESLA MODEL 3 Complaints

While driving on a four-lane Interstate Highway and using the adaptive cruise control, the car suddenly decelerated with no obvious cause. We were well behind the car in front of us -- the cruise control was set to 7 car lengths. I pressed the accelerator as soon as I could to resume speed. Fortunately, there was no vehicle close behind us, but a vehicle closely tailgating might have crashed into us.

AT 70000 THE FRONT RIGHT BAR THAT CONNECT TO WHEEL WENT BAD 350 DOLLARS. AT AROUND 90000 MILES THE AC WENT BAD AND THEY SAID IS BECAUSE I USED IT TOO MUCH 4700 DOLLARS AT 110000 THE LID FOR THE CHARGER KEPT OPENING UP AND CLOSING BY ITSELF AT 127000 THE BATTERY RANGE REDUCED SIGNED WENT ON 129000 MAXIMUM CHARGE COULD BE CHARDED 47 PERCENT. AND COULD NOT BE CHARGED MORE THAN WHATEVER IS IN THERE ALREADY

While in Cruise control: I.e.going 70 + mph, when passing large trucks (18 wheelers) the vehicle will hard break down to 50 mph. Vehicles traveling behind don’t expect this and are barely able to stop from hitting into my back end. Only happens with large 18 wheelers, seems to be Trucks that are white in color. It has happened several times previously, stopped at dealer, told nothing wrong, record if it happens again.

My vehicle, was parked and pulled out of the parking lot on a doing a complete left steering turn, couple of nuts&bolts carrying the vehicle control arm fell to the ground and the entire control arm disengaged out of the shafts. This could have been very fatal, if my family or me were riding the car. Tesla was trying to tell me that saying that, this is caused due to a high impact etc, not doing wheel alignment etc. And they want to charge me $3561+ to fix this shaft to put back the nuts and bolts that fell off from the car.

Car frequently brakes for no apparent reason when driving on the freeway. This happens when either adaptive cruise control only or autopilot is used. For example, it has happened on a divided highway during daytime, in good weather, with clear lane markings, with no obstructions. It also happens sometimes when certain road signs come into view, such as "Caution" or "Men Working". There was no phantom braking problem with the car prior to 2021, when a software change was made. It is scary and dangerous for the car to slam on the brakes without any reason. I have stopped using adaptive cruise control or autopilot because of the risk of being rear-ended on the freeway.

For the past year, I have been receiving "Safety restraint system fault" message from Tesla screen in my vehicle. The message does not stay on the screen. It sometimes goes off and then comes back. I have not been able to identify its pattern of occurrence and disappearance. I have informed Tesla service support numerous times since Dec 2021 until now. They did not charge me for the inspection and repair for roughly 3 inspections. Up until around April 2022, their fixes still could not resolve issue, so asked me to go into one of their repair shops. Repair shop charged me $161.45 to fix the problem. Everything seemed okay for couple months. But just last month in Sept 2022, the same warning message started appearing again. I have informed Tesla and Tesla wants to charge me $2200 this time. Would this resolve the issue? I am not sure. And why am I responsible for a safety warning system fault that was not caused by my normal usage of the vehicle? I asked Tesla to give me a reason why they are charging me and any action from owners that has caused this issue to come up again and again. They have not responded. I'm not sure how the law works, but isn't it manufacturer's responsibility to make sure the vehicle is safe to drive on the road? With this warning message coming on and off periodically, and apparently Tesla cannot identify the reason either. How am I supposed to know if and when there is indeed a problem with my safety restraint belt?

Very recently Tesla had a standard software update for the car. They happen all the time. There was no warning with this update (or any update I’ve seen) about removing paid for features if you install the update. This one disabled my radar and turned my radar based autopilot I specifically bought this car for into vision based autopilot. I paid $15k for full self driving and never requested the beta to use it because I specifically did not want to disable my radar because of safety concerns. They did it anyway now, and without warning. It phantom brakes now all the time and it never used to and the general autopilot performance is worse and unsafe. I can’t use it reliably anymore and Tesla refuses to downgrade the firmware or do anything to re-enable my radar and I’m absolutely livid. This is a $75k car that I got for this one feature and they took its functionality away from me without warning and won’t give it back. Vision based autopilot is not safe and I am afraid anytime I use it now. Radar based autopilot felt so safe it was relaxing much of the time.

https://www.tesla.com/support/home-charging-installation/wall-connector The strain relief on the cable that is used to charge the vehicle became loose exposing dangerous high voltage 240v (40A) bare wires inside where the consumer holds it to charge the vehicle. If touched by anyone while charging, would likely cause electrocution and possible death. As the vehicle takes hours to charge outside, not only is the driver and passengers at risk but passerby's including young children. This could happen during clear, dry conditions and exacerbated by wet conditions. The manufacturer, Tesla, responded to my complaint by telling me the only remedy is for me to buy a new charging unit at a cost of $500 plus a few hours of electrician labor. There was no mention of a replacement part (strain relief/handle) other than purchasing the entire system and paying an electrician to replace it. There were no prior symptoms (no scratches, no cracks, no physical damage, etc..) which leads me to believe that this is a manufacturing defect and a serious live threatening one. Furthermore, the Tesla support team wrote on 7/16/2022: "Thank you for reaching out to the Tesla Wall Connector Support team. "he crack shouldn't stop the unit from charging. Your unit is out of warranty. If you would like to purchase the newest Wall Connector while it's on sale for $400 instead of $500, I have provided the link. We do recommend a certified electrician install the Gen 3. https://shop.tesla.com/product/wall-connector." This implies that the wall charger can be used to charge the vehicle and ignores the DANGEROUS ELECTRICAL HAZARD present which is totally unacceptable.

2 bolts mounting the left lower front control arm to the subframe has come loose. The car is out of warranty and Tesla refused to work on it without charging. The car has been making clunking noise and lately is pulling to the right when on freeway. Glad that I am handy and capable of doing DIY repair and glad I discovered it early. If one of these bolts comes loose on freeway, it could be fatal to me. I researched and found that I am not the only one. https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/suspension-rattling-sound-turned-out-to-be-a-loose-bolt.185958/ When there are that many reports of the same problem, I believe Tesla should be more proactive or do a recall. The bolts have been tightened by me but I don't know the exact torque specs, nor do I know if any other suspension components or threads of the bolts have been compromised. I did not check the right side of the car for loose.

On Sept. 9th, around 9:05pm, my wife was on the driver's seat, FSD was engaged. so the Tesla model 3 car was driving itself on highway 395 close to susanville. Then suddenly a car coming, we had a head-on collision, the other car's front left hit our front left. The other driver passed away, my wife and I got serious injuries, we are recovering from 3 surgeries. 1.FSD did not give alert or warning, 2.FSD did not break the car, 3.FSD did not slowing down the car 4.FSD did not change direction of the car. 5.FSD just kept the speed and direction. “Disabling FSD” needs time, my wife did nothing, because there was only few 10th of a second. But I am afraid if she was driving without engaging FSD, she might be able to steer the car slightly to the right to avoid the accident. CHP will pull data from the car in the next few days. We would like to request NHTSA has a full investigation of the accident. Attached please find a form we received from CHP, a picture of both cars, and driving data downloaded from Tesla web site.