2023 TESLA MODEL S Complaints

A car was coming towards me and I couldn’t honk because I couldn’t find the tiny horn button without taking my eyes off the road.

The tire has an excessive and extremely disproportionate amount of wear on the inner part of the tire and sidewall. It is still on the car at this time. The location of the failure is hard to visually notice. My tire losing pressure was the cue something was wrong. It was on the verge of catastrophic failure and only luck prevented this from turning into an accident. This same failure has been reproduced on a large number of Tesla Plaid vehicles equipped with 21” rims and these Michelin tires. It has not been inspected by the manufacturer, police, insurance representatives or others. I will be taking it tomorrow for warranty review from Michelin. There were no symptoms of an impending failure at all. The only warning light that ever showed was a communication error with the sensor that read tire pressure. However, I always checked the pressure manually since that particular sensor was intermittent with its reporting. These tires are rated for 30k and I’m barely over 12k.

The Tesla Model S Plaid with the yoke does not have a functional horn feature in the center of the yoke. Instead, the horn button is a small one to the side. This is dangerous and not intuitive. Similarly, the capacitive turn signal buttons on the left make little sense. It’s particularly challenging to indicate the correct signal when I’m in a roundabout to note when I’m going to exit. There should instead be a stalk like every other vehicle I’ve ever driven in my life (I’ve driven MANY cars!) for the turn signal feature and similarly the center of the yoke/steering wheel should activate the horn. Tesla missed the mark on both of these areas. I entered 3/31/2023 as the date below, which is when I took delivery of the car in St. Louis, MO; however, the issue persists.

The horn is a button now instead of a stalk and the turn signals are buttons now. This is dangerous as I almost got hit the other day and reaction was to hit middle of wheel for horn to alert other driver but nothing happened as it is a button and not in middle. Also harder to use turn signals now. Very confusing and dangerous. Tesla should be required to put horn in middle as in ALL other cars and turn signal stalks back

This complaint is about difficulties with the horn sensor on the steering yoke under emergency situations. After 14 months of driving the car, I have these safety issues: 1) The horn sensor is difficult to find in emergency situations. It is a single, small area located farthest away from the right-hand rest position and touching it requires a long stretch with the thumb. When turning, it is easy to lose the orientation of the yoke and nearly impossible to find the horn sensor. (See #5 in the attached image). 2) The horn sensor is near the cruise-control button ("right scroll button"). The cruise-control button is raised and I have accidentally engaged the cruise-control on multiple occasions when trying to reach for the horn sensor. I would lift off the accelerator, expecting to slow down, but imagine my panic when the car speeds-up due to the accidentally engaged cruise-control. (See #8 in the attached image). 3) The horn sensor does not work when wearing regular gloves. None of the steering yoke sensors with gloves. You have to wear special touch-senstive gloves. 4) The steering yoke airbag is NOT a horn button. All of my previous cars since 2000 had airbag horns. This is a hard habit to break. I urge the NHTSA to recall the steering yoke and make the airbag a physical horn button. This would alleviate the four safety issues above. Thank you.

The design of the car which uses turn signal buttons on the steering wheel instead of the traditional stalks creates a critical safety hazard. When attempting to use a turn signal while the steering wheel is turned (which happens when pulling out for circular driveways, making two very quick turns, or in emergency maneuvers), it is nearly impossible to find these buttons and be able to press the correct button. In fact, when the steering wheel is turned 180 degrees, the left and right buttons point in the wrong directions, and even if you can locate the buttons, it becomes very counterintuitive to press the correct position. There are so many times when I have had to take my eyes off the road just to see where the turn signal buttons are. Additionally there are multiple occasions when I have kept pressing the turn signal button but it does not turn on. It might be due to its capacitative nature. Turn signals need to be intuitive and easy to use. They should not require the driver to think where they are and guess the correct direction. This is such a fundamental safety feature. I am not sure how this design was approved in the first place. The NHTSA should require the manufacturer to replace the steering wheel with the traditional stalks instead of turn signal buttons on the steering wheel. Otherwise it creates a highly unsafe condition every time the vehicle is driven. The other safety hazard is the use of a tiny horn button on the steering wheel instead of the center of the steering wheel being the horn, as is the case with almost every car. So when is a horn used? Mostly in an emergency to warn other drivers. How does it make sense to take eyes off the road and look for that horn button on the steering wheel when even fractions of seconds are important to avoid a crash. I urge NHTSA to require Tesla to install stalks for turn signals and a center horn button, as these poorly thought of design elements jeopardize people's safety every time you drive the car.

Tesla moved horn button away from center of steering wheel to a small button the frame of the steering wheel. If the wheel is turned such as making a u turn and another car tried making a right almost hitting me. I had no time to find the horn button and this is very dangerous.

I have the plaid version… and this care wears out the rear ties within 12-14 thousand miles.. which is super fast and you can’t tell because it’s the inside of the tire. The metal shoes and is potentially dangerous and life threatening

I have a yoke to steer the car. The horn is only able to be activated by a small button and not a normal large push to the center of the wheel. It is a major safety hazard. You go to press the horn in an emergency and nothing happens. Then find yourself trying to find this small button and are probably already in an accident at that point. Please force them to fix this!

The issue that appears to be a safety concern is the positioning of the horn button. With the release of the yoke style steering wheel, the horn activation was moved from the center of the steering wheel, where it is easily found in an emergency, to the right side spoke of the yoke steering wheel in the form of a tiny button, that is awkward to press in an emergency if the yoke is rotated during a turn.