In June, began hearing noise from the front suspension area while turning at speeds from 0-45 mph. I created a service appointment and I was initially told the front control arms and shock needed to be replaced due to wear and tear and would not be covered under warranty. Was informed the shock was leaking and it was required to be replaced in conjunction with the control arms repair. Was told “I won’t say its safe to drive, because at some point it can fail ”by the service advisor on 7/6/21 on a recorded line (recording available but not able to be uploaded here). To me, this indicates a safety concern; however, I was told it is a wear item that commonly needs to be replaced on older cars due to mileage/age of car and is not checked on the annual service unless there is noise or problem. However, suspension items are not listed anywhere on the website, manual, or 2013 esa, or original warranty as being wear items needing replacement/checks after a set mileage or vehicle age. Having an annual service that does not check a wear item that appears to have turned into a safety item – makes no sense. Additionally, the front suspension was checked on 2021.2.11 @ 82,562 miles as evident by the uploaded service invoice. At the time, there was a difference of 6,146 miles and less than 5 months since the suspension check. I pointed the above concerns out and how I knew there was a pending the federal safety agency investigation into control arm failures, and it was then determined that the control arms could be replaced under warranty and the in conjunction and required spring would be customer pay per the ESA contract.
2013 Tesla Model S suspension complaints
Page 2 of 4: complaints 11 to 40 of 92, newest first, as owners wrote them.
My vehicle started making some loud creaking/squeaky noises when turning and going over bumps at any speed or parked. I had it inspected by a tesla service center and they said the left control arm is starting to fail and should be replaced. They also recommended replacing the fore link assembly to address some rattling noise that was going on also. I recently read that tesla had issued a recall in china for this problem for the model s and is currently investigating the issue in the us. I would like to add my vehicle to this investigation as it seems that I'm being affected by this problem.
Changed the suspension components before full failure occurred. Car was brought in due to safety concerns, technicians noted the entire suspension system was on verge of collapse and not safe to drive. Under their service bulletin they replaced the rear control arms as a good will gesture and charged for the front upper and lower control arms. There is a design flaw for this suspension system and the manufacturer is refusing to acknowledge their flaw, leaving users unaware and with the potential for severe loss of life.
1. Driving screen failed. 2. During wet weather brakes will not slow down car for 3 seconds...very distrubing 3. 2013 model s with under 100k miles had font end parts fail. Required a $3,000.00 repair. Have never had an american car, even with twice the mileage have multiple front end parts fail.
Back and front suspension issues, tire blow while driving and caused unsafe operation.
Here is another tesla in the junkyard: https://erepairables.com/salvage-cars-auction/tesla/model+s/vid-44567577 the air suspension has collapsed whilst the car was in motion causing the wheels to jam up in the wells and damage the liner and bodywork. Failure of the air suspension is a common defect in teslas and many of these cases have been discussed in the tesla forums and have been reported to the federal safety agency. Any normal car manufacturer would have fixed this problem by fitting limit stops on the suspension. But this company is run under the rule of lord elon musk who must never be questioned. There is no need to press the insane button. It comes as standard with every tesla. Yours whompily. Keef
Here is a terdsla in the junkyard:https://www.iaai.com/vehicledetails/38372462?rownumber=30 look closely and you will notice that the back wheel has gone whompy. If you would be so kind as to take these contraptions off the roads then I can shut up and let you get back to sleep. Thanks a lot. Keef
We own a 2013 tesla model s 85, rear wheel drive, no autopilot. As vehicle aged, the steering was noticeably vague and the vehicle became "darty" on the highway, seemingly wanting to drive out of the current lane on its own. This dartiness became worse and worse over time, and also was worse when accelerating or decelerating. We first alerted the dealer of the problem in aug 2019, and they replaced few components in the front suspension (both upper control arms and the right forelink) and charged us $1571+tax for parts and labor. The steering seemed a little better for a while, but in jan 2020 we brought the car back in with concerns about vague steering and the dealer recommended a wheel alignment, which we paid for. The alignment yielded no improvement and the car became increasingly difficult to drive on the highway, requiring constant steering adjustments to keep in its lane. We brought the car back to the dealer in may 2020, and by this time the dealer verbally agreed that the car was not safe to drive in its current state. They replaced both rear lower control arm assemblies and charged us $1382+tax, but this still did not resolve the dartiness. We returned to the dealer later in may 2020, and they recommended replacing nearly every other suspension part, including both rear toe links, both rear upper links, both front aft links, the front fore link that wasn't previously replaced. The cost for this was a $1870+tax. Fortunately, the steering issues did not result in any accidents. Since this last repair, the car now drives relatively normally for a 7 1/2 year old car. We are reporting our experience after we learned that the federal safety agency is investigating a series of other suspension-related concerns with tesla model s cars. We believe it is unreasonable for a car to become unsafe to drive in 7 years subjected only to normal personal use.
Front suspension control arm disconnected, dropping body onto tire. This happened at low speed in a parking lot. Tesla replaced the control arm.
Ball joint on front left upper control arm assembly failed prematurely at approximately 80,000 miles vehicle usage; specifically, it separated so as to cause the uca (upper control arm) to disconnect from from the steering knuckle during a low-speed parking lot maneuver (three point 'y' turn) at approximately 5 MPH or less, which caused the wheel to tip in words against the strut assembly. Repaired suspension by replacing upper control arm with integral ball joint. Approximately 40,000 miles later, the ball joint on the right hand upper control arm exhibited extreme looseness and clunking sounds forcing me to replace the rh uca / ball joint on that side as well. Vehicle now has approximately 150,000 miles vehicle usage and the suspension is once again exhibiting abnormal clunking noise (from the lh front corner) over bumps at low speeds that makes me suspicious that additional or same ball joints are wearing prematurely. I am a professional mechanical engineer (with 27 years industry experience) responsible for propulsion systems on agricultural harvesting vehicles and can definitively state I have never abused this vehicle. The wear rates are excessive on the uca ball and socket connection which does/could cause ball joint separation and suspension function/control.
Here is a tesla model s in the junkyard. Https://www.copart.com/lot/44596360/photos/2013-tesla-model-s-ca-san-jose it has the traditional whompy wheel. Sb-19-31-001 january 3, 2019 tesla, inc. Service bulletin replace lower rear control arm assemblies on certain model s vehicles, either lower rear control arm might crack, causing excessive negative camber of the rear suspension." you can say that again mister garrison! Tesla is not proactively fixing these problems. Every tesla is a time bomb. Please sort this out thank you keef
Vehicle makes squeak noise when driving low speed and drive over a bumper. Took the car to service center and they said right upper control arm need replacement on oct 19 2019 and paid it and replaced. Same thing happened on left upper control arm on may 08 2020 and paid and replaced. And they told me that play is present in both aft links. I am worried that my model is old one as 2013 and it failed a lot from the suspension part. Thanks god this thing happened on high speed but I am really worried regarding the safety of the car.
Was supercharging about 7 hours away from home, my screen turned off and would not reboot.. The dreaded mcu failure every tesla owner fears, and every service center pretends does not exist. My car would not power off, as we were at the beach my A/C was on full blast. My car was now driveable with no key, and the doors would not lock whatsoever. Anyone with or without a key could just walk up touch the handle and get into my car. I had to stay close to superchargers as my A/C drained the battery heavily. Tesla essentially told me they would have to have me take it to a service center which were closed for the next 2 days because a mobile tech would not be able to replace it on spot. So now I get to drive 7 hours home in the most stressful situation of my life. As we got away from the coast and the temperature rapidly dropped I had water pouring off my windshield and down the sides of my car and out of my air vents! It was almost impossible to see and incredibly dangerous. My fiancee had to keep a towel in her lap to wipe the windshield every few seconds. Putting the lack of visibility aside and safety of a vehicle thats unable to lock. I had to manually find all tesla superchargers along the route I also had to guesstimate how much charge I would need to make it to the next station which was quite the task due to the high A/C drain. After our last charging stop we had maybe 120 miles to go and I charged to 170ish.. At least 50 more than necessary. There was one point on our trip where we had 16 miles remaining and 17 to go. Somehow through a little help from the man above we made it home with a couple miles to spare. It completely astounds me that tesla could just brush off such a horrendous failure of a very well known and documented issue. It's not a chance of if it fails as to a matter of when. Stock prices matter more than a customers safety.
Well I love my fist tesla but after the first time it had to go in to the austin service center for a problem with a clicking /thumping noise as when I back up I heard & feel. So after having my car a couple days found it would need to have the large drive unit replace that will be still covered under warranty, but say the rear subframe needs to be replace & I have to pay to get replaced due to ' wear & tear ' as service center say, on my subframe it's never been in any accident etc.they say it's not covered the 100% warranty!!
My tesla has the well know 'black screen of death' due to emmc failure. Without this, most functions of the vehicle do not work. This includes suspension adjustments, AC/heat, backup camera, radio, navigation, etc. Tesla has been a nightmare to get a live person on the phone, unless it's for new car sales. They scheduled an appointment for us but it's 3 weeks away and we cannot wait that long to have the car mobile again. I will likely take the emmc out myself, mail it to someone for replacement, and pay about 700.00.
While slowly backing car up in driveway, the left rear lower control arm unexpectedly failed and the suspension collapsed with the wheel cambered outward at 30 degrees or so. The wheel was trapped in the wheel well and unable to rotate, and related suspension parts including a brake line and the air spring module were damaged. If this had happened at speed the locked-up rear wheel would have caused loss of control with serious consequences. There is an existing tesla service bulletin, sb 19-31-001, which states: "on certain model s vehicles, either lower rear control arm might crack, causing excessive negative camber of the rear suspension." it states that the correction is: replace both lh and rh lower rear control arm assemblies with updated parts." this describes exactly what happened with my vehicle. The circular, cast aluminum part of the arm which contains a large bushing at the outboard end of the control arm cracked and failed so that the bushing was no longer held by the arm. Under the vehicle two pieces of the cast aluminum part were found. These broken parts were the result of two cracks in the assembly. One crack has evidence of corrosion, suggesting that it occurred months before the unit failed; the other crack shows bare metal indicating that it just occurred. The tesla sb states that this defect is a "known non-safety-related condition." I cannot possibly see how this is a "non-safety-related" issue -- if this failure had occurred at speed it could have been catastrophic. Tesla service has quoted almost $4000 for repair, but this does not include replacement of the control arm on the other side of the vehicle per the service bulletin -- in other words, they are ignoring the bulletin. Others on the tesla forums are having exactly the same control arm failures. The situation is unnerving and discouraging.
Main screen malfunction. Turned completely black. Turn signals no longer work and car will not charge. Backup camera not usable. Car is undrivable due to safety issues. I've been waiting for a replacement unit over a month already.
This is another complaint about the deadly weakness of tesla suspensions. Please note that I have used a substitute VIN since the VIN of the affected car is unavailable. This should not matter as this is a systemic failure affecting every tesla on the roads. Here is a thread on the official tesla motors forum which only allows posts by verified owners. Https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/rear-lower-control-arm-failed the latest in a long string of failures is reported here : natecval | july 14, 2020 I had an nearly identical issue! Rear passenger suspension failure. After normal drive home from work with nothing out of the ordinary happening. I put the car in reverse and began to back up towards my driveway and the wheel tire nearly fell off. Very unnerving since I was on the freeway over the weekend traveling 85 MPH, thank god this didn't happen then. I was able to pull up my dash cam footage and see the exact moment the part cam flying out from under my car. Then drove back and found it on the road. With our other vehicle. Https://youtu.be/ag022fhsz7m pictures- 2013 tesla s85 rear lower control arm catastrophic failure. Https://imgur.com/a/0h47aym this is incontrovertible proof that tesla suspensions are breaking and putting lives at risk. I have copied the pictures referred to and they are attached to this complaint. Contrary to the claims made by some commentators on that thread this is not the result of abuse or neglect. It is a crack that is the predictable result of poor quality casting, bad design and utter lack of quality control. I strongly urge you to investigate this issue immediately. I thank you keef
Mcu (center screen) failed in my 2013 model s. I returned to the car after it was parked all day in an outdoor parking lot at work and it would not turn on. Rebooting, other troubleshooting did not remedy. As a result of mcu failure, turn signals did not work (exterior turn signals and audible indication of turn signals), air suspension could not be adjusted, climate control could not be adjusted, headlights could not be manually controlled, steering settings could not be adjusted, charge level could not be adjusted, media/entertainment could not be used, backup camera could not be viewed in addition to other functionality for the car. Leading up to the complete failure of the unit, the mcu would occasionally reboot itself during driving causing loss of turn signals and change in steering dynamics.
Tesla in junkyard. Back wheel fell off. Suspension giblets all hanging out. Very nasty. Give my regards to [xxx] yours whompily [xxx] information redacted pursuant to the freedom of information act (foia), 5 u.s.c. 552(b)(6).
The touch screen for the electric vehicle (tesla) went black rendering the vehicle to unable to be charged and any entertainment, climate and other basic functions for the vehicle to be used. The vehicle was stationary and parked when this happened but there have been reports of the screen going out while driving for other owners.
The media control unit (mcu) has failed on my vehicle over a month ago. I am still waiting for the tesla service center to notify they have a replacement for me. Till then, the representative said the vehicle is still safe to drive. Failure of the mcu means I am unable to control most of the vehicles functions. Most notably, I cannot raise the vehicles suspension, turn on the air conditioning, or view the rear view camera. Others things affected are opening the sunroof, listening the the radio or music at all, use GPS, connect my phone to the vehicles bluetooth, connect to my phone via tesla app, the odometer reading isn't visible anymore, the walk-away lock feature is inoperative so if I forget to manually lock the vehicle it will stay unlocked, and there may be more features inoperative that I am unaware of. The failure of the mcu occurred after I was done charging at a supercharger station. I noticed the screen was glitching so I attempted to reset the screen. After a few seconds the screen should've came back on but it never did.
This is a complaint about a burned out model s in the junkyard. The VIN is unavailable because the car is roasted so I have substituted the VIN of a different wreck in order to promptly file this urgent complaint. Here is the car I am complaining about. Https://www.iaai.com/vehicledetails/36655532?rownumber=4 I have attached a close up photograph of the wreck which shows that the steering knuckle has snapped in half. The steering knuckle on these early teslas is made from hollow die cast monkey metal and it is very common for these to snap in half. Tesla came out with a slightly improved knuckle in about 2014 but those ones also snapped easily. The current version is much stronger. Owners have not been warned about these weak parts. No recall has been issued. More people will die if you do not take action. Thank you. [xxx] information redacted pursuant to the freedom of information act (foia), 5 u.s.c. 552(b)(6).
The main touchscreen on my 2012 tesla s has stopped working completely- totally blank, resulting in no rearward facing camera, lower charging rates, no control over suspension height or steering stiffness; no A/C, no heat, no sunroof controls, no wifi, no bluetooth and no cellular; no map, no GPS. No radio.
Front right, upper control arm failed on right turn on a flat road. Traveling in neighbor streets at <30 MPH. No previous accident occurred.
Three days ago I parked my vehicle to p/u a dog from the vet thus pulled into a parking space with the tires close to the cement stop. No issue. Came outside with the pet and loaded her into the rear seat. Started the vehicle, put unit into reverse and backed perhaps 3" when unit stopped moving. Pulled forward a few inches and tried again. Same. Pulled up vehicle info on the it screen to height of vehicle which has air suspension. Height showed normal. Hit button for max height, same issue. Went back into screen and went through the same protocol. This time I could see the units front end rose a few inches. Put unit into reverse and unit backed without problem. I kept the height adjustment at that level. Yesterday, 2/20/19. I pulled into a parking space and drove vehicle into a parking space without any problem. Picked up two order of chinese food weighing about 1 pound. Put unit into reverse after seat belts secured. Backed out very slowly when all of a sudden there was a loud noise. Dismounted from vehicle to find the entire front portion of the unit was lying on the ground. A passerby saw what happened and said "you must have air suspension like I have in my tesla. The same thing happened to me"!! Three of us worked 20 minutes or so to reattach the entire front end. Had a pedestrian been walking to the vehicles parked next to me they would have been hurt. What is to prevent this from happening when driving? I had an aeronautical engineer with me when this event happened. They were shocked. Tesla would not admit there is a safety problem and stated owners should not drive forward to the tire stop. So, we are to let the rear end of the unit hang out 2 to 3 feet in the drive area. There is damage to the fender, hood and front end. This should stop it is a software issue, not operator fault.
I was backing the car out of my garage when I heard a strange scraping sound. When I looked to see what was up I found that the right rear suspension had collapsed. The car was moving straight back at very low speed in my driveway. I was told by the tow truck technician that the lower control arm had failed.
Here is a tesla in the junkyard:https://www.iaai.com/vehicle?itemid=28123114&rownumber=85&loadrecent=true the back wheel has fallen off for no good reason. See attached photograph. Please note that in the latest fatal tesla crash the back wheel has also fallen off. Https://www.journal-news.com/news/local/sheriff-office-outcome-would-have-been-different-prom-night-crash-with-seat-belt-use/v2tpimakdkciff5f4sbwvn/ will you please wake up to this problem. Thank you. Mightily peeved citizen. Which is probably the reason that the car suddenly swerved off the road.
Here is a tesla in the junkyard: https://www.copart.com/lot/29160998/photos it has been involved in a major accident and it is highly probable that the occupants have been seriously injured. The lh back wheel has gone extremely whompy . The suspension is quite obviously broken to cause the wheel to be skewed over at such an angle. It is a proven fact that the tesla wheels are quite fragile. It can be seen in the official crash test videos that the alloy wheels break apart which is supposedly because they should break apart rather than breaching the passenger safety cell. Since these wheels are fragile it is most unlikely that the suspension broke because of a hard impact to the wheel in the crash event. It is far more likely that the suspension breakage was the cause of the accident rather than just the result of the crash impact. I believe that tesla is being given far too much benefit of the doubt and that these all to frequent crashes are often being caused by mechanical failure of absurdly fragile alloy suspension parts. Please investigate. Thank you. Concerned citizen. Date of crash is an approximation.
Here is yet another tesla in the junkyard: https://www.copart.com/lot/28761918/photos the back wheel is whompy. How many more examples do you need before you agree with me that these cars are too dangerous to be allowed to remain on the roads? Please take immediate action. Thank you. Endangered citizen.
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