NHTSA Owner Complaint Log
This page lists owner-reported complaints filed with NHTSA for the 2022 Tesla Model X. Complaints are unverified consumer reports submitted to NHTSA and do not by themselves prove a defect or defect rate.
The 2021-2022 model X “yoke” steering wheel is poorly conceived and a safety hazard. 1) horn location is tiny, and moves as wheel turns, impossible to quickly activate horn in emergency situations 2) high Beam lights are on a tiny button which also moves and cannot be activated when wheel turns or in an emergency situation, or even when choosing to cross an intersection during a yellow light because a car behind you is tailgating. 3) wheel shape: when used at lower speeds in autopilot Beta mode, the electronics literally rip the wheel out of your hands when turning right on residential streets. It is impossible to maintain hands on the wheel without risk of personal injury during some autopilot beta turns. Safety of the vehicle would be returned if the prior 2017-2020 round wheel with turn signal, wiper control, and gear selector stalks returned. The inability for the driver to control following distance in the ADAS (cruise control) systems without dropping 3 levels down into on screen menus is also unsafe.
1) low-speed turning is very difficult. makes hitting pedestrians/curbs/edifices much more likely, as well as just holding up traffic and frustrating other drivers. 2) turn signals require looking down at the steering yoke unless you're a real ninja. even if you get the hang of them without looking down, it's too easy to make a mistake. also i've noticed that when i'm trying to use the left signal, the terrible haptic faceplate will sometimes activate the right turn signal. when this happens in traffic at speed on the highway it can cause accidents. 3) horn is a haptic region that you have to look for to activate. i think this is being addressed but it's not sufficient to recall just to replace the current version with one with a normal horn in the middle. the entire thing needs to be replaced with a wheel and turn signal stalk. Elon Musk might be a genius but he has no business running an ongoing car company.
GPS drifting that has effectively rendered my navigation, autopilot, etc., completely useless. It was actually dangerous on autopilot while GPS is drifiting. While driving on the highway, the gpa thinks the car is on local, it would slow down the car to local speed all of a sudden. Almost got rear ended. It's even more dangerous when merging the line.
Travelling at highway speed with cruise control on, the brakes came on hard as if there was an upcoming collision, slowing the car by 25-30 mph. But there was no car or obstacle ahead of mine. I was able to immediately accelerate back to speed without further incident. And fortunately, the cars behind me were able to slow down without hitting me. This is the third (3rd) time this has happened. The previous was less than two weeks ago on city streets without cruise control and I don't remember the first which happened shortly after getting the car in March 2022. I noticed that others have had a similar experience, which led me to submit this report.
I was a passenger in the vehicle. The car was moving forward at 10-15 mph and the auto braking system was activated appropriately when a large truck parked on the side of the street driver's door opened unexpectedly and was in the path of our vehicle. With the sudden deceleration, my upper body flung forward and the force of my weight caused the seat belt anchor on the lower seat to detach completely.
Sudden dangerous breaking for no reason with near rear end collisions. Happened several times while on a road trip while on highways and also when trying autopilot on highways.
GPS location in this Tesla Model X can drift massively for many minutes, resulting in very unsafe autopilot (such as thinking it's suddenly in a 25mph zone while on the freeway, or vice versa), confusing directions and prompts. See https://twitter.com/ArtemR/status/1534576069524590592 for video demonstration and more reports / info.
I ordered a new Tesla X on 01/10/2021 and I just received it on 06/03/2022. I can’t believe that the car passed quality inspection (I found that the passenger falcon door can’t close unless I override the door to close from the driver seat and non of the closing bottoms works in addition to safety seat built is not even attached to it seat!! These issues should be fixed on the spot (actually I should not receive $110000 car in with a safety issues and I should get it serviced on the spot but they kept telling me that I have to make an appointment through the tesla App and I have to wait weeks before the fix the safety issues. This is my second tesla and I found that the tesla X quality is much worse than the tesla Y. The Tesla x (vin number is [XXX] ) INFORMATION REDACTED PURSUANT TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(B)(6)
a safety recall letter regarding the front-row curtain airbags was sent by Tesla on 6/1/2022, but no further action is taken up to this day.
New Tesla model s/x gear shifter(shift on screen) is unintuitive and dangerous. In a traditional car, or even model 3/Y. Gear shift is intuitive, can be confirmed by visual, muscle memory, sometimes audible as well. In the new Tesla model x/s, the shift happens on the side of the center screen. A thin but very long slide , going up from middle point vertically all the way goes to drive, going down to reverse. The problem is, sitting in driver’s position with your elbow sweeping up and down , especially such a long sweep perfectly needs extra attention. And it needs to be vertical, which is hard to do since the natural elbow motion make your hand movement curved. But in order to get engaged with gear successfully it needs to be perfectly straight. The worst part is, there is no redundancy to confirm your gear engagement except visual — by confirming a tiny text showing gear , on a different screen(cluster) , sometimes laggy response . While the traditional gear shift that people used to can be done by muscle memory , then confirmed by touch/feel, like crisp stalk click or shifter lever steady stuck in new gear , and audibles. You can always confirm by visual as well but it’s not always the case. This makes back and forth maneuvers in a time critical situation ( like parking parallels in a busy street) more stressful and much more room for fail to engage the gear you want. I had an minor incident due to fail to shift to drive , stuck at reverse then hit a parked vehicle in a parking lot at a low speed. Had I been in a traditional car, this kind of mis-shift would never happen, I had been driving for over a decade and never had a collision before, this is the first time. not to mention such a ‘stupid mistKe’ This design is unsafe for seasoned drivers, and needs to be improved.
Two times in last 3 weeks while our Tesla Model X Long Range attempted to emergency or "phantom stop" while cruising at 65 MPH. Both instances occurred when there was a car crossing the highway well in advance (approx 50-75 yards) of our vehicle position. First instance we were utilizing Auto Pilot, second instance was while using Adaptive Cruise Control.
I was driving on the road send out of no where, While driving the wheel started to shake and felt I was losing control. I I started to Press down on the brake in my car would not slow down as fast as it normally would and I felt that I was pretty much driving on metal. Because I had no control due to the wheel on the passenger front side my car was going in and out of the gravel on the road where I almost flew into a ditch. I got the car to stop And noticed the full rim split completely in half. My safety was at risk because I had a toddler in the car with me as well and something like this should never happen to a brand new car rim and tire
When the car automatically started to "precondition" for supercharging while driving to the supercharger location, the binnacle lit up like a Christmas tree. Warnings included, autopilot unavailable, brakes faulty, navigation unavailable and low tire pressure. In addition, all camera related functions such as back up camera and blind spot warning froze. The behavior has repeated itself without warning shortly after I supercharge the car each and every time.
Car is displaying a warning reading “Rear right safety restraint system fault. Service is required.” Same for the left side. I took the vehicle for service and was told that this is a “Known Characteristic of Current Firmware”. Tesla sent me a message stating that “all the hardware components are OK and the alert is caused by a firmware bug at the moment which will be resolved in a future update”. They did not provide any estimates of when this update will be available. They returned me the car without making any statement on whether it is safe to drive, and whether rear passengers would be safe.
Vehicle repeatedly applied the brakes while on cruise control. This sometimes seemed to be a response to other vehicles approaching in the oncoming traffic lane, but sometimes seemed totally unexpected. Once, the vehicle even sounded the collision alarm when no collision danger was present. If someone had been following me closely, the inexplicable braking could have caused an accident. A search of Tesla forums shows this is a common problem with these vehicles.
Malfunctioned components and systems: 1) Outdated feed from the backup camera. No signal from the side cameras. Reproduced multiple times. 2) False input from physical controls. Reproduced multiple times for the left wheel button on the yoke (scroll up and press) and the honk button on the yoke. 3) False signal from proximity sensors. 4) False signal from open door sensors. 5) Spontaneous activation of autonomous parking (when disabled in the settings). 6) Spontaneous activation of the service mode. The vehicle shows: "Do not drive. Improper use may cause damage or injury." 7) Brake fault. Reproduced multiple times. 8) Parking brake fault. Reproduced multiple times. 9) Steering assist fault. 10) High-voltage system fault. 11) Spontaneous computer restart. Available for inspection before 5/5/2022. Safety concerns: 1) The outdated feed from the backup camera almost led to an accident on 03/26/2022 at ~3:09 pm when another vehicle was shown at a distance, but it was actually right behind the vehicle. 2) False signal from proximity sensors on 04/17/2022 at 10:35 pm likely caused a false accident avoidance maneuver toward leaving the drivable surface at a high speed with no vehicles in proximity (video is available by request). 3) Spontaneously increased volume on 04/17/2022 at 12:00 pm distracted the driver and could damage the ears. It couldn't be counteracted by the driver's input due to the fast false input and the persistence of the problem (the volume increased and the playback resumed). 4) False input from physical controls may potentially lead to an uncontrollable vehicle. 5) Spontaneous activation of autonomous parking may potentially lead to an uncontrollable vehicle. The problem was reported to Tesla on 3/26/2022 (two days after the delivery of the vehicle). The vehicle was inspected and the problem was confirmed by Tesla Service on 4/5/2022. They recommended installing a software update that didn't resolve any of the reported issues. Tesla has issued a safety recall with NHTSA Recall No. 22V-296 and Manufacturer Recall No. SB-22-00-009. The recall addresses the same issue as described in this complaint that occurs after preheating the battery before supercharging and after supercharging. The safety recall states that the issue increases the risk of a collision.
While driving my 2022 model x in full self driving beta the vehicle suddenly took a sharp right into another vehicle causing damage to both no one was severely injured. At the time of the incident I was traveling at 40mph which was the designated speed for that area. I had a passenger in the vehicle that can verify the incident.
While driving the electronic systems that monitor the brakes as well as traction control malfunction. It happened multiple times. At one point, the steering wheel was not operable. The brakes became inoperable. I had it towed to the Tesla service center where they said they corrected it. However, upon getting the car back it happened again. Car is very unsafe to drive when all systems shut down.
Data synced from NHTSA on May 4, 2026