There are 7 owner-reported lighting complaints for the 2024 Tesla Model Yin NHTSA's database. These are unverified consumer reports and may not reflect confirmed defects.
The right rear taillight and turn signal on my Tesla Model Y became dim and intermittently flicker, and the turn signal does not function properly. This issue began immediately after a Tesla software update. The malfunction significantly reduces rear visibility and signaling to other drivers, especially at night, creating a safety risk. I contacted Tesla Service and provided photos/videos. Tesla have scheduled a repair which is 1 week later but declined to confirm whether the vehicle is safe or legal to drive with this lighting malfunction. Tesla also declined to provide a loaner vehicle or alternate transportation and advised me to use my own judgment. Rear lighting and turn signals are safety-critical components required by law. Operating the vehicle in this condition poses a risk of rear-end collision or failure to signal lane changes or turns. I am filing this complaint due to safety concerns and Tesla’s inability to provide written guidance confirming safe operation until repair.
My vehicle’s auto-high beam system does not properly recognize other traffic. It specifically fails to substantially dim the high beams when approaching oncoming vehicles or when behind other traffic on roadways. I have reported this to the manufacturer and attempted to have the dealership fix this on multiple occasions. The dealerships insist that the vehicle dims the required number of pixels in the headlights to not blind other drivers. However, this does not appear to be effective as other drivers that I have followed behind reported that they were being blinded by my highbeams while I was behind them. There is a notable difference between the highbeams and the low beams which the car fails to substantially adjust for when using this required feature to utilize the self driving/auto pilot feature.
Components Failing - Reported as central computer. This made the vehicle turn signals and backup cameras fail as critical components. These two elements were/are completely non-functional. Additional less critical safety functions that have been disabled include blind spot monitoring and cameras, both forward and reverse emergency braking, and pedestrian alerts. My safety was put at-risk due to camera failures while driving and backing out of parking spaces. These vehicles are designed with poor and minimal visibility due to their cameras compensating for visibility shortcomings. You cannot adequately see proximity to other vehicles or pedestrians when cameras are not active. This particular impacts reversing when backing in and out of parking spots since the rear windshield is so small and poorly angled. Drivers have reported that the cameras for them are failing mid-drive leading them to not know where other vehicles were next to them and making unsafe lane changes thinking their warning systems were active. The vehicle component has NOT been inspected by anyone as there was thankfully no actually accident or incident due to the failure. Tesla has not inspected the vehicle due to NO availability for 3+ weeks and they will not consider human contact to expedite review. There are now 100s of community reports of the same defect on online communities all showing failures on same-day or within 24 hours of each other. There were no warnings prior to the failure. The symptoms simply stopped working. It required a phone call to Tesla support to even receive an accurate error code. Tesla is claiming a "short" in the main computer system of the vehicle. This occurred for myself and dozens of others all within several hours of each other in the early morning hours of Friday November 29th 2024. Suspicion is that that this was due to a software update from Tesla.
Auto high beams: They come far too soon or don't dim when when following other vehicles, they do not dim soon enough when meeting cars over rolling hills. They do not dim for oncoming vehicles on a slight bend in the road or on intersecting streets. They also do not dim when in town on lit streets. I've tried to turn them off and manually operate the lights. You are unable to disable the auto high beams for more than a brief period when FSD is available (enabled or disabled). Any action (turning on legacy cruise control, Auto-steer beta, FSD, disengaging and reengaging FSD, shifting the car out of part, etc) turns the auto high beams on regardless of whether or not I disabled them previously.
Turn signals turn off prematurely. Disengaging the cruise control or entering a turn lane after the turn signal is activated appear to turn off the turn signal before reaching the intersection or turn. This occurs whether I use the half or full press on the turn signal stalk. To be honest I'm not sure the difference between the half and full press, since they appear to function the same. This is dangerous for 2 reasons. 1.) Vehicles waiting at the intersection may believe I have changed my mind on turn and take actions on the belief that I am not going to turn. 2.) It creates a distraction as I need to react and take further action to re-activate the turn signal rather than focusing on traffic and the turn.
The headlamp design of the 2024 Tesla Model Y creates a shadow (or shadows) that cannot be adjusted away. These shadows could be a contributing factor if an accident were to occur. Tesla Service has stated there is nothing more they can do regarding adjustment. Initially, there were two shadows. The user-friendly headlamp adjustment on the touchscreen allows only up-down adjustment after the system self-calibrates. Tesla Service manually adjusted the physical headlamps but did not resolve the shadows. This adjustment merely relocated the shadows while creating an additional horizontal shadow. I believe the reflector design of the headlamp is the issue. This is my third Tesla, and prior models did not have this issue. It is best to see video examples, but this form does not allow the file type and I suspect YouTube links would be blocked/removed. Please Advise.
The low beam left headlight (matrix LED) has had a dark spot in the drivers view since the vehicle was purchased in new in March 2024. This dark spot limits visibility at night and I feel is a serious safety issue. It has almost caused me to hit a pedestrian on more than one occasion. I raised this issue with Tesla service immediately after taking delivery of the vehicle. It's still not fixed. I've had (4) completed service appointments and they have failed to fix it. Their last response was "this is how the matrix LED lights function." If so, it should definitely be recalled. I did tell them I'm filing this report and they told me they would try to replace the left headlight. Sadly that's what it takes for a replacement. I've shared videos, pictures and had the service writer at Tesla confirm the dark spot is large enough to be concerning. A person walking or on a bike can easily fit into the size of the dark spot. There are pictures on the internet from others complaining about this issue as well. Just did a Google search and saw multiple postings for this exact issue. My guess is they have a bad batch of headlights or design flaw and they are in denial it's a major enough issue to simply replace them with good ones. I'm hoping others reported this issue.
Complaints are unverified consumer reports submitted to NHTSA. A high complaint count may reflect vehicle popularity, not defect severity. Data sourced from NHTSA public records.
Data synced from NHTSA on May 4, 2026