We had a Fremont manufactured 2021 Model 3. It failed the 3 year inspection (we live in Sweden) due to fog light being way off and hitch. Turns out the fog light mount had broke off. The whole front fascia was replaced.
Before the inspection I had the tail lights replaced twice, headlights replaced once and so many other things they'd find when I dropped it off for service. The boot hatch hydraulics was missing gaskets. TPMS was defective on delivery. Panel gaps of course. I had so much water in the first tail lights I could house a betta.
When Twitler started fighting the unions we sold that incident number on wheels and got a Volvo.
My boss' tesla model 3 died over 1 night of rather standard storm. Not first night out on the rain, quite rainy place, nothing unusual. Fully dead. At the service, they just gave him keys to new one, no detailed questions - most probably meaning its not that unusual for at least that batch.
When it runs well, colleagues with it are happy, just charging is PITA even for those with houses. When it doesn't, Tesla service is by far the worst in whole Switzerland - they don't give you spare car while they work on it unlike all other normal garages, you have to get on your own ie to work or wherever you need to go. Of course, service center here is in middle of nowhere industrial zone. Folks leaving car there aren't happy to be polite.
I don't know about the US, but in the EU almost all other brands have some kind of mandatory maintenance (and may void warranty if not performed on time) that may catch certain issues before the periodic inspection. Tesla is famous for not having a maintenance plan.
For EVs in particular, you almost never have to use the brakes, and if you don't burnish your brakes from time to time, the rotors may end up rusting or worse, especially in northern counties that use road salt in winter.
Some other well known issues with Model 3s and Ys are poor headlight height calibration and upper/lower lateral links that fail way too early.
The thing with all of these issues is that most Tesla owners are told that they don't need to perform any maintenance, and while that may be the case, you should at least inspect your car from time to time to detect these issues. You can even do most of this on your own (brake burnishing each year, headlight calibration, and more).
It's actually madness that they don't spec a maintenance plan. My 2019 Kona EV comes with a maintenance plan, but everything is "inspect" and then maybe a "replace" on some of the fluids every 100k km or so.
In essence there is zero maintenance, but Hyundai makes it clear that annual inspection of everything is still important, and they will absolutely void your warranty if you skip such a "service" (inspection).
This might have some political aspect, as the service and dealership networks have pushed back on the manufacturer on having 'zero-maintenance' vehicles.
Which begs the question of what are you actually saving on with an EV - the expensive part of servicing a car is what you pay for labor and facilities - I'd argue more often than not, the actual parts and consumables are less than half the price you end up paying.
Wait there is no service schedule? Surely there's at least a recommended schedule, but not following it won't void the warranty?
I mean recurring things like changing (passenger) air filters or brake fluid work about the same for a Tesla as it does for any other car?
(I don't worry so much about the warranty as I do about the resale value when I follow the schedule to the day for my car - I wouldn't want to buy a new-ish car that didn't go to the brand shop on the mandated intervals. Third party service or missed service visit is a huge red flag).
Brake fluid health check every 4 years (replace if necessary)*.
Cabin air filter replacement every 2 years.
Clean and lubricate brake calipers every year or 12,500 miles (20,000 km) if in an area where roads are salted during winter.
Rotate tires every 6,250 miles (10,000 km) or if tread depth difference is 2/32 in (1.5 mm) or greater, whichever comes first.
It's not just the 3. I just sold my X after four years, during which it accumulated faults which required 13 service appointments to fix, 3 of which were "car is completely dead".
Every Tesla owner I know tells me stories of the faults their car has had.
Even without Elon becoming a literal fascist, there's no way I was going to keep my X out of warranty, and I will never buy another Tesla.
That is... substantial. 13 appts in 4 years is crazy.
My first car in 2007 was a 1975 peugeot, and although good looking, I basically had to pray "please don't break, please don't break" whenever I rode it somewhere. At some point I could not stand the mental anguish of it any more, and sold the thing and got a bicycle.
I cannot imagine what that feeling must be like when driving around in a $80k+ brand new car!
Amazing. My 2017 Ford Focus EV (a dreaded "compliance car") had literally zero problems other than replaceable items (wipers, 12v, tires, keyfob, etc). Plus since it was based on a high-volume platform, fixing it after a fender bender was very cheap.
As I was asking myself, what the comparative value is for other cars, from the article: For "Other electric cars inspected" the rate was 9%, for the Tesla Model 3 2020 model it was 23%. This indeed sound very significant.
"The popular model has defects in particular in the brakes, lights, wheels and steering, according to inspection data" also does not create trust.
The bad build quality of at least the US built models is a meme by now. The Chinese and German built models are supposedly way better though. Not that I'd buy a Tesla at this point.
While it states "Other electric cars inspected", it does not appear to specify if that means simply all other electric cars, or other electric cars with the model year 2020. The latter is the only group that should be compared with the 23% figure.
From the wording, they are comparing against all electric vehicles, no specific model year, called to a routine inspection (~MOT).
There is a small note explaining that the Model 3 was introduced in Denmark in 2019 (MY 2020), and therefore 2024 is the first time the M3 has been called to the routine inspection (periodiske bilsyn), hence the specific focus on that model year for this article.
I couldn't be sure from my awkward autotranslation into English. But I would have thought that if the 9% includes cars from other years that makes it worse, not better for Tesla: The article is making the point that this is the first time Tesla has been included in the figures, so it would only be newer Teslas being compared to older, other electric cars.
All other cars would be model year 2020 or older (since inspection becomes mandatory at the four year mark). So best case, this is compared to cars of the same age, and if not, even older cars, which does not make the Model 3 look any better.
One should pay special attention when making comparisons like this, like adjusting for mileage and car segment. It known this segment of cars with more complex suspension systems is known to be hard on the bushings (but this is not unique to Tesla). Also the brake system.
Take away is: Take your car for inspection before the warranty expires (which for Tesla is 4 years or 80.000km in Europe)
How many mass produced electric cars were sold there in the same class in 2020? I see some potential bias in this statistic because Tesla is probably the only one who sold a significant number of cars back then, but I don't speak Danish.
I can't say about Denmark but my observation is that the electric car landscape in europe might be slightly more diversified than say in the USA.
Mostly because our number one car is not a truck and thus the competition had to react and build EVs to compete against Tesla.
Here are the numbers I found for 2020:
1 Renault Zoe: 99,261
2 Tesla Model 3: 85,713
3 Volkswagen ID 3: 56,118
4 Hyundai Kona: 47,796
5 Volkswagen eGolf: 33,650
6 Peugeot e208: 31,287
7 Kia eNiro: 31,019
8 Nissan Leaf: 30,916
9 Audi E-tron: 26,454
10 BMW i3: 23,113
So there are many more EV cars from other brands sold in 2020 than there were Tesla Model 3. The Tesla Model 3 represented at the very least less than 18.5% of cars as I only counted the top 10.
It seems they do pretty badly in Germany too. TÜV data showed 14.2% Model 3 cars had "significant defects" at inspections after 2-3 years. This was the highest defect rate of any car model.
Edit: Previously stated "at 12-13 years it was a little over 40%.", but this is incompatible with how long the Model 3 has been on the market, so assume this was a caption mistake by the site posting the stats.
apologies, this gave me pause for a split second but I didn't double check — see sibling comment, I think the captions weren't properly updated by the site reporting the stats.
This is definitely making me rethink my choices. I've been eyeing the Model 3, but a 23% failure rate during inspections is really alarming. It's not just a minor issue if the car has three times more problems than other electric vehicles.
The fact that the same problems are found in German inspections, it seems to confirm that it is not just a local issue. I will definitely start looking at other brands with similar models.
this would seem to be huge considering Teslas cant fail the emissions component and gas cars generally don't start failing their inspection in any meaningful way until they are 6 or 7 years old.
wonder how much weight plays a part, all the extra forces involved making the general structure deteriorate faster.
higher maintainance costs over gas vehicles has brutal implications for the fledgling electric aviation industry.
Inspections in Europe are not just emissions. It varies by country, but in general they are checking all the equipment on the vehicle. In my country you even need to make sure the fire extinguisher has not expired.
I'd guess most of the failures are due to things like headlights not being aligned properly.
the article says steering, suspension and headlights.
headlights are fairly normal, but suspension and steering are dangerous failures and expensive repairs - higher weight jumps out to me as a likely root cause. especially when many of the others are hybrids with much smaller batteries and motor power.
This seems to be mostly a Tesla thing, not an electric car thing; per the article the fail rate for Teslas was almost 3x that for other electric cars. And that's comparing 2020 Teslas (the first year to sell in significant numbers in Denmark) against _all_ other electric cars, which is going to include Nissan Leafs from 2011 and other weird old stuff.
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Before the inspection I had the tail lights replaced twice, headlights replaced once and so many other things they'd find when I dropped it off for service. The boot hatch hydraulics was missing gaskets. TPMS was defective on delivery. Panel gaps of course. I had so much water in the first tail lights I could house a betta.
When Twitler started fighting the unions we sold that incident number on wheels and got a Volvo.
When it runs well, colleagues with it are happy, just charging is PITA even for those with houses. When it doesn't, Tesla service is by far the worst in whole Switzerland - they don't give you spare car while they work on it unlike all other normal garages, you have to get on your own ie to work or wherever you need to go. Of course, service center here is in middle of nowhere industrial zone. Folks leaving car there aren't happy to be polite.
How so?
For EVs in particular, you almost never have to use the brakes, and if you don't burnish your brakes from time to time, the rotors may end up rusting or worse, especially in northern counties that use road salt in winter.
Some other well known issues with Model 3s and Ys are poor headlight height calibration and upper/lower lateral links that fail way too early.
The thing with all of these issues is that most Tesla owners are told that they don't need to perform any maintenance, and while that may be the case, you should at least inspect your car from time to time to detect these issues. You can even do most of this on your own (brake burnishing each year, headlight calibration, and more).
In essence there is zero maintenance, but Hyundai makes it clear that annual inspection of everything is still important, and they will absolutely void your warranty if you skip such a "service" (inspection).
Which begs the question of what are you actually saving on with an EV - the expensive part of servicing a car is what you pay for labor and facilities - I'd argue more often than not, the actual parts and consumables are less than half the price you end up paying.
I mean recurring things like changing (passenger) air filters or brake fluid work about the same for a Tesla as it does for any other car?
(I don't worry so much about the warranty as I do about the resale value when I follow the schedule to the day for my car - I wouldn't want to buy a new-ish car that didn't go to the brand shop on the mandated intervals. Third party service or missed service visit is a huge red flag).
Every Tesla owner I know tells me stories of the faults their car has had.
Even without Elon becoming a literal fascist, there's no way I was going to keep my X out of warranty, and I will never buy another Tesla.
My first car in 2007 was a 1975 peugeot, and although good looking, I basically had to pray "please don't break, please don't break" whenever I rode it somewhere. At some point I could not stand the mental anguish of it any more, and sold the thing and got a bicycle.
I cannot imagine what that feeling must be like when driving around in a $80k+ brand new car!
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
"The popular model has defects in particular in the brakes, lights, wheels and steering, according to inspection data" also does not create trust.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17437073
There is a small note explaining that the Model 3 was introduced in Denmark in 2019 (MY 2020), and therefore 2024 is the first time the M3 has been called to the routine inspection (periodiske bilsyn), hence the specific focus on that model year for this article.
Take away is: Take your car for inspection before the warranty expires (which for Tesla is 4 years or 80.000km in Europe)
Mostly because our number one car is not a truck and thus the competition had to react and build EVs to compete against Tesla.
Here are the numbers I found for 2020:
1 Renault Zoe: 99,261
2 Tesla Model 3: 85,713
3 Volkswagen ID 3: 56,118
4 Hyundai Kona: 47,796
5 Volkswagen eGolf: 33,650
6 Peugeot e208: 31,287
7 Kia eNiro: 31,019
8 Nissan Leaf: 30,916
9 Audi E-tron: 26,454
10 BMW i3: 23,113
So there are many more EV cars from other brands sold in 2020 than there were Tesla Model 3. The Tesla Model 3 represented at the very least less than 18.5% of cars as I only counted the top 10.
source: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/renault-zoe-ecli...
https://www.adac.de/news/tuev-report-2025/
About 40% of the electric cars sold in Denmark in (edit: september) 2020 were Teslas:
https://www.datawrapper.de/_/Q1H9W/ (the source for this is https://web.archive.org/web/20201119015250/https://www.bilim... only available on Archive.org anymore apparently)
Deleted Comment
https://fussmattenprofi.com/en/these-cars-fail-the-tuev-repo...
Edit: Previously stated "at 12-13 years it was a little over 40%.", but this is incompatible with how long the Model 3 has been on the market, so assume this was a caption mistake by the site posting the stats.
2 – 3 years
Tesla Model 3 14.2%
Ford Mondeo 13.2%
Skoda Scala 11.8%
4 – 5 years
Tesla Model 3 19.7%
VW Sharan 17.7%
BMW 5er/6er 17.7%
6 – 7 years
Dacia Dokker 26.5%
Dacia Duster 24.3%
BMW 5er/6er 23.6%
8 – 9 years
Dacia Dokker 30,9%
Dacia Duster 29.7%
Dacia Sandero 28.6%
10 – 11 years
Dacia Logan 39.6%
Dacia Duster 34.1%
Renault Twingo 33.0%
12 – 13 years
Renault Twingo 41.5%
Dacia Logan 41.0%
Renault Clio 39.8%
The fact that the same problems are found in German inspections, it seems to confirm that it is not just a local issue. I will definitely start looking at other brands with similar models.
0: https://trafi2.stat.fi/PXWeb/pxweb/en/TraFi/TraFi__Katsastuk...
wonder how much weight plays a part, all the extra forces involved making the general structure deteriorate faster.
higher maintainance costs over gas vehicles has brutal implications for the fledgling electric aviation industry.
I'd guess most of the failures are due to things like headlights not being aligned properly.
headlights are fairly normal, but suspension and steering are dangerous failures and expensive repairs - higher weight jumps out to me as a likely root cause. especially when many of the others are hybrids with much smaller batteries and motor power.