2023 Tesla Model Y Complaints: What Owners Actually Filed
Owners of the 2023 Tesla Model Y filed 1,134 complaints with NHTSA; the forward collision avoidance, adaptive cruise control leads with 26% of them, ahead of the forward collision avoidance, automatic emergency braking at 21%. That's a count of reports, not a rate: a model that sold in large numbers files more complaints than a rare one with a worse record, and nothing in the file knows how many were sold. Use it to decide what to inspect before buying, not to grade the car.
The 2023 Tesla Model Y problems owners filed, by system
| System | Complaints | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Forward collision avoidance, adaptive cruise control | 299 | 26% |
| Forward collision avoidance, automatic emergency braking | 233 | 21% |
| Steering | 203 | 18% |
| Vehicle speed control | 163 | 14% |
| Service brakes | 149 | 13% |
Vehicles with fewer than 10 complaints aren't in the file at all, so a system missing from this table drew fewer reports than the ones shown, not none. A further 143 named no system, or one the form calls other.
Is it this year, or the model line?
The forward collision avoidance, adaptive cruise control is named most in 5 other model years of the Tesla Model Y too: 2020 (71 of 274), 2021 (406 of 1,059), 2022 (337 of 847), 2024 (70 of 312), 2025 (26 of 95). That's the pattern worth reading; one year alone can be a recall season.
The whole Tesla picture, every system by model year, is on the Tesla brand page.
Recalls to check before you buy
The one part of this page that is a verdict rather than a count: recall campaigns are the manufacturer's own admission, filed with the regulator. The list is by model year, not by car; whether a particular car had the work done is in the dealer's records, or in NHTSA's VIN lookup through our decoder.
Recalls on file
Checking NHTSA's recall file...
What we have written about it
- steering-wheel-shakes-when-braking for the steering
- brake-pad-rotor-replacement-cost for the service brakes
What this page doesn't know
How many were sold. The file counts reports, not cars, so a popular model looks worse than a rare one with the same problem.
Whether your car has it. A share of complaints isn't a probability for one vehicle. It says which system to have inspected, and which service records to ask for.
Who filed. Filing is voluntary, and a recall or a news story sends owners to the form in numbers a quiet year never sees.
What it costs to fix. Nothing on this page is a repair price. The site's cost articles are censused on specific cars, not on this file.
Sources
- NHTSA consumer complaints, FLAT_CMPL bulk file. https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsa-datasets-and-apis. The copy counted here is dated 2026-08-25; one complaint is counted once per vehicle, and once per system it names. The same file drives the complaints decoder.
- NHTSA recalls API, read live for this make, model and model year when the page opens.
Counts of owner reports filed with NHTSA for the 2023 Tesla Model Y, bulk file dated 2026-08-25, rebuilt with each data refresh. General information about what owners reported, not advice about a specific car.