2021 Tesla Model S: what breaks, and at what mileage

What owners report breaking

Owners have reported 42 named failure modes on the 2021 Tesla Model S, and the three most-reported carry 26% of everything filed, which is an unusually even spread for one model year.

Cruise control failure leads with 32 reports and about 0.3 per 1,000 vehicles.

Automatic braking for no reason follows with 20 reports, median 35,000 miles.

Other steering problem follows with 20 reports.

By system, the reports fall mostly into adas (93), steering (23) and wheels (19).

Severity, and what it costs

Across the named modes, 29 mention a crash, 2 a fire, 3 an injury and 1 a fatality. Those are the words owners used in their own complaints, and NHTSA does not verify them, but they are the closest thing in this data to a measure of what a failure actually did.

The average severity weight across every report on this year is 4.47, where a stalled engine or a failed airbag weighs many times more than a rattling trim panel, and a figure this high means the reports are dominated by failures with safety consequences rather than annoyances. The weighting is set out in full on the methodology page.

What the top failures cost to put right, as editorial estimates for an independent US shop rather than figures from NHTSA: cruise control failure at $200–$1,400, automatic braking for no reason at $0–$1,500, other steering problem at $350–$2,400 and other driver assistance problem at $250–$1,800. Dealer labour, a seized bolt or a part that is no longer made can push any of these past the top of its range.

6% of the reports on this year sit in the engine, transmission, drivetrain or cooling systems — the four where a repair bill is usually four figures.

How often, against how many were built

Scaled by an estimate of how many of these cars exist, the 2021 Tesla Model S draws about 2.6 per 1,000 vehicles, which puts it in the 80th percentile of complaint rates among 2021 vehicles we can rate.

That denominator is the weakest number on the page and it is fair to say so plainly. Rate per 1,000 uses a fleet-size estimate derived from recall paperwork for this exact model year. It is a lower bound.

The working figure is 108,802 vehicles. If the true number is twice that, every rate on this page is half what it says; the ranking against other 2021 vehicles, which is what the risk score uses, is far more robust than the rate itself.

Recalls on the 2021 model year

NHTSA has issued 23 recall campaigns covering the 2021 Tesla Model S, affecting an estimated 533,901 vehicles. A recall is a different kind of evidence from a complaint: it is the regulator and the manufacturer agreeing that something has to be fixed, and the fix is free for as long as the car exists.

The campaigns cover back over prevention:software, electrical system:horn, air bags:frontal:driver side:cushion and latches/locks/linkages:hood:latch. Whether the work was actually done on the car in front of you is a question only the VIN can answer, and the manufacturer or NHTSA will answer it free.

One caution about reading these together: a recall usually raises the complaint count for the same part, because owners who read about it go and file. The mileages stay informative; the counts get noisy.

How 2021 compares with the other years

Severe risk for a 2021 — 78th riskiest of the 231 2021 vehicles we can rate. Because the ranking is against the same model year only, age cancels out of it.

Across the 13 model years of this car that carry enough reports to score, 2023 comes out best at 62 and 2018 worst at 80, with 2021 itself at 77.

If the model year is negotiable, 2023, 2012, 2022, 2013, 2015, 2014 and 2024 score lower than 2021 by a margin worth acting on. Same body, same engines, different luck — usually a supplier change or a mid-cycle fix, which the complaint data can show but never explain.

Within the 2019–2023 generation specifically, 2023 is the strongest year at 62 and 2020 the weakest at 78.

Where these figures stop being useful

280 owner reports; fleet size estimated from this year's own recall paperwork. Every count on this page is therefore a floor: it is the number of owners who went to the trouble of filing with a federal agency, which is a small and self-selected fraction of the owners who had the fault.

Of those 280 reports, 22 carried an odometer reading, so the mileages here describe 8% of the sample rather than all of it. Owners also round: readings pile up on multiples of ten thousand, which is why this site publishes "about 90,000 miles" and not "91,438".

The failure modes are assigned by software reading the owner's own words, which is accurate in bulk and wrong in individual cases. A mode with a handful of reports may contain a misfiled one.

And nothing here predicts what one car will do. These are other people's complaints, filed years apart, on cars maintained by strangers. Read the page as a map of where this model year has previously gone wrong, then have the specific car in front of you inspected.