2019 TESLA MODEL 3 — Complaint #1950477
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about SUSPENSION:FRONT:CONTROL ARM filed December 15, 2023
NHTSA complaint #1950477 (ODI reference 11560267) concerns a 2019 TESLA MODEL 3 and was filed on December 15, 2023. The owner reports the failure occurred on February 15, 2023. The vehicle had 49,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Pennsylvania based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as suspension:front:control arm, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same TESLA MODEL 3 cohort independently describe similar suspension:front:control arm failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2019 TESLA MODEL 3 shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2019 Tesla Model 3. The contact stated that while turning the steering wheel to the left or the right, there was an abnormal creaking sound. The failure occurred at various speeds and occurred intermittently. The vehicle was taken to the dealer who diagnosed and determined that the creaking sound was coming from the front upper control arm while turning the vehicle and the front lower control arm while in reverse. The dealer also diagnosed that the latter link was torn. The contact was informed that the control arms and suspension nuts and bolts needed to be replaced. The vehicle had not been repaired. The manufacturer was not made aware of the failure. The failure mileage was 49,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1950477 |
| ODI Number | 11560267 |
| Date Filed | December 15, 2023 |
| Failure Date | February 15, 2023 |
| VIN | 5YJ3E1EAXKF |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.