2018 TESLA MODEL 3 — Complaint #1976599
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about LATCHES/LOCKS/LINKAGES:DOORS:LATCH PLATE filed March 19, 2024
NHTSA complaint #1976599 (ODI reference 11578290) concerns a 2018 TESLA MODEL 3 and was filed on March 19, 2024. The owner reports the failure occurred on March 19, 2024. The report was geocoded to California based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as latches/locks/linkages:doors:latch plate, 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 latches/locks/linkages:doors:latch plate 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 2018 TESLA MODEL 3 shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
I am unable to open my rear passenger car door from the outside or the inside. Also the rear passenger door also lacks a manual release like the front doors have. This, coming off of [XXX] 's death, and Tesla's service apathy and insistence on first collecting money before solving this problem is incredibly dangerous. So I am now driving a death trap, and this is my only car, and Tesla should have to pay for the fix, yet they are insisting I pay for the full price because my car is now "out of warranty." But with this kind of LIFE-THREATENING failure of a door that should honestly just work, is reprehensible. INFORMATION REDACTED PURSUANT TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(B)(6)
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1976599 |
| ODI Number | 11578290 |
| Date Filed | March 19, 2024 |
| Failure Date | March 19, 2024 |
| VIN | 5YJ3E1EA2JF |
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.