2018 TESLA MODEL 3 — Complaint #2044914
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about LATCHES/LOCKS/LINKAGES:DOORS:LATCH:EMERGENCY MECHANICAL RELEASE filed December 3, 2024
NHTSA complaint #2044914 (ODI reference 11628467) concerns a 2018 TESLA MODEL 3 and was filed on December 3, 2024. The owner reports the failure occurred on March 7, 2024. The report was geocoded to Illinois based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as latches/locks/linkages:doors:latch:emergency mechanical release, 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:emergency mechanical release 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
In several accidents and fires in model 3s it became apparent that when the electric door openers on the rear door fail the backup mechanical system is completely inadequate particularly for incidental passengers. Unlike the front seats which have a level to pull up to open the door the rear doors require a number of steps that are odd and certainly not obvious or intuitive leading to a very dangerous situation when a very fast exit is needed. The rear should have the same type of level to provide consistency for riders in an emergency situation. As someone who owns Tesla and uses many UBER Tesla's in the back seat I have quired drivers who generally have no idea that the rear seat passengers could easily trapped in the car in an emergency and do not know how to open the doors from the inside. Please refer to this YouTube video for a better understanding of this issue [XXX] INFORMATION REDACTED PURSUANT TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(B)(6)
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2044914 |
| ODI Number | 11628467 |
| Date Filed | December 3, 2024 |
| Failure Date | March 7, 2024 |
| VIN | 5YJ3E1EA3JF |
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.