Tesla Model Y All Variants
Problems & Worst Years

Nearly a third of all distinct problems logged against the 2023 Model Y carry a safety-severity rating — 25 of 74 — and the top five alone account for 149 of the year's 584 total complaint occurrences. Forward collision avoidance system malfunction leads at 39 reports, closely followed by 35 describing false forward collision warnings (the system alerting or braking when no collision risk existed), 27 for phantom braking specifically during cruise control operation, 26 for a separately labeled forward collision avoidance malfunction, and 22 for general phantom braking. Four of the five are rated safety-severity, and all five point toward the same broad category: the car's collision-avoidance and cruise-control software reacting to threats that, per the complaints, weren't there.

2024 drops to 209 total occurrences but the safety proportion climbs further — 18 of 29 problem categories, or well over half. Unusually, the top five entries that year are essentially tied at 21 reports apiece: cruise control and adaptive cruise control failure, GPS and navigation system failure, camera system failure, AP4 computer failure, and forward collision avoidance system malfunction. That even distribution suggests a broader software or computer-hardware issue touching multiple connected systems at once, rather than one isolated defect.

No recall campaigns are listed against either year in the data reviewed, so none of this reflects a confirmed manufacturer safety action — it is entirely owner-reported. Given that both years lean so heavily on driver-assist and camera/computer systems rather than mechanical parts, the most informative pre-purchase step is a real-world test drive with cruise control and forward collision avoidance active, across varied road and lighting conditions, rather than a static inspection.

These are, as always, counts of what owners chose to report to NHTSA rather than a measured failure rate, and 2024's lower total partly reflects less time on the road rather than necessarily fewer problems per car. A full service history and an extended test drive remain the better guide for judging any individual Model Y over the model year alone.