Quality Control Hell: Tesla’s Model 3 Bumper Is Falling Off “More Than Expected”

We’re not sure exactly how expected it should be that a bumper should randomly fall off of a car at any given time, but we digress. 

Let’s just ignore that bit of common sense and focus on the fact that Elon Musk – the man who wants to implant chips into people’s brains to cure cognitive diseases – seems to be having an awful lot of trouble manufacturing a car that doesn’t disintegrate while it’s being driven down the street.

Our friends over at InsideEVs released a scathing piece this weekend about Tesla’s Model 3, noting that the car’s bumper has a tendency to fall off at a rate that is “more widespread than expected”. And we credit the blog for posting the story despite getting obvious pushback from Tesla cultists. 

“Any article that exposes issues from Tesla gets apologists claiming it is irrelevant, regardless of what it is. The story would be an attempt to harm the company. As we already explained, it is the opposite: it is an effort to convince it to do the right thing,” the blog said. 

The blog shares three different horror stories of bumpers flying off that were sent to the blog after they posted their first article about a Model 3 bumper flying off. In all three cases, the owners were told by Tesla that the repairs would not be covered.

The first owner recalled:

“I was driving through a puddle that was about ankle deep when I heard a loud thud coming from the back of my car. When I looked out through my rear-view mirror, I could see my bumper laying on the road behind me. My friend, who was in another car driving in front of me, went through the same puddle without issue. I was able to get the parts that fell off my car home through the help of my friend and some people who were in the area at the time who loaned me their tools. The next day at home I assessed the damage and reattached the bumper fascia more securely.”

When he brought the issue to Tesla, who seemed at first like they would help him, they eventually “told me that they actually wouldn’t be able to fix it, despite having ‘ordered all the parts.’” 

A second owner wrote about his bumper: 

“Just another statistic for you: the same thing happened to my early Model 3 LR RWD, VIN 26xxx, last month (June) when I drove through a puddle a little larger than this on a one-way road. Both lanes were flooded, there was no place to turn around, and not really enough warning to make a turn prior to encountering it, with heavy traffic behind me. My car is still sitting at the body shop…”

“They simply told me that it wasn’t something Tesla would cover,” the second owner said after he took his vehicle to try and get repaired under warranty. 

A third owner, Luis Terceiro, said: 

“I was driving to work in low traffic and heavy rain. I take two major highways to get to work (I-35 and President George w. Bush Turnpike tollway, both in Dallas, Texas). After parking my car, I saw that my rear bumper was hanging by one bolt on the left side. The whole bumper was dragging on the road for who knows how long!”

Tesla claimed they couldn’t make repairs to his vehicle because he was “driving 100mph” when the bumper came off. “How I can drive 100 mph in heavy rain and live to tell the tale is beyond me,” Terceiro said.

Recall, just a few days ago we posted a viral video perfectly demonstrating exactly the type of quality one would expect from a vehicle made in an outdoor tent.

A video of a Model 3’s bumper flying off while driving in the rain went viral last week. Hilariously, pro-Tesla blog electrek describes the bumper flying off as a “known issue”, as if when it rains the bumpers of Fords and GMs fly off randomly while driving all the time.

The video has garnered over 1 million YouTube views in just a matter of days. 

“In 2018, when Tesla was still ramping up production of the Model 3, we reported on several owners who had issues with their rear bumpers falling off after driving through rain or water puddles,” the blog wrote last Wednesday.

Although the company said they were investigating it, here we are in 2020 and it still appears to be a major issue. The video description says:

I was driving my Tesla Model 3 in the rain with 2 other people in the car when all of a sudden we heard a big BOOM! I pulled into the nearest parking lot, went out of my car to check what happened and I was in total shock.

Recall back in 2019 we wrote about a flaw that had allowed 35 pounds of dirt to get trapped under a Model 3 bumper in Canada. The Model 3 was found to have a design flaw in its underbody that causes the car to trap and retain dirt, water and sand from roadways.

Back in 2019, electrek was making excuses for Tesla still, saying that the company has “often been accused of designing cars for the Californian climate” and that water, dirt and sand used to de-ice roads in colder climates are susceptible to getting trapped in the underbody of Model 3 cars. 

“I wish Tesla would address this, but the automaker doesn’t seem to respond to media inquiries anymore,” electrek editor Fred Lambert bemoaned at the end of his article about the issue.

Now you know how we feel, Fred.