Facepalm! Imagine you’re eagerly awaiting your new 1,020-hp, $131,190 high-performance electric SUV, and it finally arrives straight out from the factory with … dangerously mismatched tires? According to twitter user @EZebroni (Ethan Joseph), that really happened. He ordered a Tesla Model X Plaid back in August 2021. After a few estimated delivery date changes, Tesla had finally assigned a vehicle for Ethan to take delivery of in March 2022.
Upon the new Tesla’s arrival, Ethan did a once-over on his new $131,190 Tesla Model X Plaid and noticed something very odd about the tires. Naturally, he immediately tweeted about it, asking the internet “is it normal for the Plaid X to have two different brands of tires at delivery? Front set are Michelins. Back set are Continentals.” Somehow, no one at Tesla caught the mistake before the buyer went to pick up his new vehicle (again, after waiting months for it).
Upon looking up the tires on tirerack.com, Ethan noticed the front two are the correct Michelin Latitude Sports 3 UTQG 220 (treadwear) AA (traction) A (temperature) sport summer tires. The rears? An incorrect set of Continental CrossContact LX Sport UTQG 480 A A touring all-season tires. Those are two very different types of tire compounds with drastic differences in grip ability that will vary even more greatly in colder weather, as the summer-spec front tires will harden and deliver less traction than the rears. That’s a safety concern, given the potential impact on the vehicle’s handling. In warmer weather, the traction issues are inverse, with the less grippy all-seasons in back liable to give up well before the front tires—again, potentially skewing the handling balance.
A quick vehicle dynamics lesson: When the rear wheels experience significantly less traction than the fronts, it would be easier to introduce oversteer in a hard corner, even without lifting off the accelerator or suddenly braking (which shifts the vehicle’s weight more onto the front tires, unloading the rears). The opposite is the case in cold weather, when the harder front tires will deliver less grip and thus unexpected understeer. Sure, on a skid pad or similar closed course, a little tail-out action is a gas; it’s probably less so on public roads and when the driver isn’t anticipating it (and, you know, neighboring vehicles, trees, or other objects might be around).
Of course, we’re talking about limit handling here; this owner’s mismatched tires wouldn’t exactly be an immediate crash sentence in typical driving, but unexpected transition maneuvers or swerving to avoid a collision, animal in the road, etc. would bring the unusual tire arrangement to the fore. This is why cars are delivered with four matching tires.
Some might say “it’s not a big deal on an AWD vehicle” to have funky tires, but remember, all-wheel drive can compensate to a certain degree, but only if you’re actively accelerating. Under braking and off-throttle cornering, all-wheel drive is simply extra mass to contend with.
So, How Did This Tire Snafu Come About?
In the era of supply chain constraint, understandably manufacturers may need to use part substitutes to keep producing cars. Given how this change could impact safety, we hope the odd tire fitment was a mistake and not an intentional decision to get a car to a customer with whichever tires were sitting around.
Unfortunately for Ethan, the customer-satisfaction issue was not limited to the dangerously mismatched tires. He also discovered some scratches, uneven panels, and black marks on the white seats of his “supposedly directly from Fremont factory new Model X Plaid” as he puts it. Ethan tells MotorTrend that he thinks the car might be a reject from another buyer and was assigned to him afterwards. But a Tesla representative insisted to him the car was shipped directly from the factory after the other buyer failed to schedule delivery three times. Tesla did offer to install the correct Michelin tires on the rear wheels at a later date, since they were out of stock at the time. Ethan stated he’s a huge Tesla fanboy. But even his enthusiasm couldn’t help him ignore the defects, and so he decided to reject the delivery. Tesla promises it will expedite finding him another one.
We wish Ethan the best of luck for his next high performance electric SUV, though his experience does raise questions (many of which have been raised before) about Tesla’s quality control efforts. Because after all, new vehicles from all manufacturers occasionally show up at dealerships with odd problems or get damaged during transit. These defects are usually caught by dealerships or service centers, and usually are remedied before the buyer can see the vehicles, or are acknowledged and the car is sold at a lower price. So next time you buy a new car, regardless of which automaker you purchase from, remember to perform a careful inspection before taking delivery. If the dealer or manufacturer agrees to send parts to fix certain problems at a later date, you might consider moving forward anyway, though who knows when the parts will show up in the times of supply constraint.
As for the last question lingering on your mind, what will happen to the troubled Model X Ethan didn’t accept? Will Tesla fix the issues first or might it simply push the SUV to the next buyer in line? Whatever happens, let’s hope it eventually gets a correct set of tires.
Photos courtesy of Ethan Joseph
Keyword: Brand New Six-Figure Tesla Model X Delivered With Mismatched Tires