NHTSA Complaint #11702670 — 2026 TESLA MODEL Y

The vehicle exhibits harmonic oscillation in the steering column since the day I drove the vehicle home on the interstate. Even though tires had been balanced out of pocket due to long service center wait times with a road force balancer, balanced again at the service center, match mounted and road force balanced again out of my own pocket, noise reducing foam removed and balanced on an uncalibrated balancer that resulted in a same day bring back and final road force balance. Service center refused to troubleshoot further after lead tech drove vehicle after third attempt of repair. I asked whether the tech felt the vibration and the service advisors face turned red, and fed the line that it is normal NVH from the solid front drive unit mounts and that was Tesla's stance. This issue has been widely reported online to vehicles that are RWD as well. The bad wheel balance exacerbates the harmonic in the column. Exceptional wheel balancing with RVF down to 6lbs on the front wheels only made it less intense. When driving on any uneven road, or crossing bridge expansion gaps for example, the steering oscillation gets worse, as the uneven roads make it worse. Reasonably assumed at this point it is not caused by just a balance issue. Tesla refused to try a set of known good wheels on the vehicle. This is not normal NVH or general road feel; something in the front end of the vehicle gets into harmonic oscillation. I asked if Tesla would like to keep the car for a proper diagnostic and whether they had looked into other components of the front end, and if they were not going to diagnose further I'd request a buyback. The simple response was that a buyback request would be initiated. It could be a myriad of issues, none of which should be my responsibility to try and track down or fix on a vehicle that exhibited the behavior since day one and still does after 1500 miles. I've passed the account to the service center manager and district manager yet to no reply.