Tesla Model X
Published · Researched 2026-09-21
The falcon-wing doors are the whole car, and they're also the whole problem. There is no version of the Tesla Model X where the doors just work and you never think about them — ten years into production, with a fresh 2026 owner report of a one-week-old car whose doors wouldn't open or close properly, you have to price that in before anything else. If the doors don't make your heart sing, buy literally any other luxury EV SUV and save yourself the trouble.
On the used market, though, the Model X makes a case that has nothing to do with showmanship. A 2021 that stickered near or above $100,000 now averages $36,569 — about a third of its original price. A 2022 averages $49,925 against a peak-era average new price of $133,440. Tesla's MSRP whiplash between 2021 and 2023 — prices rocketing to $133k, then collapsing to $79,990 by late 2023 — vaporized early owners' equity and left the rest of us shopping a $100,000 SUV for the price of a loaded RAV4. Somebody else ate the loss. That somebody is not you.
What's genuinely good starts with the EV fundamentals. The Long Range does 329–335 miles of EPA range, the Plaid does 1,020 horsepower, and everything rides on the Supercharger network, which remains the one charging advantage nobody else has matched. Standard air suspension and AWD, seating for five or six, and a battery warranty — 8 years/150,000 miles on battery and drive unit — that still has years left on a 2022 buy. The packs themselves appear to hold up; the depreciation is your discount, not your warning.
What's actually wrong is a longer list, and it starts with the doors. The falcon wings have been failing since 2016 and the failure modes haven't changed: sensors misreading, doors half-opening, seals leaking, glass shattering when a sensor fails to spot a garage-door opener. In February 2026 — February, 2026 — a brand-new 2026 owner's wife got stranded in the cold driving rain with two toddlers when the doors repeatedly failed to open or close fully, the car half the time refusing to drive because it thought a door was open, service three weeks out. This is the fifth car in the Tesla family; they're not beginners, and they wanted to return it. UK repair data puts sensor recalibration at £200–£400 and motor/mechanism replacement at £500–£800, and there's no DIY path — these are Tesla-service-only components.
Then the suspension. It's the number-one NHTSA complaint area for the X: control arms, ball joints, and air-suspension components wear prematurely, with 716 suspension complaints on the aggregator count. Budget a full front refresh (£800–£1,200 in the UK) somewhere around 60,000–80,000 miles. The electrical system is the number-two complaint bucket — 12V gremlins, body controllers, phantom faults. Build quality is the ongoing insult: delivery-condition paint chips and trim misalignment documented on 2023–2024 cars, panel gaps that a 2024 InsideEVs investigation described as the same ones present "nine years ago." And the 2021 refresh launch year drew 23 NHTSA recalls and a Consumer Reports verdict of "much less reliable than other EVs" — software faults, power steering, driver-assist bugs, airbags. A 2021–2022 buy in 2026 is out of the 4-year/50,000-mile basic warranty, so every door and suspension visit after this is out of pocket.
The social pulse is the most divisive in this cluster. The doors are either the reason to buy or the reason to run, and there's no middle — long-term owners who survived the early years defend the utility, and everyone else points at a decade of the same complaints and asks why they're still paying luxury money for a beta test. The Rivian R1S keeps coming up in owner threads as the exit vehicle, which tells you exactly where the frustrated X owners land.
Value call: the 2022 is the sweet spot. It dodges the 2021's 23-recall launch avalanche, it's the deepest into the depreciation cliff (about 37% of peak-era MSRP, ~$49,900 average), and the 8-year battery warranty runs to 2030. The 2021 at ~$36,600 is cheaper but carries the refresh-launch history — fine as a project, bad as a daily driver. Skip 2022 asking prices above $55,000; sellers anchoring on what they paid are dreaming, and the market has moved on. Nearest alternatives: a used Rivian R1S (the one owners actually defect to) or a used Model Y if you don't need the doors and just want the Tesla experience cheaper.
Skip the 2021 unless it's thousands cheaper and the door and suspension work are documented. And go in with your eyes open: you're not buying a car with doors, you're buying doors with a car. If that sentence doesn't excite you, this review has already done its job.