See All 3 Photos 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. 0:00 / 0:00 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? Anincorrectset 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. See All 3 Photos