Tesla EPC Explained: What the Catalog Gives You, and Where It Stops

Tesla publishes the catalog, and it is free

Start with the address, because plenty of bookmarks still point at the old one. epc.tesla.com answers with a 301 redirect to parts.tesla.com, checked on 28 August 2026. Anything written about the Tesla EPC that still sends you to the epc subdomain is describing a door that now opens somewhere else.

The page that loads is headed Genuine Tesla Parts and offers three routes across the top: VIN, Model and Parts. A line under the first reads that VIN search is recommended for catalog selection and fitment checking. That line is Tesla's own answer to the question the rest of this page works through.

Browsing costs nothing and asks for nothing. No account and nothing to install. Nobody should pay a third party for a route to numbers the manufacturer hands out for free.

What a model browse actually returns

The Model route asks for three things in order: market, model, generation. With the market set to the United States on 28 August 2026 the list read Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Roadster and Cybertruck, with Service Tooling and Subscription in the same dropdown. Switch the market to the United Kingdom and Cybertruck and Service Tooling drop off it. The market selector is not a currency switch, it changes what exists.

Choose a model and you land on a category grid carrying Tesla's own two-digit codes. Model 3 held 22 of them. These are Tesla's own category labels and codes, and the catalog prints them in capitals. The spellings below are Tesla's, including Tires.

Each category opens into numbered sub-groups, and each sub-group holds illustrations. Suspension breaks into 3101 - Front Suspension (including Hubs), 3103 - Rear Suspension (including Hubs) and 3115 - Coil Spring Suspension System. Inside 3101 sit Front Knuckle - Hub and Bearing, Front Stabilizer Bar and Links, and Front Suspension Arms. It is the ordinary EPC shape, drawn cleanly, and it is worth learning because the codes stay put while the generations under them move.

The illustration is where the work happens. You get the exploded view with numbered callouts and a list beside it, and every line carries the callout number, an abbreviated description in Tesla's own shorthand, the part number, a price, and sometimes a note. The notes are what most people scroll past. In the Model 3 battery group several fastener lines say they should only be ordered or replaced if damaged, and a high voltage dummy plug carries a note about when it is needed on commonised packs. That is service knowledge parked inside a parts list, and it is free to read.

The shorthand takes a little getting used to. Descriptions are written for a fitter rather than a search engine, so the front lower lateral link appears as LINK, FRONT LOWER LATERAL rather than under any phrase a customer would use. Reading the callout on the drawing is faster than guessing at the wording, which is why the illustration rather than the description list is the thing to navigate by.

Generations with month boundaries, and why the UK and US splits differ

There is no model year anywhere in this catalog and no field to type one into. Tesla splits each model into generations bounded by months, and those are the coordinates you get.

With the market set to the United States on 28 August 2026, Model 3 offered two generations: one running June 2017 to December 2023, one starting January 2024. Model S offered four, beginning February 2012, April 2016, February 2021 and June 2025. Model X offered three. Model Y offered two, splitting in February 2025. Cybertruck came as a single undivided catalog.

Switch the market to the United Kingdom and the Model 3 boundary moves. There the first generation ends in August 2023 and the second begins in September 2023, four months earlier than the United States. Same car, same badge, different line drawn, because the change reached the two markets at different times. A model year would have papered over that. Tesla has no model years to paper over it with.

This is what catches people at the counter. "It is a 2021 Model 3" is a sentence containing no usable coordinate. The generation narrows a search to several years of production, which is closer, and the VIN is what resolves the car. It also means the market has to be set to where the car was delivered rather than where it is being repaired, because an imported car carries the parts of the market it was built for.

One warning about dates. This page cannot tell you when a specific component changed over, because the catalog does not publish a changeover date beside a part and we did not find one anywhere in it. Anyone quoting you a precise date for a running change on a Tesla part is telling you something their source does not say.

What the live numbers add to the format

The shape of a Tesla number, the seven-digit base with a variant block and a revision letter after it, is set out on our Tesla EPC catalog page. What the live catalog adds is what those blocks do once real lines are in front of you.

The front lower lateral link on Model 3 is 1044341-00-G. The seven digits name the component and the trailing letter is the revision. What the catalog does not publish is what each step in that sequence represents, so read a late letter as evidence the component has a history rather than as a count of anything.

The variant block is where it earns its keep. Under the front lower compression link callout, the UK catalog listed 2188354-10-B described as CN and 2188354-20-B described as ZF. Same base number, same callout, different two digits in the middle, and the descriptions name two different builds of the same component. Note what that is not. Both were listed together in the same generation, so the variant digits here separate two builds that coexist, not an old part and a new one. Do not read a higher variant number as a later part. If a supplier quotes you a number whose middle block differs from the one your VIN produced, that is a question to ask rather than a typo to ignore.

One real exception to the format, and one thing that looks like one. The real exception is a plain seven-digit number with no suffix at all: 2007207 and 2006327 both appear in the Model 3 battery group, one a nut and one a vinyl transport cap. Those are valid Tesla numbers and should not be discarded as incomplete.

The thing that looks like an exception is a changed base number. The leading digits move across a replacement chain: 1044321, 1188321 and 1288321 are the same position on the car under three different base numbers, and the catalog notes tell you how they relate. Replacing an old 1044321 or 1044326 means fitting 1188321 and 1188326 as a pair. A changed base number on a Tesla is not automatically a different part, which is the opposite of the assumption most counters start from. That is a supersession chain rather than a menu of alternatives, and our guide to parts supersessions covers how one behaves generally.

Where the free browse stops: one callout, four answers

This is the case that decides whether the free catalog finishes the job for you. Callout 3 on the Model 3 front suspension arms illustration is the front upper control arm. In the UK catalog for the June 2017 to August 2023 generation, that single callout listed eight lines, four per side. The left-hand options were 1044321-00-J, 1188321-00-A, 1188321-10-C and 1288321-00-B, with matching right-hand partners.

Open the same illustration in the United States catalog for the overlapping generation and callout 3 listed one number per side, 1188321-10-C and 1188326-10-C. Two markets, one component, and a very different amount of choosing to do.

The notes on those lines are instructions. The 1044321 line reads "For EU Market, When replacing with 1288321* please replace both LH and RH". The 1188326 line reads that if an old 1044321 or 1044326 breaks, 1188321 and 1188326 have to be replaced together. Which number you pick therefore changes how many parts land on the invoice and how long the car is on the ramp.

Nothing on the browse page tells you which of the four your car left the factory with. The generation is right, the illustration is right, the callout is right, and there are still four answers sitting under it. That is a running change rendered as a list, and the list is the honest output of a catalog covering six years of production in one view.

The VIN is the only input that collapses it to one line. Everything else narrows the field. That is exactly what Tesla means by the note under its VIN box about fitment checking, and it is the reason a Tesla lookup that starts from the model name tends to end in a return.

Three different boundaries, and only one of them is an account

Three different things get called the Tesla EPC login, and only one of them is an account.

The account gate sits on the home page search. Typing a number into the Parts tab before choosing a catalog redirected the browser to auth.tesla.com and a sign in screen. The same search inside an open catalog needed no account: with the Model 3 June 2017 to August 2023 catalog open, the header part search resolved 1044341-00-G to its part page while signed out. The gate is on searching across the whole catalogue set at once, not on searching a number.

The market gate sits on the Add To Cart control. In the United States view every part line carried an enabled Add To Cart control while signed out. In the United Kingdom view of the same illustration, prices displayed in pounds and no Add To Cart control rendered on any part line, though the cart itself is still in the header. We did not take a cart to checkout, so where the account requirement actually falls in that flow is not something this page can tell you.

The release condition is a decision about who Tesla will sell to rather than who may look. Lines in the Model 3 battery group carried the flag Sold by Tesla; Requires VIN, alongside warnings marked HV-related, HV Battery and Dangerous Goods. Those flags render in plain sight to a signed-out visitor, and battery assemblies showed a price beside them, so nothing about that restriction is hidden behind a login.

What you can read without a Tesla login

Checked on 28 August 2026 in both the United Kingdom and United States views, no account was needed to walk a model and generation down to an illustration and read the part numbers, descriptions, notes and prices on it. Prices appeared on ordinary hardware and on the expensive lines alike, including battery assemblies listed in the five figures in the United States catalog on the day.

The VIN box accepts input without a sign in. A VIN Tesla did not recognise came back with "Catalog not available for this VIN" and no request to sign in, so the check runs before any account check. We did not have a VIN whose catalog Tesla would return, so what a successful VIN lookup does about an account is not something we can report.

So the shape of it is a readable catalog with a conditional transaction attached. The number is public and the diagram it sits in is public. Whether you can buy the part in your market is Tesla's call, and it varies.

What it does not solve for a mixed counter

If Teslas are the whole of your week and ordering works where you are, use Tesla's catalog and stop reading. It is the factory data and it is free, so paying a third party for a second route to it would be daft. The arithmetic changes on a mixed counter, where every extra manufacturer adds another portal with its own login and its own idea of what a supersession looks like. That cost shows up as the gap between a customer asking a question and somebody being able to answer it, and it never appears on an invoice anywhere.

VINsearch is built for that shape of workshop: 52 official manufacturer catalogs on one login, in the browser with nothing installed, free VIN decoding, and paid access from a $3 day pass, $50/month or $500/year. Tesla is one of the 52. Tesla's own catalog stays free whatever you decide, and the reason to hold a subscription is the other 51 arriving under the same login and the same VIN habit.

One boundary applies to both routes equally. Identification is not configuration, and on the high voltage side it is not qualification either. Both are covered in EVs out of warranty, and both are cheaper to settle at quoting time than with the car in pieces.

What to write on the job card

Most wrong-part arguments on these cars come from a number recorded halfway. The catalog gives you enough to make the lookup reproducible, so record all of it and the next person does not repeat your guess.

• The full part number, including the variant block and the revision letter, not the first seven digits
• The market and the generation you looked in, because both change the list under a callout
• The VIN you resolved it from
• Any note attached to the line, particularly a replace-in-pairs rule or a VIN release condition