Tesla owners report dozens of cases of 'phantom braking'

According to The Washington Post, Tesla vehicles are inexplicably slamming on their brakes for no reason, scaring owners and receiving more than 100 complaints to the federal government in the past three months alone.

This has been an ongoing issue for the automaker. Last October, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter that the company was forced to "roll back" version 10.3 of its full self-driving beta software due to forward collision warnings and phantom braking issues. ,

But since then the number of complaints about Tesla's braking has increased. According to an analysis by The Washington Post, reports from Tesla owners to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) about phantom braking increased to 107 in the past three months, compared to just 34 complaints in the past 22 months.

"Using adaptive cruise control with Autopilot steering (as well as without Autosteer), there have been several episodes of severe 'phantom braking [sic]' where the car slams on the brakes [sic] for no apparent reason," One of Sterling said the owner of the Model Y, Ill., wrote in the November 16 complaint. "There are no other cars around. Flat, clear open freeway."

Another Model Y owner, who reported having the FSD installed in October 2021, said he experienced problems "immediately" after the update was installed, including "fake forwards" with the autopilot and traffic-aware cruise control. Collision warning. "These warnings included standard warning beeps and red indicators on the driving display, and there was an unnecessary emergency braking incident at one point when there were no obstacles in front of me," wrote this person. "Like, I was back driving the car in manual mode, not on autopilot," wrote this person.

A Model 3 owner in San Ramon, Calif., reported "[a] number of phantom braking incidents on Utopilot. It appears to have happened out of nowhere, under various circumstances, and for no apparent reason."

The problem can be traced back to a controversial decision last year to remove radar sensors from new Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. The decision came after Musk publicly expressed his desire to rely on cameras to power the company's advanced driver assistance system.

Tesla has drawn intense scrutiny from safety advocates and regulators for allowing its customers to test that Musk has promised to lead fully autonomous vehicles on the road. Will Do Earlier this week, the company was forced to issue a software update to remove an FSD feature that allows cars to perform a "rolling stop" – a maneuver in which vehicles come to a full stop without coming to a full stop. stop. The signal moves slowly through. (Despite being illegal in all 50 states in the US, a rolling stop is a common driving maneuver.)

A spokesperson for NHTSA said the agency was "aware of the complaints received about avoiding further collisions and is reviewing them through our risk-based assessment process. Discussions with the manufacturer in this process, as well as additional data sources." " NHTSA will act immediately if the data shows that a risk may exist."

During an earnings call last week, Musk described the FSD as a "primary area of focus." FSD is a beta version of an advanced driver-assistance system that controls certain functions of the car on local roads but still requires human supervision. In contrast, autonomous vehicles are cars that can ply on public roads without any human intervention or supervision.

Nevertheless, the company claims that FSD will benefit more in the future due to "more use of our vehicles". Musk has said that once Tesla's cars are able to drive themselves, the company will take advantage of that capability in its Robotaxi fleet. The goal is to make it so that each Tesla customer's car doubles as an autonomous vehicle while others are not using it.

Tesla said it released seven over-the-air software updates for FSDs in the quarter and currently has 60,000 vehicles in the US with advanced driver assistance systems.

Last fall, complaints began to surface on social media of problems with some Tesla vehicles. Owners said the FSD's 10.3 update introduced phantom forward collision warnings, while others noted a missing autosteer option, traffic-aware cruise control (TACC) problems and the occasional autopilot panic.

It is now clear that some owners were filing complaints with NHTSA as well. To be sure, the agency does not verify each complaint individually. When they report their problems to the agency, owners submit a description of the problem, their vehicle identification number and other identifying information.

Late last year, a Tesla Model Y with an FSD reportedly crashed southeast of Los Angeles. No one was injured in the accident, but the vehicle was reportedly "seriously damaged". The incident was reported to NHTSA, but there were no media reports of the accident, leading some Tesla fans to dismiss the incident as fake.