Adaptive Cruise Control problems of the 2020 Tesla Model 3 - part 1

Full self driving mode (with hardware 3) consistently will enter the carpool lane when I am driving solo. In the vehicle navigation settings, I have, "use carpool lanes," unselected. It doesn't seem to use this input in it's decision to enter the carpool lane. Sometimes it is very quick to signal and then enter the carpool lane illegally that I can't respond quick enough to correct. However, it only seems to need 1 correction for it to ignore the carpool lane for the remainder of the trip. This then can/will repeat each new trip (it doesn't always occur for each new trip, sometimes it won't make an attempt to get into the carpool lane). I have sent Tesla dozens of recorded messages that it needs to be fixed. It will enter at an illegal point, crossing the solid line, this can sometimes be a dangerous maneuver as well as being illegal for a solo occupant. Also, I don't want to want to be ticketed. It's quite a stressful situation each time this occurs.

My Model 3 failed at under 50,000 miles and gave out a series of failure warnings. It was unable to drive anymore and steering became stiff and unresponsive. In researching this I see it is a common issue with hundreds of thousands of cars affected. And the NHTSA has an open investigation into it. Tesla as usual is denying the problem exists.

Driving at highway speed (75 mph) using autopilot & car rapidly applied hard braking. There were no obstacles, shadows or anything visible that should have caused this. It occurred twice over two days in different locations. If anyone had been behind me too close they would have collided with me. No other vehicle I’ve owned have done this with their implementation of adaptive cruise & lane assist. My car used to use radar and I never had this issue until vision based detection was implemented. It’s occurred numerous times over the years, but no this rapid of braking.

While driving on cruise control at highway speeds (75-80mph) on I-80 the car braked very hard and unexpectedly many times. There were no other cars around me, weather clear, road straight. No obstacles noticed to cause this reaction. If a car had been behind me I would have caused him to rear-end me because there was no apparent reason for the severe braking. I reported four incidents of this type to the Tesla during the drive which I believe were date/time stamped so they could diagnose (using the "report" function). I matched these with my own observations which I also provided to the service department. I have had the car diagnosed by Tesla and they claim they could not duplicate the problem and/or fix the problem.

I was traveling on autopilot in left lane with autopilot engaged on 06/13/2024 on hw 101 at around 9:40am my car all of the sudden slammed on brakes and dropped speed from around 65mph to 30mph before I was able to react and recover speed. Reached out to Tesla on their app about this and they are sending me estimate of $275 to check it out.

When driving in "autopilot" mode which uses adaptive speed control, the car suddenly slows down without any warnings. This happens even when there is no vehicle in front of the car and therefore slowing down is not expected. This has happened several times while driving on freeways. If it weren't for my immediate reaction, serious multiple-car accidents would have happened. My reaction has been to quickly disengage the "autopilot" system and manually accelerating to avoid rear collisions. The other issue is the car suddenly steer the wheel and drag the car to the side even when there is no reason to do so. In such cases, I have to forcefully steer the wheel to the opposite direction to avoid collision with other cars moving on either side, or parked cars on the streets.

Fsd beta 11. 4. 9 and past versions. A possible explanation for some degree of phantom braking on controlled access roadways. Fsd beta reacts to a stop light at the end of an offramp when the direction of travel is inline with the ramp. This reaction does not occur in daylight, only in darkness. It occurs across multiple versions of fsd beta and is consistent and repeatable at night under similar conditions. The point at which normal speed is resumed appears to coincide with the beginning of the offramp, but that may be coincidental. Since it doesn't occur in daylight it is less likely that the reaction is triggered by lane topography or some other factor relating to the converging right hand lane that occurs after the ramp is passed. In one test pass that was not recorded, the stoplight at the top of the ramp turned green while the braking was happening and the car seemed to react to the green light and resume speed, but that may have been coincident to the turn in the roadway or being adjacent to the beginning of the offramp. Another example where the light turned green has not happened again during tests. This test was at 3:08 am on a weekday with almost zero traffic in this direction and there were no vehicles within 0. 25 mile behind the test vehicle at the time this was recorded. Link to video: https://youtu. Be/obwp5rg9law.

I am writing to provide feedback on the recent mandated Tesla full self driving software update (recall). When I keep both hands on the steering wheel, I now get constant warnings. Specifically, even when I drive with both hands firmly on the wheel at 9 and 3 o'clock and maintaining what I feel is adequate control, the system nags me with disruptive alerts. It tells me to apply pressure and flashes visuals that my hands are not properly positioned, despite both remaining clearly in contact with the wheel the whole time. I typically drive responsibly with proper grip, yet these frequent notifications are frustrating and stress-inducing. The sensors seem to be calibrated too sensitively if they are detecting grip issues when both my hands are correctly and securely holding the wheel. Prior to the mandated update, I didn't receive nearly as many warnings. The update was not helpful and makes driving more stressful and less safe if anything. I understand the goal is to enforce safe driving, but the current warnings are excessive even when drivers are maintaining proper hand positioning. Perhaps the regulations could be relaxed so alerts only activate when grip is legitimately inadequate, rather than routinely throughout normal driving. Please let me know if any further details on my experience with both hands on the wheel would be helpful. I would be happy to provide additional information to aid review of this system. Thank you for your consideration.

This morning, I was waiting in the left turn lane on s/b peach hill rd turning east onto tierra rejada rd in moorpark, CA. Waiting at the light, I tapped to turn on autopilot and expected it to turn left… it tried to make a right turn from the left turn lane. This is not the first time autopilot has tried to make an unsafe and illegal turn from the wrong lane. I once had it attempt a u turn from the right lane on new los angeles avenue.

I am writing to bring to your attention a concerning issue regarding the recent update related to recall alerts in my vehicle, which has inadvertently led to an increase in distraction while driving. I received a software update for my vehicle, which included new features aimed at enhancing autopilot alerts. However, instead of improving safety, these updates have unintentionally resulted in an increased level of distraction while driving. Issues identified: frequency of alerts: the frequency of recall alerts has become excessive, leading to a constant stream of notifications while driving. This has proven to be highly distracting and has compromised my ability to focus on the road. Alert presentation: the visual and auditory presentation of the alerts is intrusive and often occurs excessively during driving. The alerts are not sufficiently streamlined to ensure minimal disruption, causing a significant distraction. Impact on driving behavior: the continuous alerts have forced me to divert attention away from the road, leading to an increased risk of accidents and compromising overall road safety. Recommendations: as per most other vehicle brands that benefit from self-driving technologies, like Cadillac and Ford, they are not affected by this recall, and do not make the driver continually look at the display for information regarding to the alert. Intelligent alert timing: incorporate a Smart algorithm that considers the driving context before issuing an alert. This can prevent alerts during critical driving moments, reducing distraction. Comprehensive testing: conduct thorough testing of software updates before release to identify and address any unintended consequences, such as increased distraction. Before this update, it was a lot less distracting to drive this vehicle, due to the limited notifications. Since this update, I've found myself removing my eyes from the road because of the increased notifications. A reversal of this recall is in need.

At 11:47 am pacific time on December 23, 2023 my Tesla model three auto pilot system failed after a recent update mandated by the NHTSA. Ever since the update, the vehicle, cruise control and auto pilot systems no longer function properly, and while I was in, cruise control and auto pilot traffic stopped ahead and the auto pilot system disengaged while I was waiting while it was slowing down, which has never happened in four years of ownership and over 60,000 miles of driving. The new recall software update has made the vehicle unsafe and it should be retracted and corrected. What once was a safe feature is now unsafe. Please investigate this with Tesla to prevent possible injury or death resulting from this programming failure.

While driving on the highway from philadelphia to allentown using I-476 north I was driving using cruise control and the car suddenly applied brakes ( phantom braking) there was no one either in front or sides or behind me. No accident happened.

Driving on the freeway with the adaptive cruise control set to 78 mph. Traveling in the #1 lane, medium traffic, no vehicles in front of us for a while (in our lane or the #2 lane next to us). Roadway was dry, sun was overhead at that time of the day. Weather said it was 72 outside, so not excessively hot. While nearly cresting the top of a slight incline, the car hard-braked, taking the speed from 78mph to 58mph for no obvious reason. (thank heavens the car behind us was following at a safe distance and was able to brake, too. ) there was no debris on the roadway or any other reason why the car would need to brake. Suffice to say that we deactivated the adaptive cruise control for the remainder of the journey.

I've had the car since December 2019. The car will "phantom brake" when the autopilot adaptive cruise control is on. This happens intermittently, ~1 time per month on my normal commute. I will be going along, cruise set to 75 and out of nowhere it'll slam on the brakes and lose 10 mph in a second before I can take over. This occurs with absolutely no traffic or reason, it'll be an empty highway and it does it. I drive with my foot over the accelerator so I can floor it to override the car. This is the exact opposite reaction I would think that someone should have to do with a safety feature. Tesla tells me the system is working fine, but random brake checks on the highway should never be normal. I don't understand how this system was approved to operated by the government.

Phantom breaking occurred twice while driving east on highway sr 152. Our car was traveling straight with no cars in front of us. I was using cruise control set at the speed limit when the car suddenly slammed on the brakes, the car slowed from 65 mph to 20 mph in a few seconds. This happened twice in a matter of 10 minutes. I no longer use cruise control. Apparently there is no fix. I have two relatives that have experienced same problem with their Teslas. I will suggest that they report to NHTSA.

I was driving on the garden state parkway in new jersey in the right hand lane. I was using basic auto pilot and needed to pass a pick up truck in front of me. I disabled auto pilot and went into the left lane. I re-engaged auto pilot and the vehicle took a hard right and hit the truck. I heard the audible chime once it made contact with the truck indicating that auto pilot disengaged. My car went back into the left lane and I took control. We moved to the shoulder and waited for state police to arrive. Luckily no one was injured. A police report was filed.

On 9/3/23 we were traveling from moab ut to green river ut and the cruise control was engaged at highway speeds. We were not using the "autopilot" functionality. Without warning, the car suddenly decelerated under what felt like hard braking. There was no warning immediately before the hard braking started and the car had no warning indicators of any kind either before or after the incidents. The hard deceleration happened at least four times. One of those times a raven flew up from the road, but the other times there was nothing in the road. At least three of the incidents occurred on highway 6 traveling north. The last time it occurred was on I-70 westbound after we stopped the cars and cleaned all the cameras and ensured there was no debris on the front bumper which could cause issues with the forward-looking radar. We lost confidence in the cruise control feature and did not enable it for the rest of the trip. This is a safety issue because the car does not just reduce speed, it feels like it is braking hard or perhaps full regeneration of the battery. Either way, on these 2-lane highways, there are often situations when other drivers are driving too close to the rear bumper and a sudden, inexplicable hard braking is very likely to cause collision. A collision at these speeds could push the car into oncoming traffic, leading to fatalities. We asked Tesla service to look into the issue, and said there is likely footage of at least one of the events (because I honked the horn to start recording). The Tesla service person gave several reasons why it deceleration may occur, but Tesla is neither reviewing the footage, nor taking action to remedy the issue. They said "our remote diagnostics has confirmed the vehicle hardware is operating as expected and there are no repairs the service team can make in regards to this. " with service unable to make a fix to the car, this problem remains unresolved and we have lost confidence in cruise control.

Sudden hard "phantom" braking while in adaptive cruise control. This put myself and other drivers in danger of a collision. The problems been reported to Tesla, but as of yet not fixed or inspected. The problem seems to be completely random with no advanced warning of any kind.

The car repeatedly rapidly decelerates when passing semi-trucks on the highway. This creates a problem for vehicles driving behind my vehicle as it creates sudden braking for them and it creates a bit of panic for the driver of my vehicle due to the suddenness of the braking. This problem occurs almost every time the vehicle is driving over 60mph on a freeway and is midway in passing a semi-truck trailer truck. The dealer has replaced the camera but the problem still occurs. Collision lights occur at the time of the error but no other warnings occur.

While driving on the freeway, my 2020 Model 3 “phantom braked” multiple times while using the cruise control. No autopilot for lane keeping assistance. There were no cars in front of me or any hazards. The pavement was pretty new. I was using this feature earlier in the trip with no issues then it started all the sudden with multiple incidents in a short amount of time.

My car cameras and audio will randomly stop working. Come to find out I took a recording with a timestamp of 1151 pm where I am on the highway and driving. Have witnesses of me driving and the issue. My Model 3 logs, as stated by service technician, say my vehicle is "parked and not being operated". This means I am driving with potentially dangerous and absolutely unreliable software in my car. It shows the car isn't being operated as I am going 60~ on the highway in traffic. My car cameras will go completely black and the audio warnings will go out including the backup sounds which are a required feature. Have contacted Tesla since 2020 and no action except a blanket statement of "a future update".

Phantom braking occurred almost 40 times on our recent trip from northern nv to California and return. We left on July 16 and returned on July 21. Our route was from minden nv to las vegas on highway 95 and then onto temecula CA on highway 15 and 215. The return trip was on highway 15 to CA 138 to highway 14 to highway 395. All travel was during daylight hours. Sometimes phantom braking was so severe, the deceleration cause us to be thrown forward towards the dashboard. We wore seat belts to prevent hitting the dashboard. This also happened on a similar trip in 2022 and was reported to Tesla and were told that nothing could be done. The current software version is 2023. 20. 9.

While driving on the freeway i5 in central California in the middle of the day there were no cars in front of me and the vehicle went into sudden phantom braking mode. I was driving at 75 mph and it suddenly went into hard braking. Extremely dangerous. The vehicle behind me had to swerve around us. We could have been killed. I was using the cruise control but not the enhanced autopilot. This needs to be fixed. We escaped severe injury or death by sheer luck.

I was driving from indio,CA to orinda,CA on interstate 10-210-5 north and the vehicle had at least 6 phantom braking events when the car was in cruise control and one event the auto pilot was on. There was clearly nothing front of me. This is so dangerous and there will be a bad accident if it isn’t fixed. Please have Tesla fix this.

Had cruise control on and “phantom braking” occurred about 10 times on a 22hr trip from California to oklahoma. Very scary. Car went from 80 to about 40mph in seconds. How is this even possible for Tesla to have these vehicles on the road? I’ve only had the car for 2 weeks.

The automatic windshield wipers came on and would not shut off. The car was clean, the day was sunny, and the camera lenses were free of dust or anything else that could cover them. While driving along, the wipers started and would not shut off. I went into the main monitor/screen that has the wiper settings but I was not able to activate the wiper/off button, so the wipers kept working. Pressing on that button would not activate it. I was in autopilot at the time, I. E. , cruise control + lane keep assistance. I have fsd/full self driving, but have never used it since it is still in beta testing. I’m using Tesla software # 2023. 7. 10 I checked the various Tesla websites, and you can turn off the wipers only if you disable the adas features. After I turned off the adas, I was able to activate the wiper/off button. But this is a terrible situation, the adas needs to be activated, but if I activate, it wipers will begin working whenever they feel like it, regardless of the weather outside. This is clearly a software problem with the Tesla adasn needs to be corrected. I don’t want to be driving along with auto pilot on, and then the wipers will simply turn on. Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated to correct this dangerous situation. There are countless hundreds of complaints like this on the various Tesla websites about spontaneously functioning wipers when the weather is bright and sunny.

When driving on a longer trip, I have repeated sudden deceleration and sometimes harsh braking when using cruise control. This has also happened in normal daytime hours with no traffic around me on rural interstates. On my last trip, I had to keep my foot on the accelerator to keep the car at a constant speed. It is unnerving to me and very scary for passengers. It has made it impossible to use cruise when I have passengers. Tesla has said there is no hardware issue and have declined to service the car.

Recurrent phantom braking while using autopilot. Sudden deceleration that does not seem to correlate to any specific traffic or weather condition.

When using cruise control from las vegas to reno nevada and also going back the car will brake extremely hard over 80 times one way which almost caused alone 4 major accidents with stopping abruptly for no reason causing the cars behind you to almost rear end you. This is tremendously dangerous and it s happening so often you can even use the cruise control. This does happen on other trips as well such as las vegas to phoenix. When it slams the brakes randomly all your items get thrown to the front as well. This needs fixed before someone gets killed.

When using “auto pilot” (teslas adaptive cruise control) the vehicle experiences violent phantom braking. The system slams on the brakes in some cases going from 65 to 20 mph almost instantly. This happens on a fairly regular basis and is a massive safety issue. We have nearly been rear ended on several occasions.

Hard phantom braking incident when using cruise control with no vehicles ahead or next to me.

I was driving on a highway using the adaptive cruise control. Several times the car braked for no reason at all. There were no cars in front of us, it was phantom breaking for no apparent reason. It was a long road trip of 12 hours over 2 days and I stopped using cruise control when anyone is behind me out of fear of causing an accident. The issue happened at least 15 times over the 2 days. It is a safety issue in my opinion, as other cars following you may rear end you when the car brakes hard for no reason. I've owned the car for a while, and it seems to have gotten much worse than it was before. There are no warnings before it does the phantom breaking. I have not had it inspected by anyone else. I believe it is a software issue that needs to be fixed by Tesla, as there are no error messages, and all my cameras appear to be functional.

While driving in fsd, autosteer, traffic aware cruise control, and with all turned off, I have experienced 5-10 episodes of “phantom braking” on the highway at high speeds over the past 48 hours. I have driven in 4 states total so far; in sunny, cloudy, straight road ahead conditions, sometimes with cars around and sometimes on totally empty stretches of road. The first episode took my car from 80mph to 60mph extremely suddenly, with no warning, lurching me and the things in my car forward. I was shocked as I was unfamiliar with this issue. Luckily the car behind me at the time was about 1/8 mile away. However, this could have very easily caused someone to rear end me. This repeated over and over all day yesterday, sometimes the braking less severe than others. Now if using cruise control I need to hold my foot over the accelerator instead of the brake, which feels wrong and also unsafe, but it’s terrifying and I disengage cruise control if anyone gets too close behind me to be safe.

Driving from reno to las vegas on hwy 95. I was using the cruise control and the car repeatedly slammed on the breaks when there was nothing on the road to cause it. Breaking was applied dropping the speed from 5 miles an hour up to 35 miles per hour. The excessive breaking could have caused a crash if a semi was behind me. Every time it happened I noticed a phantom object showing up on the very limit of the traffic display screen. If there was any other vehicle picked up by the sensors the cruise control never malfunctioned. It braked at least 10 times during the trip. I talked to 10 other Tesla drivers and 9 told me they were having the same issue. The one driver that did not never used his cruise control.

April 10 & 11. Drive from minneapolis to washington d. C. Several phantom braking incidents—two severe. If someone would have been behind me on the ohio turnpike, there would have been a major crash. This issue first cropped up on my vehicle in late fall of 2020. What can be done to force Tesla (really musk) to install radar sensors or lidar? is there a class action lawsuit that has been started? I have a car I cannot trust to use cruise control. I do not use, or ever want, lane assist or fsd. I just want a reliable and safe cruise control system. I get nowhere with Tesla on this. At this point, Tesla should buy back my car—and likely thousands of others or retrofit. I know that others have been injured and no doubt someone is going to get killed…something must be done…this is major safety issue. Thanks.