Automatic Emergency Braking problems of the 2018 Tesla Model S

On [xxx], my 2018 Tesla Model S (VIN [xxx] ) experienced a complete brake system failure while in motion. The brake pedal was pressed multiple times, but the vehicle did not stop, resulting in a collision. The emergency brake also failed to engage. 1. Component/system failure: the braking system, including both the standard hydraulic brakes and the electronic emergency brake, failed to operate. The vehicle is available for inspection upon request. 2. Safety risk: this put my safety and the safety of others at immediate risk, as I was unable to stop the vehicle to avoid an accident. 3. Confirmation of problem: the problem has not yet been reproduced or confirmed by a Tesla service center since the accident, but the vehicle previously had recalls in 2021 and January 2024 for brake and emergency brake issues that Tesla claimed to have remedied. 4. Inspection: the vehicle has been involved in an accident and has been documented by police and insurance representatives. Tesla has not yet inspected the car after the most recent failure. 5. Warning lamps/messages: there were no warning lamps or error messages on the dashboard prior to the failure. The brakes appeared normal until the moment they failed completely. This incident demonstrates that the recall-related brake defects remain unresolved and present a serious safety hazard. Information redacted pursuant to the freedom of information act (foia), 5 u. S. C. 552(b)(6).

My car was left on the driveway for a weekend where I was out of town. Upon returning, as I got into the vehicle and started reversing to get out of my driveway; several alerts popped up on my car. The alerts included "steering assist reduced", "stability control disabled", "automatic emergency braking unavailable" and lastly, "parking brake fault. " immediately the power steering was gone and it took several pounds of force to turn the steering wheel even a little bit. Then, the parking brake engaged. No matter how many times I put the car into drive, it would engage the brake again. My vehicle was halfway out of the driveway and into the road and I was causing my neighbors angst. After several reboots, it still was not working. I was unable to even get the car into neutral to push the car back on to my property and out of the street. After nearly 20 minutes of trying and almost giving up; the parking brake disengaged for a few minutes and allowed me to get back to the driveway. However, when driving the brakes were extremely loud when the car was in motion. The car was completely fine with no signs of wear and tear or issues prior to the out of town weekend. The car was also fully charged so to not run into any batter issues upon my return. After some internet sleuthing, this issue is decently common and is caused by faulty housing in the steering rack. The nuts/bolts that were used by the manufacturer could not withstand more than a few years of wear and tear. I believe there was a recall on the previous years for this exact situation. I am afraid I will have to take it to Tesla service and pay several thousand dollars as the warranty expired last year.

Shortly after an update in December, my 2018 Model S started getting alerts: driving visualization temporarily degraded, charge port sensor fault, autopilot cameras unavailable, automatic emergency braking unavailable, lane departure avoidance features unavailable, steering assist reduced. The map no longer knows where the car is located and cannot navigate or tell what the battery percentage will be at. All automatic features have stopped working. The service center claims the ecu needs to be replaced. It was upgrade to the autopilot/full self-driving ecu in 2020. I have read reports from dozens of other Tesla owners that this update also broke their ecu. I believe Tesla knows the new requirements for full self-driving to be safe and usable does not work with their current ecu. They want to charge me $1600 to replace the ecu. I cannot receive the recall ota update with my current ecu.

My car will randomly apply the brakes when driving on the highway for no apparent reason. I have noticed this to occur when going under overpasses especially on a bright sunny day, but also at other times. I do not find it to be predictable and it can be quite dangerous if traffic behind me is very close. This has occurred many times, most recently as yesterday.

Multiple components failed or malfunctioned. Fsd beta, lane keeping assistance, lane departure warning, adaptive cruise control, and automatic emergency braking, all failed or malfunctioned. I have requested Tesla to provide me the details on what happened, but after multiple attempts of reaching out to them, they are not providing any answers. I was driving with my son and we both got injured, my son was admitted to the hospital for 4 days. I am not sure if Tesla inspected it, they are not answering my questions. There was no warning or there were no symptoms of the problem before the failure. This is what happened, I was driving on fsd beta on a 2-way street with one lane in both directions, the car suddenly drifted, crossed the opposite lane, went over the sidewalk, and hit a tree. The airbags were released, and the front of the car was destroyed. The speed limit on the road was 25, and as it was in fsd mode, the speed was locked in at 25 mph. I was driving with my son, and my son got a lot of bruises internal and external from the seat belt, I had some bruises on my forehead. This is a complete failure of Tesla's fsd capability because it didn't detect the tree or the sidewalk and failed to apply the brakes. The car was declared a total loss by the insurance company. I am attaching a few photographs of the car after the accident.

While driving using cruise control, in the space of 9-10 miles, the vehicle had 14-16 instances of sudden, unexpected braking for no reason. Most were moderate braking incidents slowing the car 15-30 mph before I hit the accelerator to get the car back up to speed. 2 incidents were where the car slowed 5-10 mph then resumed speed. Very disconcerting. There was little to no traffic on the road and in every case, there was no other car within a 1/2 mile or more to the front. Finally got fed up with this and turned off cruise. Left cruise control off as I passed through a city then decided to try it again. Soon after engaging cruise at 72 mph, the car suddenly and violently braked for no reason. It was such a hard braking that one of my dogs in the back seat crashed into the front seat. The hard braking continued until the speed was about 20 mph at which point, I hit the accelerator in order to resume speed. Note that no other car was visible on the roadway which was a 4 lane highway. Conditions were clear and dry. Soon after this incident, while still on cruise, the car suddenly braked moderately hard. Since the road was clear before and behind me, I decided to see what would happen. The car slowed to 38 mph and stayed at that speed for 3-4 seconds then slowly resumed the set speed. A short time later 1-2 miles further, the exact same sequence happened again. Again, note the road was clear with zero traffic ahead of or behind me. I then turned off cruise and decided to drive manually the rest of the way. This car is dangerous and should be removed from the road.

I was using the enhanced cruise control and the car just slammed on brakes out of nowhere. There was not any cars ahead or beside me at the time. This has happened about 5-6 times since I purchased the vehicle on March 10, 2023.

Mcu2 failure. Dashboard and screen no longer works turn signals and headlights do not work there are no seatbelt warning can no longer see battery levels / range (via app or inside car) can no longer see car's location (via app) the car will drive, brake lights and windows work that's it. Car it totally unsafe to drive otherwise. Tesla is charging $1965. 75 plus taxes which equals $2083. 70 parts $1800 remove and replaces $165. 75.

The contact owns a 2018 Tesla Model S. The contact stated that while driving at an undisclosed speed with the self-driving feature activated, the vehicle experienced phantom braking. The vehicle was not diagnosed nor repaired by an independent mechanic or dealer. The manufacturer was not made aware of the failure. The failure mileage was approximately 36,000.

On 3/15/2022, I was driving on i405 with auto-pilot engaged. My car (Tesla Model S) suddenly braked hard for no apparent reason. I had to disengage auto-pilot and quickly accelerate to avoid the car behind me from rear ending my car. Fortunately, I remembered to save the event recorded on Tesla cameras. Take a look at 2022-03-15_12-24/2022-03-15_12-24-53-back. Mp4 file around 46 sec ~ 51 sec within the file. You will notice that the car suddenly braked around that time causing the car behind to nearly rear-end my car. If you watch recording from the side+front cameras around the same timeframe, you will notice that there was nothing in the front or on the sides that warranted sudden braking. Those files are 2022-03-15_12-24-53-front. Mp4, 2022-03-15_12-24-53-left_repeater. Mp4 and 2022-03-15_12-24-53-right_repeater. Mp4 the Tesla app does not allow me to create a new service request for this issue because I have another request open for a minor and unrelated issue. Therefore, I have not been able to report this to Tesla. I will do so after 3/22 when the current request is resolved. Note your site does not allow uploading video files therefore I could not attach them to this report. I can make them available if you need them.

I have experienced many times "phantom braking". When I reported that to a Tesla service center 2 years ago, they did not know of this problem. It is scary and dangerous especially for the cars following me it only happens to me on the freeway when in adas mode. There is a exact place on the 5 freeway sb near disneyland, that each time I drive there, phantom braking happens. Further also random without noticing any reason for it.

Phantom breaking. Car suddenly breaked on highway going at 70 miles per hour. No crash. This has happened 5-10 times over the last year.

This incident happened some time ago but I read recently about complaints related to "phantom braking" which I also experienced. I was driving on the highway at speed with my cruise control activated. There was no traffic close in front of me, but a large semi was in the lane to my right. This vehicle triggered sharp braking of my car. It was very scary, but I immediately overroad the braking to avoid being hit by a vehicle behind me. I have never used my cruise control since that incident.

While driving at approximately 40 mph the car suddenly braked by itself! a sound alarm and display indicator were also activated. After a couple of seconds the event resolved without any intervention. Their was no warning lamps or messages prior to the event. At the time I was driving on a divided road and there was light traffic at the time. The car was not on cruise control or auto-pilot. My concern was being rear-ended by the vehicle behind me! the car has not been inspected by anyone since the event.

Without warning, the car will phantom brake at highway speeds at least once or twice on every highway trip I take. It will slam on the brakes automatically even though nothing is in front of the car, putting us at risk of losing control or a rear end collision if someone is following closely. This has been happening since I purchased the car in 2018 until I sold it in late 2021. Tesla cancelled my mobile service appointment about this issue, saying this is "normal environmental conditions" without even looking at the car. I have since sold the car due to this issue and frustration with their response, but wanted to report the safety issue here.

On several occasions both of my dashboard screens (driver cluster and center console) went blank while driving at a variety of speeds. I was unable to see my speedometer, back-up camera, control hvac, or any audio. I also was unable to use collision assistance, blind spot detection, autopilot, or, presumably, emergency braking. To regain control I had to reboot the vehicle while driving, which was hazardous to say the least. There does not appear to be any specific trigger to this outage other than the vehicle was in gear and moving forward. It happened during the day and at night. I reported this to Tesla using their "report bug" feature in the vehicle, but I never heard anything back. This has occurred at least 6 or 7 times over the last year. The most recent incident occurred last week, 15-16 March.

--- system: autopilot, emergency braking, collision detection. Vehicle is available for inspection if requested. --- how safety was put at risk: in 2018, while driving on the interstate at about 70-80 mph with autopilot enabled the car suddenly braked for no reason. By our estimates the car's velocity changed by about -20 mph in a very short time. There was no debris in the road, obstruction or reason for the car to do this. If there had been a car behind us it would have resulted in an accident. --- has problem been confirmed by service center: yes --- has vehicle been inspected by manufacturer: yes --- when we contacted Tesla they initially denied anything happened but when we took it to another service center a different engineer confirmed that something happened but would not provide the logs. After 6 months of fighting with them trying to get more information we gave up and had to stop using autopilot due to safety concerns. --- were there any warnings: no. It was abrupt and frightening. --- additional: I have email correspondences with the service center and invoices if requested. However due to their extensive nature I'd rather speak to someone at the NHTSA before gathering the documents.