“The complaints allege that while utilizing the [advanced driver-assistance] features including adaptive cruise control, the vehicle unexpectedly applies its brakes while driving at highway speeds,” the company mentioned. “Complainants report that the rapid deceleration can occur without warning, at random, and often repeatedly in a single drive cycle.”
Tesla house owners flooded NHTSA‘s website with hundreds of complaints of alleged “phantom braking” this month following a Washington Post report that noted a sharp uptick in the phenomenon. The issue, a glitch in the cars’ ahead collision warning and computerized emergency braking methods, happens when Tesla’s automobiles instantly decelerate in response to falsely detected hazards.
Owners started complaining of the difficulty in bigger numbers starting in November, days after the automaker issued a recall of its “Full Self-Driving” software program over a glitch that would result in phantom braking. More broadly, the surge has adopted Tesla’s shift from a multi-sensor notion system combining cameras and radar to a camera-based system that depends on what the automaker calls “Tesla Vision.” The spate of complaints included a number of frequent patterns in addition to a minimum of one report of an harm.
After The Post’s article in early February, NHTSA acquired about 250 complaints about phantom braking throughout the next two weeks. That in comparison with 107 complaints within the earlier three months — a steep surge of its personal — and solely 34 within the previous 22 months.
Tesla, which disbanded its public relations division in 2020, didn’t reply to requests for remark. “NHTSA will determine the scope and severity of the potential problem and fully assess the potential safety-related issues,” mentioned NHTSA spokeswoman Lucia Sanchez.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly defended using its automated options, calling its Autopilot driver-assistance “unequivocally safer” than regular driving and decrying the “fun police” as the corporate confronted a number of remembers in latest weeks — an obvious reference to federal regulators.
Complaints of phantom braking involving Tesla autos additionally far surpass these for different automakers that even have superior driver help however largely depend on radar-equipped methods. The improve in complaints sheds gentle on the sorts of frequent eventualities through which house owners report phantom braking. Among all of the complaints, a few third of the sudden slowdowns occurred on two-lane roads or highways when, for instance, an oncoming truck was approaching within the distance, in keeping with a Post evaluation. Teslas throughout the fleet usually react to such conditions in the identical approach, leaving frequent patterns rising within the complaints.
“It’s when the traffic is coming towards me that it randomly throws on the brake,” Sally Bergquist, of Alexander City, Ala., who skilled repeated sudden slowdowns on her 2021 Tesla Model S on drives to Birmingham, mentioned in an interview. “This random braking is really concerning to me.”
The NHTSA complaints should not individually verified by the company — house owners describe the difficulty they expertise, and supply their automobile identification quantity together with different figuring out information after they ship their report. Complaints to NHTSA can — as apparently occurred right here — be extra frequent as house owners study the potential of telling the federal government about security issues with their automotive, so will increase in complaints may not all the time be attributable to a rise within the fee of issues.
But the sheer variety of complaints for Teslas associated to phantom braking far outpaced these for different automobile makes and fashions, indicating a recognized downside of rising prominence among the many proprietor inhabitants.
The Post’s evaluation coated the 2019 Tesla Model 3 together with 2020 by means of 2022 Tesla Model Y and Model 3 autos.
Tesla has confronted mounting strain from NHTSA over Autopilot and its apply of issuing over-the-air software program updates to treatment points with its autos, with out initiating the formal recall course of. The company is investigating the potential position of Autopilot in a few dozen crashes involving Teslas and parked emergency autos whereas the driver-assistance system was energetic. Tesla has issued a gentle stream of remembers since October, when NHTSA publicly known as out the corporate for its failure to challenge a proper recall when it up to date its automobiles to raised detect emergency autos in low gentle.
Tesla has aimed to streamline its {hardware} suite — eliminating using radar — as a part of its effort to usher in a brand new self-driving period utilizing the tens of millions of autos it has placed on the highway. The firm has given house owners twin driver-assistance choices within the type of Autopilot, which is essentially supposed to be used on highways, and “Full Self-Driving” beta, which brings driver-assistance functionalities to metropolis and residential streets.
Musk has mentioned he believes Tesla will be capable of safely deploy self-driving autos based mostly on the software program.
“I would be shocked if we do not achieve Full Self-Driving safer than a human this year. I would be shocked,” he mentioned on an organization earnings name lately. Musk mentioned folks have failed to know the gravity of Tesla’s work.
“It’s not, like, some little feature,” he mentioned on the decision. “It’s, like, the most profound software upgrade maybe in history.”
Experts in automobile notion methods say {that a} reliance on cameras to navigate roads can typically be problematic, since it may be extra simply confused than radar about elements akin to distance or an upcoming billboard.
Some house owners who spoke with The Post mentioned they’ve been experiencing phantom braking for months — coinciding with the interval when Tesla eradicated radar — nevertheless it had beforehand not occurred to them to report the difficulty to NHTSA.
Owners described the issue as “serious” and “scary” in emails to The Post, with a number of describing Tesla’s cruise management options as unusable in gentle of the issues.
Marlin Myers, 52, of Mechanicsburg, Penn., mentioned repeated phantom braking compelled him to cease utilizing cruise management altogether on his month-to-month drives to Philadelphia on Interstate 76.
Since he purchased his Tesla Model Y in June 2021, it’s occurred roughly eight occasions, lurching his automotive from round 70 mph to 40 mph, with no seen hazard within the neighborhood.
“The first one or two times that it happened, you’re shocked by it,” he mentioned. “I very quickly became very cautious about having it on whenever the cars are behind me.”
Myers, who mentioned he in any other case enjoys his Model Y, mentioned he desires Tesla to deal with the difficulty — and rapidly.
“It seems like we’re not alone,” he mentioned. “Fundamentally, there’s a problem with the car — let’s get it fixed, and let’s move on.”
