AP/phantom braking.

[sleepydoc]

I will keep that in mind. The speed limit here is 70mph and everyone is doing 85mph. I am generally in the middle lane doing 75mph.

Driving back from our cabin today it happened 3 times again, one right after the other.

I was on a 2 lane road that temporarily widened to 3 lanes - 1 lane in the opposite direction and 2 lanes in my direction to allow for slower cars to use the right lane and faster cars to pass. I was in the right lane and had 3 cars pass me in the center lane. This is a regular lane of traffic and Tesla recognized it as such but with each of the 3 cars my car braked right as they entered my blind spot. There was no reason to do so since they had their own lane but it was very consistent.

Another note - my wife was following me the entire way and once we got home she commented that she had to be careful because my Tesla would suddenly brake for no reason and if she was following too close it would have been easy to rear end me. This is from someone who never uses cruise control and doesn't know about the phantom braking issue so it's essentially the perspective of an unknowing driver behind me.

 

[XPsionic]

Have a radar equipped 3sr+, never had much phantom braking issues until the latest "Tesla vision" update. On an empty stretch of I5 South over a crest on a sunny 98f day, the car on autopilot at 75mph decided it saw a ghost when there was nothing in front of me, no cars, no bridges, no shadows... and sounded the emergency collision alert and just slammed on the brakes hard. Thankfully i always hover my right foot over the accelerator and recovered very quickly, but it scared the poo out of me and my wife and the car behind us as well.

Our guess as to what Tesla vision saw was probably a mirage on the road. Gotta say we're less than impressed, the car always had some minor phantom braking here and there but never this severe and sudden. Plus now the car cannot see 2 cars ahead with the radar anymore and react quite as quickly to sudden traffic speed changes.

Anyone else noticed problems with Tesla vision over crests on a hot day?

 

[EVEV1]

My car last night did a hard brake (on AP) because there was a police car on the right (2 lanes over) with the emergency lights. I guess all that flashing / glare confused the cameras. I had to hit the accelerator to avoid being rear ended by the car behind traveling around 70 mph.

 

[MarkDave]

Have a radar equipped 3sr+, never had much phantom braking issues until the latest "Tesla vision" update. On an empty stretch of I5 South over a crest on a sunny 98f day, the car on autopilot at 75mph decided it saw a ghost when there was nothing in front of me, no cars, no bridges, no shadows... and sounded the emergency collision alert and just slammed on the brakes hard. Thankfully i always hover my right foot over the accelerator and recovered very quickly, but it scared the poo out of me and my wife and the car behind us as well.

Our guess as to what Tesla vision saw was probably a mirage on the road. Gotta say we're less than impressed, the car always had some minor phantom braking here and there but never this severe and sudden. Plus now the car cannot see 2 cars ahead with the radar anymore and react quite as quickly to sudden traffic speed changes.

Anyone else noticed problems with Tesla vision over crests on a hot day?

There's a YouTube video by a diehard Tesla fan showing the FSD consistently brakes for heat mirages.

 

[XPsionic]

There's a YouTube video by a diehard Tesla fan showing the FSD consistently brakes for heat mirages.

I filed a complaint with NHTSA, I think members who experienced phantom braking should also do the same and try to force Tesla's hands. It's very disappointing that cars with radar got forced to this buggy vision build with no way back.

 

[CharleyBC]

...slammed on the brakes hard . . . Our guess as to what Tesla vision saw was probably a mirage on the road.

Yep. That.

We just did a trip from home to Salt Lake City, then to the Bay Area and back home. Lots of miles on straight, warm stretches of highways, especially I-80 and I-5. Lots of mirages. And lots of mirage braking incidents. It got to where I could pretty well predict them. The bigger the mirage, the greater likelihood of a mirage braking incident.

Often one of us will snooze while the other drives. This is a guaranteed way to awaken one's spouse in abject terror.

Closely related to mirage braking is when it suddenly sees a far-off car and panics before it evaluates the car's distance. This happens when there's a bit of a dip or rise in the highway, so the car that's maybe a quarter mile ahead disappears over the rise. Then as we crest the rise and the leading car becomes visible again, AP panics and brakes. Then it evaluates the situation and realizes the car is way too far to be a threat, gets embarrassed (anthropomorphizing just a tad) and resumes speed.

Sheesh. I do miss the radar.

I did come up with a work-around, other than just driving manually. Say you want to be going 75. Find another car that's going 75 or maybe 73 or 74. Turn off auto lane change. Get behind the other car and AP will happily follow it, slowing from your set speed, but staying steady because mirages are too far away, and the car you're behind is too close for the disappear-over-the-rise trick. When the other car changes lanes, you do too. This is obviously not ideal, but it did allow my wife to sleep uninterrupted.

Where is the boundary between artificial intelligence and genuine stupidity?

 

[Resist]

Tesla should have never turned off my radar because I get way more phantom braking events now. And now they are removing the ultrasonic sensors, I assume they will soon be turning mine off too. They do this stuff way before the software is even ready, maybe someday it will be ready but it's not now, so leave my hardware alone Elon!

 

[enemji]

Tesla should have never turned off my radar because I get way more phantom braking events now. And now they are removing the ultrasonic sensors, I assume they will soon be turning mine off too. They do this stuff way before the software is even ready, maybe someday it will be ready but it's not now, so leave my hardware alone Elon!

Can you disable updates?

 

[sleepydoc]

Can you disable updates?

Sort of - if you turn off wifi my understanding is the car will not download updates over the cellular network. The problem is the warranty requires you keep the car 'up to date' and if you ever bring it to a service center it will be 'updated' without your permission.

 

[CharleyBC]

if you turn off wifi my understanding is the car will not download updates over the cellular network.

Mostly true. My son has had his 3 for 4.5 years while living in an apartment complex where his parking is out of reach of his WiFi. And so he never gets updates unless he goes to visit someone. I do recall one time where it had been months since he'd had an update, and was surprised to get one one day. It had downloaded over cellular. Perhaps it was a release Tesla considered sufficiently important to take the cellular hit.

 

[DrChaos]

Yep. That.

We just did a trip from home to Salt Lake City, then to the Bay Area and back home. Lots of miles on straight, warm stretches of highways, especially I-80 and I-5. Lots of mirages. And lots of mirage braking incidents. It got to where I could pretty well predict them. The bigger the mirage, the greater likelihood of a mirage braking incident.

Often one of us will snooze while the other drives. This is a guaranteed way to awaken one's spouse in abject terror.

Closely related to mirage braking is when it suddenly sees a far-off car and panics before it evaluates the car's distance. This happens when there's a bit of a dip or rise in the highway, so the car that's maybe a quarter mile ahead disappears over the rise. Then as we crest the rise and the leading car becomes visible again, AP panics and brakes. Then it evaluates the situation and realizes the car is way too far to be a threat, gets embarrassed (anthropomorphizing just a tad) and resumes speed.

Exactly: elevation undulations and mirages cause the monocular vision system to not be able to extend the road ahead visually. It panics as it has no memory that there weren't cars there before, and they didn't suddenly appear in the hidden parts, and when they do it's a freakout.

Why radar helps: it is doppler radar and directly physically returns the speed of the other car in a microsecond. In one visual frame it can tell how fast the other car is going and know it's a similar speed to self, and so there isn't a danger. Doing it with vision only, and monocular vision at that, takes a filtering over many frames and statistical & neural network estimations. If an object just pops in, it has no idea if it is driving fast or is parked. The error bars on the velocity determination is large. As hitting parked cars is the hardest thing to avoid and safety critical, so it's a sensitivity issue and it's safer to brake on high variance velocity estimates .

 

[Battpower]

I don't get why either original radar system was deemed dangerous and a formal recall / tested solution enforced, or it's just regarded as minor tweaks to the car, in which case radar models should at least have option to retain (perfectly safe) original equipment.

Since neither approach is flawless (apparently by some margin) then St least let owners keep what they purchased.

 

[Resist]

I don't get why either original radar system was deemed dangerous and a formal recall / tested solution enforced, or it's just regarded as minor tweaks to the car, in which case radar models should at least have option to retain (perfectly safe) original equipment.

Since neither approach is flawless (apparently by some margin) then St least let owners keep what they purchased.

Well you do get to keep the hardware, it just won't function. According to Elon the radar caused conflicting information with the vision portion, thus causing the phantom braking events. Yet there has been more phantom braking events with the radar off. Elon is dead set on using vision only because "thats' how people see". True, but people also have a brain that's smart enough to know that driving under an overpass isn't something to brake for. I have no doubt that vision only can work one day, when the software is smart enough. But it's not even close to being smart enough today, so until them the cars need more sensors. Everyone driving a Tesla with FSD or even Autopilot is a free beta tester and that puts lives at risk when people don't really know their car.

 

[Battpower]

dead set on using vision only because "thats' how people see"

Except of course it isn't. People move their heads and create relative movement. We also make judgements, predictions and assumptions over extended time periods and using subtleties of input well beyond what Tesla vision works with.

I reckon most human drivers could close their eyes for as long as 0.5 second out of every 1.5 second while driving without compromising safety. If Tesla Vision were to stop 'looking' for that same proportion or the time, it would be unable to function.

Tesla has a huge task imo in trying to fix these kind of performance issues while keeping the fleet of vehicles in (safe) operation. Also, you'd hope that related features would have been tested as part of type approval, and making retrospective changes to 'proven' and tested designs would need to have similar controls in place to ensure safety is maintained.

 

[CharleyBC]

Elon is dead set on using vision only because "thats' how people see".

Well, sorta. As others above said, humans bring other assets to seeing besides just visual input. One thing we have is binocular vision, which allows our brains to compute distance by comparing the different images from our two eyes. Tesla has three forward-facing cameras, but they're different focal length lenses. They could compensate for this by scaling the images and thus achieve binocular vision. But the cameras are pretty closely set, reducing the binocular effect. And in any case, there's no opportunity for binocular vision in any other direction.

And then there's this. Yes, vision is how people see. But how we see isn't perfect. One example. Despite everything I said in the previous paragraph, binocular vision is not precise. Take parking against a wall or bollard. With the slope of the hood, I'm not terribly good at estimating just how close my bumper is to nudging. I don't want to accidentally nudge to find out, so I tend to be overly cautious. Or more accurately, I feel I've gotten really close, only to discover upon getting out of the car that I had lots more room to go. The ultrasonics are far better at this than I am. I'm happy to use a tool that's better than how this human sees.

That's one cool thing about humans (and some other animals too). We use tools to achieve things we couldn't otherwise, or at least not so easily. Depending on how hard the soil is, I might be able to dig a hole in the garden with my bare hands. But a shovel makes it so much easier. I might be able to remove the screws in a switch plate with a fingernail. But give me my screwdriver, please. Why not view vision the same way? Vision is amazing. But tools like radar and ultrasonics take it beyond what this mere human can achieve.

And they've removed radar and are going to kill the ultrasonics too.

 

[Dewg]

I'll say it again. Tesla isn't the only game in town. They are ahead of the competition, but that's not going to last forever. Competition is good for everyone. If you bought Tesla for the EV experience, you got a great car. If you bought a Tesla for the technology and cutting edge features with frequent over the air updates, then you've bought into their philosophy. It doesn't mean you're locked into it. If where Tesla is going with Vision Only doesn't appeal to you, and you think sensor fusion is the future, the good news is that other companies are coming to market to fill those gaps.

This is the power of a free market. Your power. If you want radar, lidar, ultrasonics, and cameras, take a look at the other EVs in the market and find one you will enjoy. Vote with your dollars.

 

[DrChaos]

This is the power of a free market. Your power. If you want radar, lidar, ultrasonics, and cameras, take a look at the other EVs in the market and find one you will enjoy. Vote with your dollars.

Once another automaker finally cracks the software update issue and software maturity, other ADAS systems will be attractive as they can roll out obvious improvements.

The challenge on the high end $ could be Apple. They can obviously produce chipsets, update systems, and mature software development, and they treat their employees better than Tesla. There might be a Chinese produced/designed chassis with a US battery pack (for the tax credits) popped in fresh off the boat, and Apple chipset & operating system.

 

[Dewg]

Once another automaker finally cracks the software update issue and software maturity, other ADAS systems will be attractive as they can roll out obvious improvements.

The challenge on the high end $ could be Apple. They can obviously produce chipsets, update systems, and mature software development, and they treat their employees better than Tesla. There might be a Chinese produced/designed chassis with a US battery pack (for the tax credits) popped in fresh off the boat, and Apple chipset & operating system.

It seems like nVidia is on the attack and may give Tesla some competition pretty soon.

 

[Battpower]

If where Tesla is going with Vision Only

Sure..... that would apply to buying a new VO Tesla without radar.

I didn't buy into OTA meddling. Again, I'm fine with OTA as a concept and delivery platform for updates / upgrades and even critical patches, but the car as delivered should not have suffered from phantom braking and I didn't sign up to be the test bed for working out how to fix the issue.

The fact that the 'meddling' with MY car (rather than applying a 100% solid fix) by ongoing and poorly documented OTA updates that arrive in a somewhat haphazard manner takes place apparently without thorough testing and regulatory approval is also a concern.

What I buy into (already have recently bought into) from Tesla or other manufacturers doesn't effect my view of or satisfaction with what I previously bought into.

 

[SalisburySam]

I reckon most human drivers could close their eyes for as long as 0.5 second out of every 1.5 second while driving without compromising safety. If Tesla Vision were to stop 'looking' for that same proportion or the time, it would be unable to function.

Well that explains phantom braking for me; Tesla’s software takes breaks then brakes.