Car randomly shifting to Easy Entry

[cantdecide]

We're currently having an issue where our S randomly shifts into easy entry (e.g. while driving at 20 miles per hour) which means my wife can suddenly no longer reach the brake until she hits stop or manually changes profile back. I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this happen?

We've had Easy Entry on both our Teslas for quite a while now... and this issue only seems to happen on the S, happens to both myself and my wife... and only just started happening yestoday.
The car doesn't go into park when this happens (even if the car is stationary). So this isn't a problem of us accidentally hitting park.
Sometimes the car goes into easy entry mode straight away (i.e. while the seat is still adjusting to my profile) and but sometimes I can be driving for up to 20 seconds in my profile before it switches back to the easy entry profile).
Also we believe that twice instead of going into easy entry mode it has gone into Valet mode instead. One of those times I had to use the app to disable valet mode as the pin didn't seem to work (or maybe it was just continuously going into valet mode).
The profile menu isn't coming up on the screen when this happens, so it isn't a problem with the screen.
This doesn't happen when I have easy entry turned off.

 

[bakerboy]

Interesting: This happened to me this morning leaving my house for work, got about 1 mile and out of nowhere, my car seat starts rolling back. I look at the screen and see it went into "easy entry" then before I can touch the screen, I see "valet mode", I immediately choose my profile and check to see if the car was in valet mode, it was not in valet mode so I just wrote it off.

 

[cantdecide]

Interesting: This happened to me this morning leaving my house for work, got about 1 mile and out of nowhere, my car seat starts rolling back. I look at the screen and see it went into "easy entry" then before I can touch the screen, I see "valet mode", I immediately choose my profile and check to see if the car was in valet mode, it was not in valet mode so I just wrote it off.

Interesting, let us know if it gets more frequent for you.
By the way, how many user profiles do you have? I think we have 4 + easy entry and valet... I'm wondering if having many profiles might contribute.
I'm on 2017.50.2 3bd9f6d but have been since Dec 24... so I'm not sure how related it is to the software version.

 

[David29]

I stopped using Easy Entry mode because I found it more annoying than helpful. I suppose what that really means is that I had not found a position that actually made it sufficiently easier to get in and out.
Glad I did not encounter the behavior described here! Could be dangerous.

 

[scottm]

Ditto, I tried easy entry for a day. Didn't really help much... Put it in the pile of more features I don't use.

 

[bakerboy]

I have 2 profiles + easy entry and valet, currently on: 2017.50.2 3bd9f6d

 

[cantdecide]

Interesting that we both have 2013 P85s.

I tried rebooting the car this evening, that totally fixed it.
So if anyone else is having frequent random shifts into easy entry and valet mode while driving, they can reboot to address it.

However, given that Easy Entry is typically a fair way back, this does feel like a significant safety issue for Tesla if drivers suddenly can't reach the pedals. At least regen is significant in this car so typically the car will slow down.

 

[Superendo]

Interesting that we both have 2013 P85s.

I tried rebooting the car this evening, that totally fixed it.
So if anyone else is having frequent random shifts into easy entry and valet mode while driving, they can reboot to address it.

However, given that Easy Entry is typically a fair way back, this does feel like a significant safety issue for Tesla if drivers suddenly can't reach the pedals. At least regen is significant in this car so typically the car will slow down.

To make it saver you can edit the easy entry settings but then it is not easy entry anymore

 

[jacobp]

I have a 2013 P85 and have had no problems with EasyEntry. We have two profiles plus valet and easy entry.

 

[TSLA Pilot]

YES! This occured to me a week or two ago: Driving at ~30 mph when the car suddenly decided it was time to engage Easy Entry for a few seconds, then, just as randomly, return to my previous profile. As a Human Factors Engineer (by education) this "rang my bell" due to the safety implications.

I alerted both Tesla HQ and my local SC via email to this problem asking them to pull the logs and see where the spurious command came from, and, more importantly, send out a software fix before someone loses control of their car and has an accident.

They're looking into it . . . but haven't gotten back to me with anything of value yet.

In the meanwhile, if you have had this happen to you PLEASE CONTACT TESLA HQ WITH THE DATE AND TIME OF THE EVENT TO HELP THEM FIGURE OUT WHAT IS GOING ON. You could save a life.

Thank you!

p.s. This was on our 2017 P100D Model S. I have forwarded this thread to [email protected], and my local SC manager and others within Tesla. I strongly recommended an immediate deactivation of this feature via OTA update until they can figure out what the heck is going on. When this occurs to a 5th percentile female driver, or similar sized male, there will likely be an accident which could be lethal to someone in or outside of the car. Tesla's response thus far was that they were unable to find my incident. I expanded my event time window by another five minutes and gave them more location details; how can such a dangerous event in the arguably the world's most "wired" and "networked" car be so hard to figure out?!?

 

[cantdecide]

I've shared with Tesla along with a video I took of it happening.
Of course now that I've rebooted it isn't happening any more.
I'll see if I can reproduce it over the weekend.

 

[David29]

Reminds me of an incident a few years ago when I was driving a Mercedes Benz that had memory seats. Suddenly and without warning, the driver's seat began to move forward and kept moving despite my attempts to stop or reverse the motion by using the seat controls. The seat essentially pinned me against the steering wheel! I was driving on a freeway at the time, at 60+ mph. Once it stopped moving I was able to return it to the normal position, and the seat stayed there for the rest of that trip. Pretty scary, and I was pinned so tight I could have had trouble maneuvering in an emergency.
The seat continued to move on its own at random moments, and eventually the dealer spent a lot of time diagnosing the problem. Those seats had a computer in each seat, and at first we suspected the computer itself had failed. But replacing the computer did not solve it. Eventually we realized that there was a faulty ground in the wiring. Once the electrical connections were tightened up, the problem was solved. The car was something like 8 or 10 years old at the time. Over time, ground connections can rust or become loose, and wiring can be damaged by repeated motion (such as from opening and closing the door a few thousand times, thus wearing or loosening the door harness). Such problems can be very difficult and time-consuming to locate, partly because the natural tendency is to assume that some mechanical or electrical part is faulty.

 

[cantdecide]

In this case a reboot made a big definitive difference, so I'm expecting a software issue rather than bad wiring.
Additionally it has happened to at least 3 people on this forum this month, and nobody before then (mind you, people didn't have easy entry much before this month).

I think it would be more scary in a Mercedes Benz, though, without the regenerative braking and autopilot to reduce the chances of injury.

 

[jorobsand]

I'm wondering if this is tied to the update in which the seat belt is the trigger for the profile automatically switching to "easy entry". If the seat belt sensor is finicky, could that cause the profile to switch back/forth?

I have never tried to take off my seat belt at driving speed (nor would I recommend to anyone) to test to see if the car also has to be in "Park" for that function to work as designed.