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Is Phantom Braking Still a Problem?
- Thread starter JeffreyC
- Start date
I just took my first semi-decent road trip in my MYLR and I had at least 3 Phantom braking occurrences on both multi lane divided highway and two lane roads on the way there and back. I updated to 2021.4.18.2 shorty after taking delivery FWIW. I don’t have a ton to add, but my prior 2017 Chevy Bolt with ACC and our current 2017 Volvo XC90 have NEVER done the same on any of these same roads, and basically performed flawlessly.
I'm so glad I found this thread. MYLR, no FSD, 3 weeks of ownership, ver. 2021.4.18.3.
Just took our first road trip (about 350 miles round-trip) with mostly interstate driving this past weekend. Had two unexpected 'phantom braking' events, at least based on what I've read in this thread, I believe that's the best description.
First event:
On autopilot, but not autosteer. We were in the fast lane cruising a few mph above posted speed limit (72-74 mph) when suddenly, without warning it slowed down to 60-65 mph. Right before that, two motorcycles moved in behind us to pass the vehicle we were overtaking and they had to brake hard to avoid rear ending us! They were pi$$ed when they passed us a short time later, as they should have been! Thankfully, it ended well. I believe there was an overpass about that time as well so perhaps it was related to shadows from the overpass or perhaps the vehicle we were passing's shadow??
Second event:
Same situation, on AP but not AS. Double lane, divided highway (not interstate, but two lanes each way, median in between), again overtaking another vehicle and sudden braking. No one behind but there was another car further behind in the right lane that was about to merge into the left lane to pass the vehicle we were passing but when we braked so suddenly, he waited a bit to get into the left lane to begin passing. There were no overpasses this time, and no shadows.
Just contributing our experiences and hopefully adding to the data ... Do Tesla techs actually read these forums or what is the best way to contribute to the cause??
Just took our first road trip (about 350 miles round-trip) with mostly interstate driving this past weekend. Had two unexpected 'phantom braking' events, at least based on what I've read in this thread, I believe that's the best description.
First event:
On autopilot, but not autosteer. We were in the fast lane cruising a few mph above posted speed limit (72-74 mph) when suddenly, without warning it slowed down to 60-65 mph. Right before that, two motorcycles moved in behind us to pass the vehicle we were overtaking and they had to brake hard to avoid rear ending us! They were pi$$ed when they passed us a short time later, as they should have been! Thankfully, it ended well. I believe there was an overpass about that time as well so perhaps it was related to shadows from the overpass or perhaps the vehicle we were passing's shadow??
Second event:
Same situation, on AP but not AS. Double lane, divided highway (not interstate, but two lanes each way, median in between), again overtaking another vehicle and sudden braking. No one behind but there was another car further behind in the right lane that was about to merge into the left lane to pass the vehicle we were passing but when we braked so suddenly, he waited a bit to get into the left lane to begin passing. There were no overpasses this time, and no shadows.
Just contributing our experiences and hopefully adding to the data ... Do Tesla techs actually read these forums or what is the best way to contribute to the cause??
Definitely still an issue. I have a MY with Tesla vision and FSD and it happens quite often if there are shadows on the road or an blind uphill road. Gets scary as well when there are people following you. I love everything else about the car but this issue makes me hesitate to activate TACC and Autosteer.
JRMedic19
Member
I just completed a 3k mile family road trip. This phantom braking issue is a HUGE pain in the ass. Wife sleeping, kids, sleeping ... sudden hard deceleration which continues until i intervene. Everyone wakes up looking around to see what's going on.
It happened at least eight times or more total. My Toyota Camry with radar assisted cruise control and my Jeep Wrangler with the same tech does not do this. Whats nice is you can turn off the radar assist and just use old fashioned cruise control. Why can't my MY do this. I got to the point where i didnt use the autopilot, navigate on autopilot or any of the driving features because it was unreliable on busy multi-lane freeway's especially when there were twists in the road.
That brings me to the next point. I've been evaluating the situations in my head and i think the car does not like when it "looses" good visual of the lanes. i.e. cresting a hill, low lighting, poorly painted lines, and especially when someone next to you is creeping toward your lane. BUT, it also spontaneously brakes when absolutely nothing is happening.
Stupid.
It happened at least eight times or more total. My Toyota Camry with radar assisted cruise control and my Jeep Wrangler with the same tech does not do this. Whats nice is you can turn off the radar assist and just use old fashioned cruise control. Why can't my MY do this. I got to the point where i didnt use the autopilot, navigate on autopilot or any of the driving features because it was unreliable on busy multi-lane freeway's especially when there were twists in the road.
That brings me to the next point. I've been evaluating the situations in my head and i think the car does not like when it "looses" good visual of the lanes. i.e. cresting a hill, low lighting, poorly painted lines, and especially when someone next to you is creeping toward your lane. BUT, it also spontaneously brakes when absolutely nothing is happening.
Stupid.
No they have not sorted it. In fact they almost come over as if I am the first person who has had this happen! "Send images, times, details of road, shoe size and loads of stuff. The problem is a major safety issue and I would not buy the autopilot because I dont trust the system. I had a Model S for 4 years with no problem whatsoever. This is new on the Model 3 and a disaster making one of the mosty useful features of the car dangerous.
I do had the same situations. Shared the info with the service center. They said, we evaluated and the behavior is as expected.(beta version)
laservet
Member
Twice again today. One interesting twist, in addition to the hesitancy in overtaking trucks it now brakes hard in one specific location on my way to work, again at a different location on the interstate going home. It’s definitely location specific, and both are straight, no overpasses, no nothin. Even if I am the only vehicle in sight. The place on the way home is a hundred yards from the spot where it usually moves over into the right lane, even if I am two lanes to the left. That is the only place where it goes into that lane, otherwise it always stays in the center lane unless passing.
Can’t wait for the big update. Until then I look at this as a personality quirk of the car. Welcome to the machine.
Can’t wait for the big update. Until then I look at this as a personality quirk of the car. Welcome to the machine.
Phantom breaking is still a huge issue for us. Seems a bit worse on assisted cruise controll. We drive a lot of rural highways. 1 lane on each direction. Phantom breaking at so ma y random times. We get it a lot with oncoming trucks in the other lane and also for no reason or undulating hilly terrain. It's actually a very big problem that seems dangerous and a bit of a buzz kill for liking the vehicle. Wish we could get the fsd update that seems to solve these problems. I'm sure most Tesla's are not driving rural highways regularly. Maybe they can use us for beta.
Well, technically a one-lane road isn't a "highway". I suspect Tesla would say that's not part of the use case for TACC and Autosteer. They are also Beta features so....
I just completed almost 1000 miles of mostly highway driving in the last 2 weeks and had one 1 incident.
Awesome, hopefully it’ll keep getting better, but compare that to the roughly 35-40k highway miles I’ve put on our 2018 Volvo XC90 with its Pilot Assist 2 and haven’t had it happen once…literally not a SINGLE time. Also never had it happen a single time in my 2017 Chevy Volt Premier with Adaptive Cruise Control over roughly the same amount of miles. Also never had it happen in my old Ford Flex Platinum Ecoboost AWD with its adaptive cruise. Just sayin…
The first step in addressing a problem is admitting you have a problem, and there IS a problem with phantom braking for Tesla…sorry, it’s just the facts.
PACEMD
Active Member
I've only experienced phantom breaking twice in 33k miles on my M3P. Both at the same location, at an underpass on the freeway. We have, however, had reports here on multiple occasions of phantom barking. So far so good, with my car.........which is good. I hate it when phantoms bark.........
I think I found why the phatom break occurs. The problem seems to be related when there is a drift in the GPS coordinates of the car and Google Maps. I was on the highway and a few phatom breaks occured during my ride. I zoomed as close as I could in the map and I notice dans the red arrow representing the car had a little offset according to the road in the map. My cruise control was on and every time I was passing a exit lane, the red arrow was passing over the exit lane instead of the highway. According to that, my guest is that the phatom braking is related to the information pass between the car's GPS location, Google Maps and Tesla's cruise control manager. While the car coordinates place the car in the exit lane, Google Maps, sends the information of the exit lane (with the new reduce speed limit) to the Tesla cruise control manager. The maximum speed limit icon is reduces instantaneously to that speed new limit and the cruise control speed is reduce automatically at the same time, resulting in a phatom braking. The Tesla adaptative cruise control does exactly what it is supposed to do. Lower speed limit, resulting in a reducing of the speed's car.
I notice the same observation when i was crossing an overpass. The car's location placed the car on the overpass, Google Map detected it's speed limit and the cruise control manager was automatically adapted to that reduce speed.
Hope Tesla see's my message.
I notice the same observation when i was crossing an overpass. The car's location placed the car on the overpass, Google Map detected it's speed limit and the cruise control manager was automatically adapted to that reduce speed.
Hope Tesla see's my message.
Why not just contact your local service center with this same information. Better than hoping that someone from Tesla reads your post don't you think?
Well, if EVERY incident of 'phantom braking' was as you describe, that might be the case (and FYI, Tesla uses their own navigation, which was apparently based on Google Maps, but is not Google Maps). The couple of times I've had it happen, it was not near an exit or an overpass. The first instance I believe it was the shadow of a truck moving from the right to the center lane (I was in the left lane); the second, I cannot explain as I was alone in traffic, no overpass, no exit, no shadows on the road.
And yes, I would not assume that anyone from Tesla is reading this forum.
I will effectively check with my local service. Might have a better chance. The thing is that I also doubt that they can update that kind of information to the headquarters to verify if this could explain a part of the phatom braking. I find it to bad that Tesla does not have a way to contact them directly over their website.
Your still too new to this game that Tesla plays. The service centers can indeed contact the mother ship and give them your findings or believes as they might call it. This forum does not belong to Tesla if that's what you thought. They closed down the forum that they use to have quite some time ago, but they didn't go there much either.
