Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

Model Y Shuddering on Steep Downhill

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
Anyone else run into this? When our Y is charged close to 90%, or higher for starting long trips, (little to no regen) and we do down a steep hill there is often a serious shuddering, kind of like ABS brakes engaging very strongly. Loud sound and shakes the car. It happens when we let off the accelerator, with or without brakes applied. Dry road, no slipping. Haven't yet tried to narrow it down, as in change the regen setting, apply brakes at different levels, etc. But it hasn't happened at lower states of charge so I'm thinking it's related to the reduced regen. Car does see the stop sign at the bottom but we don't have FSD. Ideas? If you are just going to reply with a joke make sure it's a good one, please.
 
Thanks. Same hill only because it is close to home. Road with no lines (small, rural town) and autopilot not engaged. Regen kicking in and out sounds plausible. Wish there was an option to turn regen off completely to see if that's it. I would ask Tesla what might be going on but they will never answer. Then again, Toyota, Mazda, Subaru and Jeep never answered either.
 
So this also happened in my Y this morning. Batt was only charged to 70% but I had the “Regen reduced” warning when I started the drive. First steep hill I came down, it felt like the brakes were grabbing on and off really quickly. (Same feeling as ABS pulsing)
 
Same happened to me yesterday. The car was at 100% and you could see the regen green line pulsing on the screen.
I engaged the cruise control and the shaking stopped but it reappeared as soon as I disabled it.

I stopped the car, went outside to see if nothing looked wrong and when I restarted the car did not occur again.
 
Sounds like it is just the regen turning off and on... nothing to worry about. Just use your brakes until the battery gets low enough to take advantage of full regen.
I think you are right that it's regen kicking in and out but hard not to worry when the shuddering is strong enough to make you wonder if it's doing damage. So far applying the brakes doesn't stop it, even if I slow down to 5mph. It's nearly 4 hours for me to the nearest service center so that's not a good option. Mostly hoping enough Y owners encounter this to get Tesla's attention and maybe push a software fix. Thanks.
 
Anyone else run into this? When our Y is charged close to 90%, or higher for starting long trips, (little to no regen) and we do down a steep hill there is often a serious shuddering, kind of like ABS brakes engaging very strongly. Loud sound and shakes the car. It happens when we let off the accelerator, with or without brakes applied. Dry road, no slipping. Haven't yet tried to narrow it down, as in change the regen setting, apply brakes at different levels, etc. But it hasn't happened at lower states of charge so I'm thinking it's related to the reduced regen. Car does see the stop sign at the bottom but we don't have FSD. Ideas? If you are just going to reply with a joke make sure it's a good one, please.
Something similar to this has happened to me three times, but only while on AutoPilot. I found the car would slow down and make repetitive clicking/clunking sounds from the front left of the car as it slowed with each clunk. I found a model S doing the exact same thing on youtube, and brought the video to my SC yesterday, giving them the time of the most recent occurrence. They examined the car and found nothing, and were going to request Tesla records of the most recent episode.They felt it is likely a known problem with the i-booster, and told me that if it happens again they would consider replacing the part.
 
i-booster? I have an i-booster? Is there a chance I have a flux capacitor too because that would be a dream come true. Oops. Turns out I'm the wise guy posting the bad joke. Thanks again for the help.
Yes! They showed me a picture of it, (I think Bosch makes it) and said they had read an article about this problem and promised to research it. The team in Smithtown was terrific.
 
We have a newer Model Y and experience this shuttering on a step hill twice during our same trip. There was no way to arrest the shuttering until the car rolled to a stop. We made a service appointment and luckily for us the Tesla technicians were able to duplicate the issue on hills near their service center. They’ve already replaced several parts on the front end of the car but the problem persists. They’ve now elevated the service to the “engineering department.” Not sure if this is a software issue with regenerative braking or a hardware issue. Has anyone had success with Tesla service figuring out what this problem is?
 
Anyone else run into this? When our Y is charged close to 90%, or higher for starting long trips, (little to no regen) and we do down a steep hill there is often a serious shuddering, kind of like ABS brakes engaging very strongly. Loud sound and shakes the car. It happens when we let off the accelerator, with or without brakes applied. Dry road, no slipping. Haven't yet tried to narrow it down, as in change the regen setting, apply brakes at different levels, etc. But it hasn't happened at lower states of charge so I'm thinking it's related to the reduced regen. Car does see the stop sign at the bottom but we don't have FSD. Ideas? If you are just going to reply with a joke make sure it's a good one, please.
 
We have a new Model Y. Experienced the same thing. It’s at the Tesla service center now. They we able to see the event in the cars memory because I knew the dates and times. They were able to actually duplicate the issue themselves on hills near the service center. They’ve already replaced several parts in the front end of the car. The problem persists. Now they’ve elevated the issue to the “engineering department.” Hopefully they’ll figure this out.
 
Thanks for the update. It's still happening with our Y but it seems less often, probably because all the steep hills have been mostly snow and ice covered and we have to creep down them (regen definitely a plus in that situation). I'll be very interested to learn if engineering discovers something. That would make it much easier to convince service it's real.