Possible to deactivate TACC and use "regular, dumb" cruise control? Phantom braking & unexpected slowdowns

[marvinat0rz]

Wish we could get a line to Elon and just have him instruct the teams to insert a menu option to make the cruise control dumb. For my use cases, it's unusable. It will brake unnecessarily every 2 minutes or so on the (new! built in 2020) 4-lane highway I use most often, and cause either discomfort, distraction or a dangerous situation. I only ever use it if I'm practically alone on the road, and even then it will trigger all the time.

It's a sad state of affairs, but although Tesla has big ambitions in AI, that's the area that seems to be lacking the most. I absolutely love driving Teslas and will probably still get a MY at some point, but it's in spite of these inconveniences.

Here's what I want:

• Option to have a dumb cruise control
• Either AI that turns recirculating on & off automatically when entering or leaving a tunnel, or controls for this on the steering wheel
• Either automatic windshield wipers that work, or controls for this on the steering wheel
• Voice control that works. Not voice control that hears "hindu swastika" when I say "wipers three", then interprets it as "satellite navigation off". Or turn the wipers up by 1 when I say "set wipers one".

Dunno if this is California climate vs. Norway climate, but we have a lot of road tunnels and rain! This stuff should be caught during testing.

 

[cwerdna]

As someone who has lived most of their life in Nor Cal and but also lived in So Cal (city of Los Angeles) for almost 4.5 years, we don't have that much rain the SF Bay Area. And, I'd say we have even less in LA.

As for tunnels, where I drive in the Bay Area, there are none. I do know of some like Caldecott Tunnel - Wikipedia but it's almost 70 miles from home and I can't think of a single time I've driven thru it. I found Category:Tunnels in the San Francisco Bay Area - Wikipedia but don't know how complete it is. Some of them like the Transbay Tube cannot be driven in.

Where I drove in LA also had few tunnels.

 

[rt29781]

Hi I also have had multiple phantom braking events and at the weekend on a 500 mile drive it happened 4 times. Twice on the crowded M6 in rain at 70mph. There was no valid reason for the braking and it could have resulted in a very serious accident. I have reported this to Tesla and due to their “ relaxed” response I have officially reported the incident to the DVSA in the U.K. see Vehicle Safety Defect Report | DVSA

I would strongly urge U.K. Tesla owners that experience phantom braking to report it to the DVSA. This issue of phantom braking is very annoying and dangerous and really spoils an amazing car. My software version is 2021.12.25.7. I have read that newer software is more reliable but so far Tesla have refused to update my software.

I have received a response from the DVSA and they require evidence that TACC can be dangerous. I responded quoting the Norwegian example where a M3 was rear ended by a van and then that was hit by a lorry. (www.innherred.no/nyheter/2020/03/27/Tesla-på-autopilot-bråbremset.-Det-resulterte-i-kjedekollisjon-på-E6-i-Verdal.-21470184.ece) I used Google translate to decipher the text.

If any Tesla owners have examples of heavy braking being caused by TACC could you please reply to this post and I will pass your examples on to the DVSA investigator. The investigator is of the opinion that braking is mild and there is a warning. I refuted this claim.

 

[usualsuspect]

I have received a response from the DVSA and they require evidence that TACC can be dangerous. I responded quoting the Norwegian example where a M3 was rear ended by a van and then that was hit by a lorry. (www.innherred.no/nyheter/2020/03/27/Tesla-på-autopilot-bråbremset.-Det-resulterte-i-kjedekollisjon-på-E6-i-Verdal.-21470184.ece) I used Google translate to decipher the text.

If any Tesla owners have examples of heavy braking being caused by TACC could you please reply to this post and I will pass your examples on to the DVSA investigator. The investigator is of the opinion that braking is mild and there is a warning. I refuted this claim.

I'm guessing the dashcam footage isn't good enough?
I find that I can guarantee a brake if, on a three lane plus motorway/highway, I move from the fast lane to the middle lane when there's a truck in the slow lane. The truck appears in red on the screen. It thinks the action on me changing lane is the truck coming to hit me! I now know to cover the accelerator when performing this action. The weather makes no difference.

 

[sfreedmanphd]

All the safety settings are turned off in mine, including emergency braking. The car phantom brakes several times during my commute. The TACC is terrible. More of a safety hazard for me, as it will slam on the brakes with someone behind me. All you can do is roll the window down, wave and apologize.

My wife drives a new Toyota with all the camera and radar assisted tech and it’s cruise control works fantastic. It does exactly what you want adaptive CC to do—it moves you perfectly with the flow of traffic and keeps you a safe distance from the cars around you.

So are your safety settings off and you still get the phantom stopping? How did you turn the safety settings off?

 

[sfreedmanphd]

How does it perform if you set the Forward Collision Warning to "Late" (which is obviously not ideal)? I'm assuming it's set to Medium at this point.

View attachment 690966

This is probably a dumb question, but, how do I find the controls to get to the rest of the sequence above?

 

[sfreedmanphd]

All the safety settings are turned off in mine, including emergency braking. The car phantom brakes several times during my commute. The TACC is terrible. More of a safety hazard for me, as it will slam on the brakes with someone behind me. All you can do is roll the window down, wave and apologize.

My wife drives a new Toyota with all the camera and radar assisted tech and it’s cruise control works fantastic. It does exactly what you want adaptive CC to do—it moves you perfectly with the flow of traffic and keeps you a safe distance from the cars around you.

Please describe the process for turning off all safety settings. Thanks!

 

[qdeathstar]

I just drove to work in my new 3, the first trip since the short ride home from the dealer. I gave up on cruise control after 10 minutes. I had the following distance set to the closest possible setting and it was still freaking out about cars changing lanes 30 meters ahead and hesitating when passing cars that aren't even in my lane. Got a phantom braking event on open interstate which is when I just turned it off and gave up.

In all my previous cars, I've used cruise control constantly. The most used controls in my car were probably cancel, +/resume, and -/set. I want some good-ol' dumb cruise control!

Maybe you should try recalibration of your cameras. I live relatively close to you and drive though Richmond all the time and while I do get phantom braking it doesn’t happen too often.

 

[Botoo]

My Model 3 really struggles at night using the Cruise Control. First of all every night I get messages that say “One or more of your cameras is blocked.” Also lights of the on coming traffic confuse the car into emergency braking and alarm warnings Constantly. This makes the cruise control unusable at night. I would think there should be a fix for this.

 

[Holdontight]

I just drove to work in my new 3, the first trip since the short ride home from the dealer. I gave up on cruise control after 10 minutes. I had the following distance set to the closest possible setting and it was still freaking out about cars changing lanes 30 meters ahead and hesitating when passing cars that aren't even in my lane. Got a phantom braking event on open interstate which is when I just turned it off and gave up.

In all my previous cars, I've used cruise control constantly. The most used controls in my car were probably cancel, +/resume, and -/set. I want some good-ol' dumb cruise control!

Me too Capin! I have always lived on CC, especially timing out the re-engagement as you come out of a corner. Love CC. But after a couple of 70 - 20 mph seatbelt popping slow downs (where thankfully no one was behind me) I am scared to use it on my 2021 M3 LR. The brief hesitations that also plague my ride make my adrenaline surge. I still use CC (but not on two lane highways - almost killed my ass it did) but with my foot over the accelerator and tense. It is almost and maybe enough to make me give up the car I otherwise like more than any of many before.

 

[smogne41]

Honestly there would probably be a very healthy market if one of the Tesla CAN bus hackers out there could come up with a module to provide dumb cruise control to those that want it. Seems like it might be possible.

 

[MN_MY21]

I am in the same situation with our 21 MYLR. I have taken it to two different SC and got the same response. We even did an overnight "extended test drive" with one of the Tesla techs and they confirmed the problem. But the canned response from both SC was the same "Hardware is working fine and per the owners manual the driver assistance features are in beta". My complaint is primarily with the phantom braking in low light situations but also the auto headlights. Does anybody else have situations where the auto high beams turn off but then turn back on when the approaching vehicle is a 100 yards away? At this point I am afraid the only way to get Tesla to seriously address these concerns is if NHTSA steps in.

 

[gjkuehl99@gmai]

On my MYLR November delivery, ditto the high beam issue but I can live with this. I also beleive Tesla is hiding behind the "beta" shield (its a lawyer thingy not a customer thingy) and is negligent by not providing an alternative to the AP shortcomings other than "beta" wording. They are alienating whole bunch of loyal customers. When given the choice, my wife now prefers our 10 year old Prius V.

 

[MN_MY21]

Agreed. My wife has said the MY needs to go. BTW the MX and MS loaners I drove during the SC visits all handled the same situations perfectly.

 

[Gilliland]

The auto-brights on my model Y are a disaster. If I were in a car coming toward me, or a car ahead of me going the same direction, road rage would be a very likely response to the Tesla's auto-highbeam. And it should not be hard to get this right. My Mazda CX-5 did it absolutely perfectly 100% of the time. If there were headlights or taillights in front of me and less than about a quarter mile away, the lights were on low-beam. Always, and with no mistakes. If a car suddenly appeared in front of me from around a curve or over a hill, the brights were dimmed instantly.

The same is true with cruise control. The Mazda has TACC and does it perfectly. It also has ordinary CC for times when TACC isn't the best choice. TACC works best when traffic is relatively light.

With all of its intelligence, the Tesla is still very stupid about a lot of simple mundane things. It's frustrating.

 

[tm1v2]

I've never had a car with auto-highbeams before. I'm fine with just controlling them manually via the stalk, totally used to that. But because autosteer mandates auto-highbeams, I've realized I cannot use autosteer at night. Absolutely cannot. I'm lucky I was following my wife the other night, she was not happy when she told me how often I flashed high beams at her, but at least she didn't road rage at me.

This is a shame because Autosteer is good enough now that if it's late and I'm really tired, Autosteer is probably safer than me doing all the steering on the highway. But I can't use it when it's flashing brights at people on highways that have street lamps and there's zero need for brights at all.

 

[rthurlow61]

New Tesla 3 owner here (one month, no FSD). The acid test for Autopilot for me so far is driving a two-lane road at night. As many as one in ten or so oncoming cars can trigger phantom braking, dropping my speed from 60mph to 50 or lower. I am now covering the accelerator pedal when I drive these roads. I don't see this much on the Interstate por larger roads.

I am also glad to see others talk about how auto-high-beams can blind oncoming drivers. Not fun. I had no idea auto-high-beams related to Autosteer - that's ... surprising.

 

[strider]

The 2nd most-stupid thing about Cruise Control (first being not allowing us to disable TACC) is that Tesla is using AP software to drive TACC. Because of this the car will slow down for things like curves, on ramps, etc. It's Cruise Control. Drive at the speed I set unless there is an obstacle directly in front of me. It also won't let you change lanes smoothly. If you are overtaking someone and try to smoothly move into the passing lane at a normal (yes, this is subjective) distance, the car will abruptly slow down and match the speed of the car your are overtaking. Then once you have completely moved into the passing lane, it will then accelerate up to your set speed. This is super dangerous and jarring for passengers. My wife has banned the use of AP and Cruise whenever she is in the car. Tesla has no problem letting me do "dangerous" things like change driver profiles while driving, use the nav system, etc. Why not create a menu setting to change to dumb CC? The Pre-AP cars have dumb CC so the code is there.

 

[tm1v2]

Isn't easier to just switch off TACC for passing? I do keep it on for some lane changes, but if I'm changing lanes to do a quick pass and merge back, I wouldn't really expect any car's ACC to handle that for me. That's advanced stuff, seems more FSD or at least EAP territory.

 

[SalisburySam]

Yesterday, I took my 2012 Nissan LEAF to run several local errands. It is refreshing to drive that after mostly driving my Model 3 for awhile. Several things I really like about the LEAF and why I’ve kept it despite its miniscule and diminishing 35-mile range. Now that ambient temps are quite cool, the steering wheel heater is just wonderful, but the big plus is the dumb old cruise control. Simply and easily maintaining a speed set by me without having my right foot hover over the go pedal is so relaxing compared to the vagaries and self-indulgences of TACC. The ability to disengage and resume my set speed is yet another well-appreciated plus. Given that I’m forbidden to use TACC with she-who-must-be-obeyed or the German Shepherd who gives me WTF grimaces at every phantom braking event, and even alone I skip it most of the time, the chance to relax with a real cruise control has become one of life’s driving pleasures. After 3½ years in my Model 3, I know my next vehicle will have to have dumb cruise control if I can find it in any EV.