Unhappy with phantom braking

[ssrobinson]

I only have a couple hundred miles on the car so far. Work from home and so far just some quick errands and have been REALLY enjoying the car. Wonderful "honeymoon". But today I took the car out on the highway and the honeymoon is OVER. What the heck is the deal with this car slamming on the dang brakes every few miles?!? I'm in Kansas and had a wide open 4 lane highway and there was not a freakin' car within 40 car lengths of me each time (front, side, nothing). And I'm talking throwing me forward SLAMMING on the brakes for absolutely no reason. In just a relatively short drive it scared the crud out of me a half dozen times. First time I thought I'd try the full auto-pilot thing. Blue lights showing, keeping me in my lane and BAMM - about threw me into the steering wheel and scared the crud out of the guy behind me. So I decided NOT to use that anymore and just went with the cruise control part and it did it several more times. Now I see all these posts about "phantom braking". Is this something I have to live with? Umm... NO! This is ridiculous.

Rant over. So is the honeymoon. There's no excuse for this.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I don't have a "Tesla Vision Only" car, but what you describe DOES happen, but the frequency that you are describing is not normal, and the described severity is also not normal (I have my doubts that it is braking as hard as you describe - this is a common perception issue though; no one like the feeling of uncommanded deceleration for no apparent reason).

Actual slamming on the brakes is considerably more sudden than the typical phantom braking.

 

[ssrobinson]

Moderator changed the title of my post. Is anyone “happy” with phantom braking? haha. Whatever. Guess you can’t be critical of these cars here. I really like the car, but nothing is perfect. And how will it ever approve if you can’t give input. I stand by my comment that there is no excuse for what was occurring today. ”Slam” was appropriate when it throws you forward like that.

 

[ssrobinson]

I don't have a "Tesla Vision Only" car, but what you describe DOES happen, but the frequency that you are describing is not normal, and the described severity is also not normal (I have my doubts that it is braking as hard as you describe - this is a common perception issue though; no one like the feeling of uncommanded deceleration for no apparent reason).

Actual slamming on the brakes is considerably more sudden than the typical phantom braking.

Doing some surfing through the posts here, it’s evident that it does happen. I can’t speak to the frequency others have experienced, only what I experienced. And I used the word “slammed” because it was the best descriptive word I could think of. How about “abrupt”? “Hard“? Doesn’t matter the word, it was unwelcome, unnecessary and irritating. And it spoils the driving experience having to worry about when it’s going to happen again. Every car I have ever owned has had a decent cruise control. this one has “issues”. How’s that?

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I stand by my comment that there is no excuse for what was occurring today. ”Slam” was appropriate when it throws you forward like that.

I recommend you bring your car to Tesla if this keeps happening on the freeway at the frequency you describe. AP/Autosteer is not supported on undivided highways and likely braking behavior there will be considerably worse due to road features/markings, etc.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Doing some surfing through the posts here, it’s evident that it does happen.

Yes, it certainly does, as I said. It's a real thing and it's really bad for user experience.

this one has “issues”. How’s that?

Have you had adaptive cruise in other vehicles? I think the Tesla cruise control does more sudden braking than my Toyota's adaptive cruise (I don't remember one ever occurring with the Toyota). Though I think the Tesla has improved a little. And I think the Toyota is generally a bit more likely to run into something when using adaptive cruise, though I don't have strong evidence for that.

 

[ssrobinson]

Our Acura has adaptive cruise. In almost 40k miles, we have never had a single instance of “phantom braking”.

 

[Atari2600]

Are you driving under overpasses? What firmware are you on?

I had 2021.4.x and 2021.12.x for a bit and had major phantom braking issues when traveling on an interstate under overpasses where the speed limit is 70 MPH. I had also head on collision warnings as well on two lane roads where the speed limit was 45 MPH. I've had my Model 3 since Sept 2018 and I think Tesla is in a string of really sucky code. I'm now on 2021.24.3 and things seem a lot better but it seems to allow huge gaps in traffic when traffic in front of you start accelerating. So much so that two semis cut in front of me, leaving a gap between cars with two semis can wonder over at the same time is pretty bad. Now I find myself often using the accelerator with NOA.
For phantom braking the car has me trained really well though, when I sense the braking starting I just smash the accelerator all the way down to mostly negate it..... not a good way to train my subconscious.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Our Acura has adaptive cruise. In almost 40k miles, we have never had a single instance of “phantom braking”.

Yeah that checks out. Until Tesla fixes it you'll have phantom braking. However, what you described is far far too often to be normal. I don't know the length of the drive, but the way you described it sounds like it was happening all the time, which is not normal (assuming this was a freeway and not some unsupported other highway).

 

[jjrandorin]

Moderator changed the title of my post. Is anyone “happy” with phantom braking? haha. Whatever. Guess you can’t be critical of these cars here. I really like the car, but nothing is perfect. And how will it ever approve if you can’t give input. I stand by my comment that there is no excuse for what was occurring today. ”Slam” was appropriate when it throws you forward like that.

I changed your thread title, because I am VERY "anti click bait" style thread titles. "honeymoon is over" which was the original thread title, does not say a thing about what you are actually talking about. I suppose I could have changed it to "Rant about phantom braking, or something. Not sure where you got" cant be critical of these cars here". If that were the case, we would simply delete posts crticial of tesla, which we absolutely dont do.



Phantom braking is not a model 3 topic, its a autopilot / FSD topic so it was moved to this subforum.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

The really messed up part is people need to start indicating whether they have a Radar or Radarless Model 3/Y.

Until the Radar isn't being used the two experiences are going to be vastly different.

Even at it's worst I've never seen phantom braking of a radar based 3/Y being reported as nearly as severe as phantom braking with the radarless.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

Phantom braking is not a model 3 topic, its a autopilot / FSD topic so it was moved to this subforum.

It's a "Oops, we were a bit premature with this whole radarless thing" topic.

 

[jjrandorin]

It's a "Oops, we were a bit premature with this whole radarless thing" topic.

I would 100% agree with that, because I have read more than one account that this issue seems worse on "tesla vision" enabled cars. With that being said, there are enough anecdotes of it occurring on radar enabled cars, that this is likely to be an issue for tesla cars as long as they exist.

I personally dont think we will ever see a time when the cars dont brake unexpectedly in some cases, even if we could sleep in them while they drive, and they dont have steering wheels.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

I would 100% agree with that, because I have read more than one account that this issue seems worse on "tesla vision" enabled cars. With that being said, there are enough anecdotes of it occurring on radar enabled cars, that this is likely to be an issue for tesla cars as long as they exist.

I personally dont think we will ever see a time when the cars dont brake unexpectedly in some cases, even if we could sleep in them while they drive, and they dont have steering wheels.

So far in what I've seen it seems so much worse than anything I've heard or have experienced myself with a radar based AP/TACC, and I used to be a fairly frequent complainer about phantom braking.

Hopefully we'll get more information from those that own both radar based Tesla AP (of HW3) and radarless Tesla AP.

I do agree with you in that we'll never zero phantom braking events, and we actually don't want to. I'd rather have an every great once in awhile phantom braking event than a false non-braking event.

I myself on a very rare occasional phantom brake because of something spooking me.

 

[Resist]

Even at it's worst I've never seen phantom braking of a radar based 3/Y being reported as nearly as severe as phantom braking with the radarless.

So much for radar being the cause of phantom braking then.

 

[ssrobinson]

My car is a "Tesla Vision" car. No radar. The events happened on I-70. 3 lanes wide each direction and divided. Driving in middle lane. It occurred 4 times in an approximately 15 minute stretch in those conditions. (Then 2 other times spread out later.) Sunny day, slightly after 12:00 so no shadows. No debris on the road. No cars beside me. No overpasses in sight in any of the events. And, no curves coming up either. In every case, any car in front of me (in any lane) was at least 15 or more cars ahead. This is why this is so very disturbing to me. Each time it happened I scanned the road for anything it might have "seen". But folks, there was literally nothing but straight open concrete. The only thing I can think of is maybe "patch jobs" on the road surface. But around here, if it's going to stop for patch jobs, I'm never going to get anywhere!

I think I will report this to the service center and see what they say. I don't know if this is related or not, but I also keep getting messages that one or more (random) cameras are "blocked". Like I need to clean them or something. Car is spotless. Then the message goes away after awhile.

Software: 2021.3.106

 

[linux-works]

I think my new sigfile for this forum might have to be something like:

"is phantom braking fixed yet, elon? no? then shut up, stop tweeting and get back to work"

he's ADD for sure; he can't keep his company concentrating on things long enough to solve them for real.

yeah, lets have a dancing idiot on stage to distract the audience. android in human form in a year.

"but elon, is phantom braking fixed yet?"

etc etc.

its like a parent, having to remind the child that the room is still not cleaned yet, even though it was supposed to be, before you get the allowance.

how many years have they had? HOW MANY?

 

[serendipitous]

My car is a "Tesla Vision" car. No radar. The events happened on I-70. 3 lanes wide each direction and divided. Driving in middle lane. It occurred 4 times in an approximately 15 minute stretch in those conditions. (Then 2 other times spread out later.) Sunny day, slightly after 12:00 so no shadows. No debris on the road. No cars beside me. No overpasses in sight in any of the events. And, no curves coming up either. In every case, any car in front of me (in any lane) was at least 15 or more cars ahead. This is why this is so very disturbing to me. Each time it happened I scanned the road for anything it might have "seen". But folks, there was literally nothing but straight open concrete. The only thing I can think of is maybe "patch jobs" on the road surface. But around here, if it's going to stop for patch jobs, I'm never going to get anywhere!

I think I will report this to the service center and see what they say. I don't know if this is related or not, but I also keep getting messages that one or more (random) cameras are "blocked". Like I need to clean them or something. Car is spotless. Then the message goes away after awhile.

Software: 2021.3.106

There are a variety of causes of phantom braking. What you're describing sounds like the mildest form - the car suddenly changes the set speed at a specific location, either because it saw a speed limit sign, or its map data indicated that it should slow down (supposedly, because other Teslas always slow down in that location, but that was from an old blog post so not sure whether that logic is still in the code). In these cases, I don't believe it uses the friction brakes, but suddenly starts to regen brake to get down to the new set speed. It's jarring but consistent. There's are two stretches of I-270 where it joins I-495 where I am that exhibit this behavior. I'll be cruising at 75 and it decides to change the set speed to 60mph for a few hundred feet. I expect that once they merge the new FSD stack into the NoA/Highway logic, a lot of this will go away. The traditional autopilot code is in need of a refresh because of a lot of this stuff that's been bolted on over time, and up until the most recent build of the FSD beta software, they hadn't even touched the highway logic.

 

[jjrandorin]

I think I will report this to the service center and see what they say. I don't know if this is related or not, but I also keep getting messages that one or more (random) cameras are "blocked". Like I need to clean them or something. Car is spotless. Then the message goes away after awhile.

2021.3.X is factory firmware (and no there is nothing you personally can do to force it to update faster). The really relevant part (and the part you should focus on if you choose to open up a service ticket is your statement that the car is saying your cameras are "blocked" when they are clean.

That could be a hardware issue, so its something I would actually submit a service request for (after capturing the message on a picture on my cellphone for proof). I also would NOT "rant" to the service department about how "this is unnacceptable that this car randomly brakes like this", unless you want them to stop listening to you and ignore the fact that you are mentioning your cameras show as blocked sometimes when they are clean.

 

[ssrobinson]

2021.3.X is factory firmware (and no there is nothing you personally can do to force it to update faster). The really relevant part (and the part you should focus on if you choose to open up a service ticket is your statement that the car is saying your cameras are "blocked" when they are clean.

That could be a hardware issue, so its something I would actually submit a service request for (after capturing the message on a picture on my cellphone for proof). I also would NOT "rant" to the service department about how "this is unnacceptable that this car randomly brakes like this", unless you want them to stop listening to you and ignore the fact that you are mentioning your cameras show as blocked sometimes when they are clean.

Gotcha. I was not going to rant to them, and agree that's good advice. I was going to talk about the camera issue and then "ask" if it maybe had something to do with the braking.