2022 TESLA MODEL 3 Complaints

No one around me on the interstate with my cruise control on. With no cars near me or any recognizable object to detect, the car phantom broke for me without warning. Nearly caused an accident for the car behind me.

While I generally love the car during the 6 weeks i’ve owned it, I am concerned about the fact that occasionally, while traveling at freeway speeds with cruise control engaged, the car will slow dramatically as if I had jammed on the brakes. The rapid deceleration has occurred at least once a week during my time with the car. This week, while traveling from North Carolina to New Jersey, the car “braked” from 70mph to about 40mph four times. This happens suddenly, no warning. As frustrating and annoying as this is, it is also dangerous given the high number of brain-dead tailgaters that populate the highways.

While driving with cruise control on the vehicle will automatically brake for no reason. I was just on a road trip and had this happen multiple times while going 80mph. If someone was behind me it could have caused a accident and someone could get seriously hurt or possibly die. I scheduled service at the dealership and it sounds like this is a well known problem that does not have a fix. I could see this issue causing some bad crashes. I put 3/5 as the incident date, but this happens almost on a daily basis.

Tesla "Phantom Breaking" - Traveling at freeway speeds using cruise control, the car applied panic breaking without warning. There were no obstacles anywhere near the car. If I had not applied 100% throttle immediately I would have been rear-ended at high speed. The problem occurred with no obvious input and without warning. I am not able to reproduce it. I have not reported it to Tesla because the problem is well known yet Tesla has not publicly acknowledged it. There was a audible alert that sounded at the moment the breaking occurred, not before. The on-board camera system did not record the event. The car is new, Nov. 2021 delivery, I have driven it less than 1000 miles and this was the 4th, and most violent, "Phantom Breaking" event. I now consider the cruise control too dangerous to use. Because all of the other driver assist features depend on adaptive cruise control, they are now also useless.

With cruise control on the vehicle abruptly applied breaking system without driving involvement and quickly reduced speed from 85 to 60 before driver could engage accelerator to prevent chance of being rear ended. I have a video file if needed.

Using the Autopilot system on a recent road trip, I experienced numerous incidents of “phantom braking”. I previously owned a 2018 Tesla Model 3 with witch I made the same 500 mile RT journey several times without ever experiencing this phenomenon. There were vehicles following mine in a few of these of these incidents which created a serious concern about a rear-end collision. I immediately reported the issue to Tesla service who confirmed the problem via remote diagnostics but did not offer any solution other than to wait for future software updates. The incidents occurred without prior warning in the form of messages or alerts of any kind.

We just purchased this vehicle new one week ago. Several times while using cruise control on Highway 101 in Mason County, WA we have experienced severe "phantom breaking". There is no reason for the sudden breaking and seems to be quite random and dangerous.

When Adaptive Cruise Control or Autopilot is active the vehicle will brake suddenly, often with no apparent reason. On flat roads, highways, clear weather and even no traffic from time to time it will randomly regen brake for no reason. The only time this occurs and is duplicated regularly is when driving on a single lane highway. Whenever a 18 wheeler is passing on the opposite lane the vehicle always regen brake suddenly, regardless of the position of the passing 18 wheeler even when it's apparent that the passing 18 wheeler is staying in its lane. Sometimes if the 18 wheeler has a wide load the regen braking is much more aggressive and the forward collision will give a warning. These instances can be overridden by pressing down on the accelerator and that will override the automatic regen braking. The problem with that temporary fix is that when I know it's going to happen I'm prepared but when the times it happens randomly I might as well just never use adaptive cruise control or autopilot.

I have a 1 month old Tesla Model 3 that when i use the cruise control every time i go past a truck on a 2 lane highway, my car will initiate emergency breaking. This has caused cars to almost rear end me. I took the car to Tesla to be serviced, and the issue didn't get any better. I have videos of this happening if you need them

When driving with Traffic Aware Cruise Control or Autopilot enabled, dangerous automatic braking occurs when the car senses conditions that do not warrant automatic braking. This unnecessary automatic braking occurs randomly when encountering overhead roadway signs, parked vehicles safely on the shoulder, oncoming vehicles fully in their lane on 2 lane highways, cross traffic that is far enough ahead of the vehicle that it is not a threat, and for no obvious reason at all. These automatic braking events are violent and slam on the brakes when they occur and create a danger from rear end collisions from other drivers since they are unexpected and occur for no obvious reason. Tesla service states that the Traffic Aware Cruise Control and Autopilot systems are Beta systems and thus require driver monitoring to maintain control of the car when using the systems and nothing can be done until improved software is developed and implemented. Driver intervention for unexpected violent braking is difficult because the events are unexpected and create driver shock which slows a reaction to slam on the accelerator pedal to stop the inadvertent automatic panic braking. In my vehicle, I find that the Traffic Aware Cruise Control and Autopilot systems are essentially unusable as they pose too great a risk of a rear end collision.