What 434 owners told NHTSA about the 2020 Tesla Model 3 Bev

Hard Phantom braking incident when using cruise control with no vehicles ahead or next to me.

NHTSA ODI 11526069

When using “Auto Pilot” (Teslas adaptive cruise control) the vehicle experiences violent phantom braking. The system slams on the brakes in some cases going from 65 to 20 MPH almost instantly. This happens on a fairly regular basis and is a massive safety issue. We have nearly been rear ended on several occasions.

NHTSA ODI 11524750

When using cruise control from Las Vegas to Reno Nevada and also going back the car will brake extremely hard over 80 times one way which almost caused alone 4 major accidents with stopping abruptly for no reason causing the cars behind you to almost rear end you. This is tremendously dangerous and it s happening so often you can even use the cruise control. This does happen on other trips as well such as Las Vegas to Phoenix. When it slams the brakes randomly all your items get thrown to the front as well. This needs fixed before someone gets killed

NHTSA ODI 11524500

I was driving on a highway using the adaptive cruise control. Several times the car braked for no reason at all. There were no cars in front of us, it was phantom breaking for no apparent reason. It was a long road trip of 12 hours over 2 days and I stopped using cruise control when anyone is behind me out of fear of causing an accident. The issue happened at least 15 times over the 2 days. It is a safety issue in my opinion, as other cars following you may rear end you when the car brakes hard for no reason. I've owned the car for a while, and it seems to have gotten much worse than it was before. There are no warnings before it does the phantom breaking. I have not had it inspected by anyone else. I believe it is a software issue that needs to be fixed by Tesla, as there are no error messages, and all my cameras appear to be functional.

NHTSA ODI 11520538

While driving in FSD, autosteer, traffic aware cruise control, and with all turned off, I have experienced 5-10 episodes of “phantom braking” on the highway at high speeds over the past 48 hours. I have driven in 4 states total so far; in sunny, cloudy, straight road ahead conditions, sometimes with cars around and sometimes on totally empty stretches of road. The first episode took my car from 80mph to 60mph extremely suddenly, with no warning, lurching me and the things in my car forward. I was shocked as I was unfamiliar with this issue. Luckily the car behind me at the time was about 1/8 mile away. However, this could have very easily caused someone to rear end me. This repeated over and over all day yesterday, sometimes the braking less severe than others. Now if using cruise control I need to hold my foot over the accelerator instead of the brake, which feels wrong and also unsafe, but it’s terrifying and I disengage cruise control if anyone gets too close behind me to be safe.

NHTSA ODI 11519720

Driving from Reno to Las Vegas on hwy 95. I was using the cruise control and the car repeatedly slammed on the breaks when there was nothing on the road to cause it. Breaking was applied dropping the speed from 5 miles an hour up to 35 miles per hour. The excessive breaking could have caused a crash if a semi was behind me. Every time it happened I noticed a phantom object showing up on the very limit of the traffic display screen. If there was any other vehicle picked up by the sensors the cruise control never malfunctioned. It braked at least 10 times during the trip. I talked to 10 other Tesla drivers and 9 told me they were having the same issue. The one driver that did not never used his cruise control.

NHTSA ODI 11519531

April 10 & 11. Drive from Minneapolis to Washington D.C. Several phantom braking incidents—two severe. If someone would have been behind me on the Ohio Turnpike, there would have been a major crash. This issue first cropped up on my vehicle in late fall of 2020. WHAT CAN BE DONE TO FORCE TESLA (really MUSK) to install radar sensors or LiDAR? Is there a class action lawsuit that has been started? I have a car I cannot trust to use cruise control. I do not use, or ever want, lane assist or FSD. I just want a reliable and SAFE cruise control system. I get nowhere with Tesla on this. At this point, Tesla should buy back my car—and likely thousands of others or retrofit. I know that others have been injured and no doubt someone is going to get killed…something must be done…this is major SAFETY issue. Thanks.

NHTSA ODI 11516569

I was on a 3000 mile road trip over multiple interstates (including I-35, I-90, and I-80), and while the adaptive cruise control was engaged, the car would abruptly and aggressively brake when no other cars or obstacles were in the area. This would often be a 30mph deceleration before I could disengage cruise control and take over. This happened repeatedly, in multiple states, and in different weather conditions. At times, it was happening every 10 minutes. The system would sometimes, but not usually, make an alarm noise. This problem has become noticeably worse in later software updates. No accidents occurred because I would not use cruise control if other cars were in the area, and I eventually stopped using it altogether due to how frequently it was braking.

NHTSA ODI 11516416

Vehicle suddenly braked while traveling 70mph on freeway with traffic aware cruise control engaged. This incident happened 3 times during the same 40 mile trip. No other vehicles were within 50 feet of the vehicle in either direction. A rear end collision could have happened if another vehicle were behind me. No warning sounds occurred or warning indication on the computer screen. I purchased this vehicle used from Tesla 3 days ago. Tesla service has not been notified of issue.

NHTSA ODI 11515248

Since recent software update The adaptive cruise control now randomly applies the brakes while driving on a straight road with no obstacles or vehicles in front. Today driving i80 through navada This happen about 5 times within a few minutes of engaging cruise control. This is a new issue I’d not seen until now. I’d had maybe 2 or 3 incidences of phantom Braking over the last couple of years. Today I had it happen multiple times through the day.

NHTSA ODI 11513894

Since recently updating the software I now get a lot of phantom braking when employing adaptive cruise control. This hardly happened in the past. Recently it’s happening every time I engage cruise control Today we drove from San Francisco to Utah on the i80 The car randomly braked 5 times Each time the road was flat, straight with no traffic in front or obstacles or road cones. After engaging cruise control the car would randomly brake aggressively with a few minutes. I would turn off cruise control then try again a few minutes later. The same throng would happen Speeds ranged from 65-75 mph

NHTSA ODI 11513895

Emergency braking is activated on highway when no obstacle is visible on clear sunny days. This has occurred over the last year but has become more frequent over time.

NHTSA ODI 11513130

I get "phantom braking" on average about every 2-3 hours of highway driving with cruise control enabled. All of a sudden without any road obstructions or vehicles ahead, the car will suddenly break hard even at highway speeds. Sometimes it happens when I approach an underpass or get to a section where the pavement is darker than before.

NHTSA ODI 11509315

The ADAS system for the car includes automatic steering, which only works at the speed limit detected or less. The car incorrectly sets the speed limit in many instances as much as 30 mph under the limit. It isn’t safe to drive the car at such a different speed than the rest of traffic. Tesla claims it relies on map data and can read speed limit signs. Most rural roads have no posted limit, so they default to 55 mph. Even in the presence of a posted speed limit, the car defaults to their bad map data within seconds of passing such a sign. Tesla has no mechanism for reporting this bad data to get it corrected. This has been ongoing for more than a year.

NHTSA ODI 11507995

My car was running in auto-steering mode. Last year it did phanthom breaking 3 times in freeway ( Arizona I-10 from casa Grande to tempe direction). Same happened on 2/14/22, it did phantom breaking for no reason. Speed dropped from 80MPH to 55mph. Luckily no one was ahead or behind me. This is high risk for drivers behind me.

NHTSA ODI 11507683

Driving on Interstate 295 (it is unclear what the official direction North, south, west). You are going south toward Philadelphia. Some signs say north but in reality it is only for a mile or two then the road bends due south. Every time I travel on this road and just before the Scuddersfall bridge, the car brakes to 30 MPH and it does it again on the other side of the bridge (the same direction). I have reported this many times on Tesla's "bug report" and for the 2 years + nothing has been done to correct the problem. The car doesn't have a problem in the opposite direction. I usually take it off the autopilot at this location to prevent the braking.

NHTSA ODI 11504953

Using Autopilot on an empty highway at appx 65mph, the auto pilot system began to brake aggressively without any obstacles in front of me. As it approached 40 or 30 mph, I pressed on the brake to cancel the autopilot before I was hit from behind. Scary.

NHTSA ODI 11504757

On a recent trip, while using the adaptive cruise control on a divided, straight, flat four lane highway, the vehicle would randomly slam on the brakes for absolutly no reason, endangering us and other vehicles behind us, who were not expecting a random slam of the brakes. Driving conditions were ideal - sunny, excellent visibility and very low traffic. There were no oncoming or road-crossing vehicles and no vehicles in front of us on the divided highway to trigger the reaction. This happened 14 times over about 200 miles of driving on our return trip home and over 30 times on the trip out. On the outbound trip, I was using it on both the divided highway and sections where there was only one lane in each direction, so decided to just use the cruise control when there was a divided highway. This is a recent phenomenon, as cruise control has never done that before. The semi-autonomous mode does it all the time as well, so we stopped using it for fear of causing an accident.

NHTSA ODI 11504325

This is the first and only time this has occurred as of today, 1/1/23. Around 11:45am EST, I was driving down a side street with no traffic coming towards me, behind me, or in front of me (and with no objects in the road). Suddenly, my brakes were aggressively applied and a warning came up on my screen saying it was the Automatic Emergency Braking that had been applied. It then released a few seconds after. I do not have the Autopilot option on my car, and I did not have any type of cruise control engaged at the time. If this had occurred in traffic for no reason it easily could have caused an accident.

NHTSA ODI 11499675

This vehicle has the phantom braking issue whether you are using adaptive cruise or autopilot, and has happened at least 15 times in the past two years. Because of the sudden braking, we almost had a collision with a semi-truck coming up behind us on I-5 heading south the last time and the driver thought I was brake-checking him, making him very angry and giving obscene gestures at us for it. We reported it to the Tesla service center, and they basically said it happens, and they disclosed it in the operator manual. That is unacceptable. This is very dangerous, and lives could be lost in the circumstance where someone is following close behind. Tesla basically is saying it can happen and there is no fix which absolutely unacceptable and this car is dangerous to drive.

NHTSA ODI 11498978

While using the autopilot function car unexpectedly brakes almost to a stop for no apparent reason. This happened in different driving conditions, day, night, other cars around and on empty roadways, both divided and connected two and four lane freeway and side highways. Brakes so hard that objects fly off the seat and cars traveling behind my vehicle have had to break themselves and or change lanes.

NHTSA ODI 11498743

Was driving Tela on 237 Clavaras Blvd heading towads 880 South just before Abott ave in Mlipitas town California Tesla Model 3 acelrated suddenly hitting the car in fronts, emegency automatic braking did not kick n. Earlier it had autopilot set not sure if it tured off. We were surirsed, my wife was driving and I was i passenger seat none of the safety measure worked in the Tesla. My car is totaled.

NHTSA ODI 11498596

Phantom braking: While in cruise or autopilot mode, it suddenly brakes on freeway without any obstacles observed.

NHTSA ODI 11498445

The contact owns a 2020 Tesla Model 3. The contact stated that while driving at an undisclosed speed on the highway, the vehicle was experiencing phantom braking. The contact stated that the failure reoccurred while driving at various speeds with the cruise control or while using the autonomous self-driving feature. The contact stated that the battery warning light was illuminated. The vehicle was not taken to an independent mechanic or local dealer to be diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was not made aware of the failure. The failure mileage was unknown.

NHTSA ODI 11496395

The contact owns a 2020 Tesla Model 3. The contact stated that while utilizing the ADAS features including the Adaptive Cruise Control, the vehicle independently applied the brakes while driving at highway speeds. No warning lights were illuminated. The vehicle was not diagnosed. The vehicle was not repaired. The dealer nor the manufacturer was notified of the failure. The failure mileage was approximately 25,000.

NHTSA ODI 11495470