NHTSA complaint #11470337

Owner complaint summary

This concerns the "Phantom Braking" problem occurring to many Tesla owners recently. I took delivery of my new Tesla model 3 on May 3, 2022. I was very cautious about enabling the advanced features of the car such as Autopilot, and I did not experience the Phantom Braking (PB) problems that some of my friends described with their Tesla. I bought the Full Self-Driving (FSD) package but I have not asked for it to be enabled. Then I left my house on June 9th for a 12 day, 2500 mile round trip to Seattle and back. During the trip I cautiously began to use autopilot functions, and found them to be very useful, particularly the TACC cruise control feature. As the trip progressed, I began to use the TACC more and more because I was beginning to conclude it might be safer than my own driving in specific situations). On the 6th day I began to return home and increased my use of both autopilot functions (TACC and auto-steer). The further I drove, the more certain I became what was happening, but not why. But first you have to understand the constraints. TACC controls the accelerator and the brake pedal and therefore also controls the regenerative braking capability. The other half of autopilot is the auto-steering capability, which controls only the steering wheel. But the important part is -- you can operate the car with only TACC engaged but you can't engage auto-steer unless you activate TACC first, or at the same time. During my trip I experienced some degree of PB something like 25 times. The 3-5 worst were similar to stepping on the brake pedal firmly. On one occasion I had no traffic near me so I didn't immediately override the stop, to see what it would do. The car continued to rapidly brake from about 75 mph down to about 25 when I stepped on the accelerator to break the PB episode. My conclusions -- PB is a TACC problem. Auto-steer does not change the behavior and PB doesn't happen unless TACC is engaged.