Tesla phantom braking

The Washington Post has discovered that complaints about the automatic braking issue in Tesla electric vehicles are accelerating, with cars suddenly slamming the brakes at high speeds and nearly causing crashes.

According to the Post's analysis, the issue can be traced to Tesla's decision to stop using radar sensors in new vehicles in order to move a purely camera-based system known as Tesla Vision, and to an update to its Full-Self Driving beta programme.

The carmaker had to recall the update in October over false positives to its automatic emergency-braking system, acknowledging that these were triggered by the software update.

On February 16, 2021, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced an investigation into Tesla's sudden braking issue, covering an estimated 416,000 vehicles.

Tesla was recently forced to recall and disable a rolling stop function in 53,822 Model S, X, 3 and Y vehicles equipped with FSD.