2023 Tesla Model Y Complaint Log

While the cruise control was engaged and traveling on a two lane road, the adaptive cruise control kicked in when it sensed a bicycle on the side of the road. There was an immediate hard braking applied by the car. Had there been a vehicle behind us we would have been rear ended. A few days later under very similar circumstances on a two lane road the brakes were applied by the vehicle. There were no other cars in sight - we were the only ones on the road. The only logical conclusion is the adaptive cruise control thought that the skid marks that were on the road was an obstacle that it braked for. Again, if there had been a vehicle behind us there would have been a collision. We contacted Tesla service in Reno, Nv. , advising of the above and requesting the adaptive cruise be disabled. We were informed they could not do that and if it happens again take note of time of event and they would review the cameras to see what is triggering the phantom braking. We want it disabled - not waiting for the next incident to occur!

My Tesla Model Y is experiencing phantom braking, due presumably to a faulty collission avoidance safety system. With cruise control enabled (not autopilot with lane keeping, only cruise control by depressing the stalk once vs. twice for lane keep) the car will phantom brake, where it slams on the brakes thinking their is a vehicle in its path when there is no vehicle in the front lane. This has happened to us on a clear toll road in Southern California on Hwy 73, both on June 7th, 2023 and in April/May 2023, where the Tesla slams on its brakes, decelerating us from 65mph to 38mph and below (at which point I slammed the accelerator pedal to avoid a rear end collission), with vehicles directly behind us, almost causing a dangerous accident. This happened with my three children in the back seat. We have experiencing this phantom braking twice in the last 2 months. In all cases the vehicle was well centered in the lane and there was no vehicle in the lane ahead of us, nor did we recently change lanes. I created a service ticket with Tesla, including bringing it into the service center at Lake Forest, CA, as scheduled, and they explained in person that there is nothing they can do, that they are unable to retrieve any video footage from the vehicle, and sent us away without even looking at the vehicle, replacing any hardware, hardware testing, or test driving it for themselves. We are at a complete loss of what to do with this vehicle that is only 6 months old. The vehicle has no warning lights or error messages prior to any of these failures. I feel that this vehicle is unsafe for my family to drive and Tesla is not putting forth reasonable effort to fix the vehicle.

We upgraded our auto pilot to the advanced auto pilot system and when driving from Denver to Santa Fe the Tesla would brake abruptly without notice or reason. The braking reduced speed by at least 30-40 mph in a matter of a second or two. This occurred 6 times during this drive. The concern is if this happens when other cars are driving behind our car, it will cause a collision.

Sudden unexplained Phantom Braking. Travelling on The Chisholm Trail Parkway tool road and while approaching an underpass the car suddenly applied brakes with no cars near me in front or to my sides. Fortunately there were no vehicles behind me. This similar situation also happened to me in my 2022 Model 3, so it is apparent that Tesla has not been able to resolve this long standing potentially serious traffic safety hazard.

I experience multiple and frequent phantom braking events when using the Active Cruise Control. This continues to occur every time I use cruise control, and occurs even on straight empty roads on bright sunny or overcast days, and creates a serious safety issue for any vehicles that are following. The deceleration is rapid because of the regenerative braking capabilities of the vehicle. There are no warnings lamps or indications associated with these random braking events. The vehicle has not been inspected by the manufacturer, but my research shows this is a common defect reported by many Tesla owners. Tesla should, at a minimum, provide a software option to deactivate Active Cruise Control and make it a non-traffic aware system until such time as a bug proof system can be produced.

Vehicle completely lost the ability to steer. Warning message appeared that said power steering assist had been reduced. In fact, the steering was "locked" and a tremendous amount of force was required to simply steer the vehicle slightly to the side of the road. I could have been killed if this had happened on anything but a very straight low speed section of road. The vehicle was taken away on a flat bed truck to Tesla.

While using Tesla's Adaptive Cruise Control on the highway, the car's Automatic Emergency Braking system applied brakes and decelerated rapidly with no obstacle on the road, as if an immanent crash was about to happen. The risk was greatest when it happened with a car traveling behind us and didn't anticipate my car braking since there was no reason to do so. My wife and I felt like we could be rear-ended. This happened several times over many days traveling across the country. On June 5th, at about 8:30 AM Mountain Time, I called Tesla Service. I called to learn if this could be fixed. I spoke with the front line employee, and than escalated my call and spoke to the supervisor. Both said the car was acting as intended, that this happens with all versions of auto pilot, and there was no way to fix it. Even when I turn off the Automatic Emergency Breaking feature, phantom braking still occurs. This call was recorded by Tesla, and they have the record. On long drives, it really helps to use this technology, even though using it puts us at risk. I support filing a claim at Tesla.com/legal or joining class action suit.

While driving highway speeds in autopilot (cruise control) I experience sudden heavy breading for no reason. No cars around on a flat road. Once while in front of another car which scared me enough not to use it anymore.

This has been a consistent on-going issue with my brand new 2023 Tesla Model Y. While using Autopilots Traffic-Aware Cruise Control and the Autosteer feature the car will without warning begin braking. Each time is different in regards to severity of the breaking but it is typically like letting off the accelerator pedal which in a Tesla is comparable to significant breaking. Have taken two highway road trips and on both trips, the phantom breaking has occurred multiple times. Some of the incidents the car would go from 75MPH to 45MPH in a matter of seconds. From research done, this "Phantom Breaking" is a serious issue that Tesla says is due to software issues and not hardware issues. Our safety was put at risk because the person behind us might not be paying attention when cruising on open road, during daylight, etc and could rear-end our car. There have been no predictors or weather conditions that cause the braking. Usually, for us, has happened on sunny days on multi-lane highways with not a lot of traffic. Have taken car to dealer and they state it is a software issue. No warning signs that the breaking would happen and no objects or cars show up on the screen when it happens.

My 2023 Tesla model y occasionally applies phantom braking when ADAS is on. The car brakes very abruptly therefore it may cause rear end collision.

Phantom braking at highway speed. Maybe a shadow or line on the road confuses the system and slams on brakes. Is more common if the cruise is engaged. Happens every day. My commute is about 30 miles happens once or twice every drive. Increases risk of being rear ended. The car is not FSD enabled.

Over the past few weeks, I have been experiencing significant problems with the steering wheel of my car. Upon starting the vehicle, the steering wheel frequently locks or becomes exceedingly stiff, requiring significant physical effort to turn. Rebooting the system, exist then re-entering the car can sometimes fix the issue temporarily to make it drivable for the current trip. This issue not only causes inconvenience but also poses a serious threat to safety as it sometimes persists even while driving. Yesterday it happened again when I drove the car to the dealer for diagnosis and repair. Luckily, it didn't happen when I was on highway, it happened when I existed the highway and stopped at the first traffic light when the steering wheel became extremely difficult to turn again. The car is in the service center since 6/3/23. Operating a vehicle under such conditions is challenging and risky, creating potential hazards for both myself and other road users. This defect could lead to an inability to navigate or respond effectively to traffic situations, thereby greatly increasing the risk of an accident.

Car under adaptive cruise control braked hard after changing lanes from behind another vehicle to an open lane with no traffic. Went quickly from 65 to 20 mph until driver started accelerating manually

Drove thru multiple states in spring and Tesla autopilot would come to abrupt sudden slow down without warning. Bad enough that I would disable the system and drive manually. This problem occurs regardless of one lane or two lane roads. With or without cars in front or behind me. Sunny or cloudy skies. Hot or cold. Straight or windy roads. With autopilot or even adaptive cruise control. I have no faith in the system. At one point it even changed lanes without warning almost hitting another car.

Unable to steer. Received the power steering error mentioned in reports, I don’t remember the error code. Happened in my driveway, so no issues with respect to time or place. Rebooted the car and the error went away, but still scheduled service due to error code. It resulted in bringing the car to a service center where the steering rack was replaced.

My car's forward collision warning system, gave another false warning: 1. May 31, 2023 at 9:04am 2. While driving on Rte. 50 at Fairfax, VA 3. I had more then enough safe distance between my car and the car in front of me The forward collision system provided sound, and visual alarms for the unwarranted situation that I described above. This cause a great deal of confusion, shock and distracted me from the road.

Drove my Tesla on a road trip for the first time and while driving the vehicle would slam on the brakes with no vehicle object or person in front of the vehicle. Very dangerous due to driving 70mph and vehicle tried to come to stop with vehicles behind me. This happened at least 3 times while in adaptive cruise control.

The driver floor mat that goes up on the foot rest keeps coming off and I fear it will start interfering with the brake pedal. I have contacted Tesla and they refuse to fix the issue as they say there is no way to repair it.

Problem: unintended acceleration On 05/30/23, the Tesla Model Y was parked in a parking spot, southbound facing a building. The car suddenly began to drive forward on its own and struck the curb, an AC unit, and a business office wall. No injuries, but the driver and people in the building (a dental clinic) panicked.

My new model y has caused numbness and tingling in both myself and passengers of my car while driving. Tesla has stated nothing is wrong with the car. It injures me every time i drive it. they forced me to take the car back and return my model y loaner car. The loaner vehicle caused no issues at all.

The car drops the speed suddenly when the car is in autopilot mode .I have noticed this issues on interstate so far . I-68,I-90,I-76,I-80. It happened 6-8 times so far since i bought the car (3/7/2023 ). This is a dangerous situation and high risk of collision from the rear . I have informed Tela service team and i have been acknowledged that there is no solution at this point but they were working on the software updates . I kindly request NHTSA to ask Tesla to recall the car until the issue gets fixed . I'm really worried .

About 24 hours after the car was delivered I performed the first routine OTA software update. Upon putting the car into drive for the first time after finishing the software update, the power steering failed with a "power steering reduced" warning before the car could move. The steering wheel would not move without great effort. A power cycle cleared the issue. After remotely viewing the vehicle logs, Tesla service inspected the car about two weeks later at a service center. The service center determined the issue was resolved by a firmware update. The issue has not come back since the initial occurrence. The service center was aware of the problem and was initially prepared to replace the steering rack.

At 10 AM on a sunny day on Sunday driving on a highway at ~68 MPH on autopilot, car suddenly applied the breaks causing it to stop but I applied accelerator to prevent rear end accident. Accident avoided because road didn’t have much traffic.

Driving directly north on SR281, about an hour before sunset. Perfectly clear dry sunny day. No traffic for at least 500ft in front of me. A car immediately behind me (about 2 car lengths).. The sun was at the roughly 10 o-clock position (Horizontal plane, 12 o'clock being directly forward/North), and at about 10 o'clock vertically (12 o'clock being directly up, West at 9 o'clock, East at 3 o'clock, centered on my position). Full Self Driving beta visualization was enabled. The vehicle was not in AutoSteer or Full Self Driving mode - but it was in Traffic-Aware Cruise Control mode. My car braked hard and suddenly, causing the car behind me to brake. On the FSD display, a red vehicle was rendered on top of my location (driver position of this "ghost" vehicle would have been ~2 feet in front of where I was sitting). This phantom car appears to have been caused by lens flare from the sun. This sequence of events repeated itself four or five times over the next few minutes, with the ghost car appearing, the car trying to brake, and then disappearing. My safety was put at risk due to hard and unexpected braking under conditions where there was no reasonable expectation that I would need to perform an emergency stop. The risk was from the vehicle behind me having to unexpectedly stop; without an attentive drive this would have caused a collision. The vehicle has not been examined by any dealer or service center, and appears to be a software problem that occurs under specific lighting conditions.

One of the seat-belt in the rear seat stopped clicking into the buckle and as a result the seat belt was unusable. The seat-belt latch plate would slide into the buckle, but wouldn't click and stay in there. Since this happened on a long road trip, it put one of the passenger at risk all through the road trip as they could not use the seat belt during the trip back home. Tesla technician is expected to come in next few days to inspect it and fix the seat buckle.

Repetitive phantom braking. Happens quite often. Three time today on the intestate. I had cruise control set at 71mph and without any vehicle or obstacles in the area the car hard breaked from 71 down to 40. I have it on video.

I have owned my new Tesla for about a month and it has had a recent software update. Today, I had the cruise control set to 75mph on the freeway and the car very suddenly reset the speed to 50 mph for no apparent reason, making the car rapidly and suddenly slow down. I figured this was just a fluke and later tried to use the cruise control again. This time the cruise control was set to 75 mph on the freeway and the car very suddenly reset the speed to 30 mph for no apparent reason, the car very suddenly hard braked on the freeway. I had to swerve in the other lane so the car behind me did not rear end me. Luckily I did not get into an accident but it was close. This is very dangerous and unacceptable to car safety. I have never experienced anything like this in my life. I have scheduled an appointment to have my new Tesla looked at but I want to notify the government about a serious safety issue with the Model Y 2023 Tesla.

We have had our car for under 3 months and have had repeated episodes (easily 2 to 3 dozen) of extremely rapid braking when the car is in cruise control on the open interstate road when there are no cars ahead of us or any other obstacles that might have triggered the camera sensor. Tried turning off the forward collision avoidance option and the events still happen. Have kept the windshield over the front camera areas clean. It has happened typically during sunny days as we have not usually used the cruise control in the rain. When these events happen there is typical rapid slowing of the vehicle by 20-30 mph within a few seconds. If a car was following close behind us, there would be a high chance of collision. There have been no warning messages or any signs that the vehicle is otherwise malfunctioning. When we contacted Tesla technical assistance, they emailed us a copy of the part of the car manual that says the feature might not function in bad weather, if the camera is not clean, in construction zones, etc. none of which describe the circumstances of when this malfunction happens in the car in broad daylight. They also said whenever it happens to send a bug report which the technicians will look at. They also said it might be fixed with the next update, which of course, it wasn't. Finally, in the same batch of emails, they sent email that said we could report our issue to NHTSA which without any other resolution method to the problem, is why I am reporting it here. It seems as if there are many Tesla owners who are reporting this problem online. It may have been less of a problem before Tesla removed the radar feature in the last year and depended solely on their front cameras to make automatic braking decisions for the car. Whatever is happening, it isn't working and makes driving with cruise control scary and dangerous. Thank you for listening. Please help.

I have my car serviced 4(four) times, most recently on May 26, 2023 at Tesla Sterling, VA Service Center. While traveling with family on May 27, 2023, we had three false warning incidents, each caused serious confusion and distress: 1. On May 27, at 12:47pm on Alder Woods Dr. at Fairfax VA - my car issued a false warning for a legally parked car on the street. 2. On May 27, at 6:51pm on I-495South - my car issued another false alarm for a slow downed traffic, for the car travelling in front of me - going well below the speed limit, with a lot of space between two cars. 3. On May 27, at 6:53pm on I-495South - my car issued a third false alarm for the same slow downed traffic, and for the same car as I described above - going well below speed limit, with a lot of space between two cars. Tesla's Forward Collision System warnings can't be turned off, the false alarms as I described above cause a lot of confusion. I need to look at the screen to study what was going on, the false warnings system distracts me, which may cause other serious injuries or problems. Also, the forward collision system is connected to Tesla insurance, I am paying 2 times more than what I started to pay, due to false warnings, when I purchased the car 6 months ago, for no good reason.

While driving on a relatively straight, 2-lane highway with cruise control set and no autopilot, the car started to brake suddenly and aggressively. This caused the car behind me to almost rear end my car. Luckily I was quick enough to press the accelerator to avoid the accident. This same sudden braking happened a total of 4 times within a 200 mile trip, one of which almost caused an accident.

I was pulling up to a ticket machine in a parking garage. I had my foot on the accelerator and was using regenerative braking and was essentially stopped. I was short a few inches from the button to get the ticket so applied almost no pressure to the accelerator – more like a tap so I could go forward a few inches. The car went into full acceleration mode, broke through the ticket machine barrier and kept accelerating. As soon as I sensed going forward too fast, I took my foot off the accelerator and put it onto the brake. I did not feel any response from the brake. With my foot. I managed to steer away from a wall in front of the car but hit a parked car. The impact pushed that car into a second car and then that car pushed into a third car and the third car pushed into a fourth car. My car was totaled as well as three others. Fortunately, the impacted vehicles were unoccupied and there were no pedestrians. No warning beeps or emergency braking occurred. One of my passengers had minor injuries (3 fractured ribs). A police report was filed. Previously (3 or 4 weeks prior to crash) I had an incident in an above ground parking lot. I had pulled into a parking space, backed up to straighten out then was pulling forward towards the curb. I took my foot off the accelerator, but the car kept going very slowly instead of regeneratively braking as it had done before. I put my foot on the brake. It was unresponsive. I kept pressing and finally it engaged, and I was able to stop the car about five feet over the curb and into the grass.

I was traveling on the 8 freeway in Az going around 80 passing a tractor trailer. I had the cruise control on. Then the car breaks for no reason dropping me to 50 mph. It happened maybe 3 other times on that trip. Maybe 10 times since I purchased the car 5 months ago

This incident took place on May 26, 2023 at 3:43pm on Rt 608 (West Ox Rd) at Fairfax, VA. I had another false alarm warning for a car traveling in front of me with below the speed limit and having more than plenty space between us. My car put a false warning with extreme sounds and visuals, as a result I had to take off my eyes from the road and look at the screen to see what may be going on. I was distracted due to this warning, and I had to 'hard brake' as a result. Tesla's false forward collision warning almost caused an accident as a result. Both false warning and the follow up is captured in the screenshot that I share. I had my car at Tesla Service Center at 9am same day on the same day (May 26, 2023) for fixing Forward Collision System malfunctions. The service told me that there is no fix, they are aware of the problems, but there is no fix.

I had an error message that power steering was not available and I was unable to steer.

Car was in autopilot multiple times and sharply applied brakes with nothing in front or obstacles. This is dangerous and almost caused an accident.

False forward collision took place on May 24, 2023 at 6:18pm on Rt. 50 Arlington, VA in the following form: I was driving on my way home, while driving around 35mph (limit is 45mph), a car in front of was taking the left lane dedicated to turn left, which slowed down. I was going slow (35mph) and there was more than enough space between me and the car in front of me. At this point Tesla's forward collision gave me another false warning.

Service pushed a software update intended to fix a parking assist issue, and after that the power steering failed with a "steering assist reduced" message. I did a full power off and waited a few minutes, and since then it has worked fine. Also of note I mentioned this in my service ticket and they didn't respond at all. I attached a screenshot of the conversation from the Tesla app.

Harness is fraying from normal use; car seat is unsafe to use. Contacted company and they refused to replace it.

Location: car wash tunnel Symptom: ghost braking/shifting While in car wash mode and neutral, Tesla shifted inexplicably from neutral to park, causing Tesla to be rear-ended by the car behind in the car wash tunnel. My passengers and I could have been injured. Tesla engineers completed a technical review of the safety incident but refused to provide the full report instead directed me to consult lawyers. On the day of the service appointment, they did not even inspect my vehicle but instead told me to request vehicle data online. It turned out to be a waste of time to download vehicle recorded data that only Tesla engineers understand. The service invoice says, “Verified proper operation of the vehicle.” That is false. They did not even admit my car into the service entrance. This crash is preventable, but Tesla is not taking this defect seriously and refuses to share the full report of technical review.

Experienced dangerous situation while using Speed Control, aka: Cruise Control, with NO vehicles ahead of mine, a totally empty road in New Mexico on I-25, the Tesla Model Y with 2,000 miles on it suddenly braked, dropping the speed over 15mph, then suddenly accelerated, I read this is a known problem and is known as Phantom Braking. It happened several times during the trip, once with a vehicle behind me creating a VERY dangerous situation. I have stopped using this feature until Tesla offers a proven fix for the issue.

On a trip to Prescott, AZ and back to Los Angeles, I encountered the following problem about 5 separate times. While driving at freeway speeds (70-80mph), the car suddenly and violently, without warning, applied the brakes vary hard (with no input from me). This threw me forward while the car continued to decelerate. In one instance, there was a class C motorhome traveling behind me fairly closely as if to pass. This was on a 2-lane road in the Arizona “countryside.” It was between 6:20am and 7:15am on Saturday, May 13th. The motorhome following me had to make a split-second decision to either crash into the rear of my car, or swing out left into the oncoming lane. He chose the latter. Fortunately, there was no oncoming traffic or it surely would have been a fatal, head-on accident between the motorhome and a car traveling in the opposite direction in the oncoming lane. The motorhome then continued to pass me and no accident resulted. In the other 4 times that the brakes suddenly applied, there was no one close enough behind me where they could not have slowed down to avoid an accident. Obviously, this was very disturbing to me. I finally realized that the Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) feature was set to “on” (by default). I then turned it off. No further incidents occurred after this. At this point, I will not travel on a busy freeway with the AEB feature activated……it is simply too dangerous. If this issue happens on a busy freeway, the likelihood of someone crashing into the rear of my car is fairly high.

False forward collision warning incident took place on May 20, 2023 at 9:25pm on Alder Woods Dr. Fairfax, VA. The forward collision system mistake a legally parked on the street car for a moving car, and produced a false/phantom warning.

This incident took place on May 20, 2023 at Judicial Dr, Fairfax VA at 1:12pm. I was driving with my family, I changed from left lane to the right lane and the forward collision warning went off for no good reason: I didn't have any cars in front of me, or at my right hand side. Forward collision warning is producing false/phantom warnings.

Vehicle at interstate speeds would periodically “phantom brake” on I-90 one a clear day with no other cars around. Experienced about 10 different phantom brake incidents betweeen Sioux Falls and rapid city

Power conversion unit failed with 400 miles on the car. It is being repaired now. The first replacement also failed and they are in the process of trying a second replacement. Car has now been out of service for more than a week.

When driving between Elgin, OK and Oklahoma City, OK phantom breaking occurs sometimes two to four times. It isn’t safe driving 75 MPH and the car suddenly brakes for no reason. I reported the issue to the Tesla service center in Oklahoma City, OK and they acknowledged it is an issue, but said there is not a repair for the issue. They said it is a software/mapping issue that will hopefully be resolved in the future.

Braking. Yes, can be inspected upon request. Phantom braking for no apparent reason occurred at least 12 times in each direction on a long-distance trip on 2- and 4-lane roads on May 15 & 17 and also a trip in April, both in Autopilot and TACC modes, with nothing but the open road ahead, very little traffic, although a couple times when nearing the top of a hill. Driving at 70 mph on 2-lane roads and 80 mph on 4-lane roads. Concern of being rear-ended if passing a vehicle so wait long time to return to driving lane. Fortunately in standard driving no one was following closely to cause concern. One time when I was passing a semi, when I was almost even with the cab. No contact with dealer or service center as they are 240 miles away from my home or inspection by others. Unknown if there were on-screen messages due to watching the road instead.

Wipers keep turning on randomly. It is a safety hazard as you do not expect wipers to turn on when no rain or water. Asked tesla dealer and they said it is a system wide issue and they have no solution.

Error message “power braking assist reduced” displayed on the vehicle and the vehicles brake gave out. Meaning I was unable to utilize the brakes for slowing down the vehicle. The message disappeared after parking (and powering down) the vehicle for a bit. Had the same issue in a few days. Tesla is now replacing the entire brake pad assembly due to a brake sensor failure.

Within two weeks of taking delivery of the car, the power steering locked up when I was driving on the highway. Luckily I was on the right lane and was able to pull over. Once I got out, locked the car and came back in, it started working. It happened twice after that on my drive home from Wilmington NC. I had to take it to Tesla and they replaced the steering rack to fix this but this seems to be a common problem.