Tesla owners report dozens of instances of ‘phantom braking’

San Francisco: Tesla vehicles are inexplicably slamming on their brakes for no reason, frightening owners and eliciting over 100 complaints to the federal government in the last three months alone, media reports say.

It has been a persistent issue for the automaker.

Last October, CEO Elon Musk on Twitter said that the company was forced to “roll back” version 10.3 of its Full Self-Driving beta software because of issues with forward collision warnings and phantom braking, reports The Verge.

But since then, the number of complaints about Tesla’s braking has spiked.

According to The Washington Post’s analysis, reports from Tesla owners about phantom braking to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) rose to 107 complaints in the past three months, compared with only 34 in the preceding 22 months.

“Using adaptive cruise control with autopilot steering (as well as without Autosteer), multiple episodes of severe aphantom breaking (sic)’ where the car slams on the breaks (sic) for no apparent reason,” a Model Y owner from Sterling, Ill., wrote in a November 16 complaint.

“No other cars around. Flat, clear open freeway,” the owner added.

The problem may be traced to the controversial decision last year to remove radar sensors from new Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.

The decision came after Musk publicly expressed a desire to rely on cameras to power the company’s advanced driver assistance system.

Tesla has drawn intense scrutiny from safety advocates and regulators for its willingness to allow its customers to test what is essentially an unfinished version of a product that Musk has long promised will lead to fully autonomous vehicles on the road.

Earlier this week, the company was forced to issue a software update to remove an FSD feature that allows cars to perform a “rolling stop”, a maneuver in which the vehicle moves slowly through a stop sign without coming to a full stop.