This car is unsafe. 70K+ purchase price with the inability to use basic cruise control, must-less the 10K FSD purchase that is USELESS. The phantom braking is constant while trying to use the basic cruise control, auto-pilot/FSD. Driving this car makes me a nervous wreck and I am beginning to HATE it and regret my purchase. I am seriously concerned for the safety of myself and other Tesla owners based on the current radar-less autonomous features. the federal safety agency should get involved and force Tesla to address the phantom braking issues before more people are involved in an accident that could be avoided.
2021 Tesla Model Y brakes complaints
Page 3 of 7: complaints 41 to 70 of 181, newest first, as owners wrote them.
There are multiple issues: 1. When trying to back up slowly, or move forward slowly, the car goes automatically on park "to prevent roll". I am intentionally trying to slowly back out of parking, and the car keeps stopping 2. When I try to change lanes, in many cases the car gives a solid "beep" which is equivalent to me almost crashing to another car. But there are no other cars! 3. The car keeps giving forward collision warnings when there is no immediate danger to collide with anything, and in most cases there is nothin in front.
I have been driving long distance 418 miles today from Phoenix, AZ through Las Vegas, NV and north. In my 6 hour journey today my breaks were applied randomly by the computer around 20 or more times on autopilot and on cruise control. It is an extreme safety hazard. I want this on record because this is day one of a cross country trip and in case anything happens. The phantom breaking was so frequent in the last hour I could not drive with autopilot on anymore for fear of a car following me would crash into me at highway speeds above 65mph.
The car brakes at highway speed with no safety hazards in sight. This phantom braking occurs while on cruise control or when using the accelerator pedal. We don't use auto pilot. It is very upsetting and could cause a rear-ending accident.
Tesla Y Unintended Acceleration! Driving my Tesla I got a phone call that did not show up on screen then 1-3 seconds later my car took control of itself and rapidly accelerated. I had NO control with no steering or brakes. Powerless inside an accelerating vehicle! The car then crashed up on the median through a private community light post and into a tree. The car did not stop until the battery was severed and destroyed by the tree. All airbags went off and all glass shattered. There was no prior warning at all. Insurance adjuster deemed the car a complete total; not worth repair.
phantom braking
Autobraking works sometimes and it doesn't many a times consistently. Also, there is a bad smell that keeps coming regularly. Not sure where that is coming from.
I was driving on highway 395 in California on Jan 6th in the afternoon. It was a very clear day. I was driving north on the 2 lane portion of the road north of Adelanto and Kramer junction with cruise control on set to about 72. With no cars in sight in front of me the car hard braked with no cars in front of me. I disabled cruise control and later enabled it again. It happened again. I contacted Tesla and they determined there no hardware issue with the car. I am afraid to use cruise control now in the car.
When driving with Autopilot enabled, the brakes suddenly and sharply come on when I crest a hill. It's very disorienting and could be dangerous if the road is busy. The Autopilot should not be beta tested on consumers and other drivers like this.
Power Braking Assist Reduced error intermittently appears followed by problems braking. I asked Tesla Service Center to repair but they have not done so, nor have they explained what is wrong or how they will fix it.
Phantom braking
I was driving on the freeway, no one was near me (I had full control of the car, it wasn’t on autopilot) and the car’s brakes deadlocked while I was traveling high way speed and then made a sharp left turn which caused me to crash into the center divide and then hydroplane across the entire freeway uncontrollably
11/29/23: vehicle begins to flash warning alerts (e.g., traction control disabled, lane departure warning unavailable), then power steering stopped working, and brakes pulsed violently when used (almost like ABS was active). Software update was available shortly thereafter, assumed this would remedy the situation. 12/5/23: same problems recur (loss of power steering, odd braking behavior, vehicle alerts). Vehicle was towed to Tesla for service. Tesla was able to ID the alerts in the vehicle history but could not identify the root cause. Took the vehicle one extended test drives, but was unable to cause the problems to recur. Tesla is unable to identify any further actions to prevent recurrence.
I had the adaptive cruise control (Autopilot) engaged on I95 and had it set to 60 MPH. Twice between a minute, the Model Y lowered the cruise speed to either 40 MPH and 25 MPH while on the interstate. No obstacles were in front of me to affect the cruise control system.
The car stopped suddenly in the middle of the street. By the grace of G-d, this happened on a quiet street because we decided to take a detour and could have instead been on the freeway! We were with our 3 young children (all in carseats). We could not restart the car after it stopped, and there was no warning it was going to stop. We were not using autopilot.
My Model Y applied the brakes suddenly when it was in Adaptive Cruise Control while I was driving in the interstate at 75 mph. This caused the vehicle to decelerate very abruptly. There was no vehicle in front of me and no obvious debris in the road. This happened several times on a trip from California to Kansas and back. On one occasion , I had just pulled back into the right lane after passing several tractor trailer rigs going 70 mph. I had to tromp on the accelerator to avoid being rear-ended.
When i do a full trip level charge on the Tesla Y at home, I leave the house and start down a hill on the way to work. When I brake, the brakes chatter severely and do not slow the car. I pump the brakes and it happens again, pump the brakes and they start working. This has happened numerous times with a full trip charge. it does not happen with a 70% charge. I feel that this is very dangerous and could easily cause an accident if braking is required. I attempted to contact Tesla, there is no easy way to report this problem. So, this is now in your court. Thanks for looking into this. Thomas Cox
On a long trip on I-70 across Colorado and Kansas I experienced 4 instances of "phantom" braking while using cruise control. I had set the speed at 78 and the car aggressively braked itself as if there was an object in the road when there was no object or reason to brake. In each instance if a car had been following closely they likely would have crashed into me. It also causes panic to the driver when the car aggressively brakes. I am contacting Tesla service today to report this issue and hope that it will be addressed but there has not been any inspection at this point. There was no waring or issues with the car prior to this and it has never happened to me before. It only occurred when using cruise control as I do not have full self driving and was also not using lane assist.
Car took over the control from the driver. Major crash could have happened NO Manufacturer No
I was driving about 65 mph on the highway with my Tesla 2021 Model “Y” in “Traffic-Aware Cruise Control” (not Auto Pilot) when, for no apparent reason, the car decelerated rapidly. This happened four times during a 1 hour trip from Boston to New Hampshire. No accidents occurred due to this incident but it was very concerning. This is not a new problem but it is occurring more often since the software was updated to include “Tesla Vision” instead of radar. I did not report this to Tesla because they are already aware of “Phantom Braking” issues with my model.
I was driving on highway when the car in front of me brake hard. Tesla failed to detect imminent crash and did not provide warning AND emergency braking. The vehicle has been recently serviced in tesla service center. There were no other warning lamps / messages / symptoms of the problem prior to the failure.
We were driving 65 miles per hour using cruise control on a flat road with no cars in front or behind us for hundreds of yards on both sides of a two-way highway. Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, our Tesla applied the brakes hard as though it was trying to avoid hitting an obstacle on the road. Within a second our speed dropped to about 30mph at which point our Tesla released the brake and accelerated back up to 60 miles and hour before I shut off cruise control.
When i was traveling at speed around 70mph on highway. Tesla has applied emergency brakes and locked the steering, which made telsa rotate(spinned) 3 times on its own and stopped.luckily no vehicles were near on either ways. The vehicle was all the way stopped on opposite road and I was able to start after some seconds it stopped and started my driving. No vehicles were near or nothing approached to apply emergency brakes. When contacted telsa they told to schedule service appointment and no help was given.
The vehicle is subject to phantom braking. When I use the adaptive cruise control and am driving in the middle or left lane (i.e. when there is a clear lane to my right), the car will brake when there is no car beside me. Sometimes this occurs when I am passing a large truck on my right. Last weekend, I was driving 68mph on a highway during a bright sunny day. There were no cars on either side of me. The car braked for no reason. I had to step on the accelerator pedal to get back to highways speeds.
5YJYGDEE2MF161659 VIN 2021 Tesla Model Y AWD with basis cruise control This last weekend we drove from our home in Arroyo Grande CA to the Mammoth Lakes area. Enroute, we experienced a number of unneeded emergency braking events while on the highways at speed (65-72 mph). While this happened about a dozen time, 5-6 of them were significant slow downs and could have caused us to be rear ended. In none of these events was there any reason for the emergency braking. One happened when another car was approaching from the rear quickly to pass. These events led us to stop using the cruise control entirely for the last 2 hours of our trip home. I have not yet contacted Tesla about this which I will be doing right after I submit this report. Prior to this, the adaptive cruise control had functioned normally with very few unexpected emergency braking events in the last year or so. We did disable the feature of “automatic emergency breaking” but that had no effect at all. This is a serious issue that need to be addressed immediately.
Using normal cruise control in the highway, my car brakes randomly and suddenly. This phantom braking has happened over 10 times in the past two weeks! It's very dangerous.
My Tesla model Y has been braking for no apparent reason when using the adaptive cruise control. Sometimes there may be a car coming in the opposite direction, but most times there is no other cars within miles. Several times the braking has been extremely aggressive causing me to have to hit the accelerator hard to avoid somebody behind me running into me. This has happened many times on long,straight, flat roads in the middle of the Arizona desert.
While car was on cruise control. The car went off cruise control without intervention or warning and slowed down quite abruptly. This occurred about 4 times in a 4 hour period while going interstate speeds.
During daylight hours when the autopilot is engaged at normal highway speeds - the Tesla brakes engage and quickly slow down the car. It occurs on long straight roads with no traffic. This appears to be a "phantom braking" issue that is causing my car to suddenly brake for no reason. There are never any cars around when this occurs-- just long clear roads. This can be very dangerous. Last known occurrences were on Aug 13 at 8:30a and 10:29a of this year.
I had unexpected and sudden braking while using Tesla autopilot while in TAC mode or adaptive cruise control. Not Autopilot that steers and keeps you in the lane and not Full self driving, my car does not have FSD. I had 5 or 6 incidents while heading West on I 10 towards Yuma on I 8. There was no rhyme or obvious reason for the braking. No one in front of me or behind me. The amount of braking over the separate incidents was different each time. On the way back to Tucson it happened another 5 or 6 times.
VIN decoder
See the problems and recalls for an exact car
Buying a used 2021 Tesla Model Y?
Check the exact car before you pay: accidents, salvage or flood titles, odometer readings and previous owners.
Check its history