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Comment by robonerd | Hacker News Reader

You continue using this feature despite these errors occurring daily? The way you describe it makes autopilot seem like an inexperienced teenage driver; I think whatever marginal safety benefit you get from it might be erased by the life-shortening stress such erratic car behavior must induce.

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Can't speak for OP, but I'm supposed to be paying attention at all times while autopilot is enabled; as soon as I feel the vehicle may phantom brake, I apply more pressure to the accelerator to maintain speed.

I believe the NHTSA is going to require Tesla retrofit radar on all vehicles to mitigate their Tesla Vision functionality deficiency.

(submitted lengthy dash cam videos and accelerometer data to the NHTSA as a complaint)

I have an early release Model 3 with radar. I suspect they stopped using the radar in a software update once they started releasing Model 3s without radar, as it didn't have this jerky stopping behavior before that.

Happens often on my Y, does not happen on my legacy S and X (circa 2018 and 2019) that are equipped with Continental radar front facing radar. I believe even current S and X vehicles are still getting radar installed, so Tesla is only being cheap on the 3 and Y to keep moving them at volume as a supply chain mitigation.

Tesla stopped putting radar units in new Model S/X in February this year.

https://www.tesla.com/support/transitioning-tesla-vision

My information is outdated, I appreciate the correction.

vehicles from 2019 being referred to as "legacy" is the most infuriating thing I've read today.

Of course no offense to OP, i've heard it referred as such by others and I know it's not literal. But it's maddening to me though that a vehicle that is still under warranty has a moniker that traditionally means end of life/support in software.

With most other cars, it becomes legacy as soon as you drive it off the lot and they release the next model year

At least Tesla mostly keeps updating their older car’s software.

(bit late on the reply, sorry)Caveat; I think EV are far superior to ICE vehicles in every measurable metric.

That said, I don't understand what you mean. 9.9/10 of new, non motorsports ICE vehicles are backed by warranty bumper to bumper for 60-100k miles. Further, the parts/labor pipeline is massive.OEM/aftermarket keep producing parts for years after the vehicle's generation stops being sold as new.

In the case of Tesla and some Boutique EVs, there is no aftermarket, and there's litigation from Tesla if you try to repair/produce aftermarket parts. "At least tesla mostly keeps updating their older car's software" is not a positive. It should be guaranteed for 60k-100k miles, and the aftermarket should be allowed to repair it.

Tesla makes their vehicles "legacy" on purpose.

I’m convinced they ditched radar because they were having big supply chain constraints with radar, and then Musk convinced himself that Machine Vision with AI is the path forward anyway and decided to rip the bandaid off and address both issues at the same time. (& I really do think he believes that because he obsessed over the AI safety thing in the past in a way I think is unforced and a little silly and pretty clearly falsified at this point.) I do think radar ought to help, at least in principle. Although they probably can eventually get vision to be better than Vision+Radar used to be, although I STILL think it’d be better off also with radar (and perhaps a different, better kind of radar unit).

> I’m convinced they ditched radar because they were having big supply chain constraints with radar, and then Musk convinced himself that Machine Vision with AI is the path forward anyway and decided to rip the bandaid off and address both issues at the same time.

Yes, that and his attitudes towards LIDAR seem like motivated reasoning / sour grapes. "LIDAR is too expensive to put in cars I'm selling today, therefore it isn't good anyway." (I can't reach the grapes, therefore they're sour and I didn't want them anyway.) Why else would he criticize LIDAR with inane arguments about LIDAR not being able to read street signs, as though anybody is suggesting LIDAR-only rather than LIDAR+Optical?

I'm convinced they ditched radar because Musk wanted to make more money.

Sort of like how GM and Ford used to have actuaries work out the cost of a fuel tank that wouldn't incinerate the occupants in a crash vs legal settlement costs.

Except minus actuaries and instead just Musk figuring "Well I've gotten away with everything else, why not this as well?" and sadly being right.

From ignoring COVID health orders to flashing his dick to repeated stock manipulation to making billions in a company that stole people's money constantly "because we're not a bank", Musk hasn't faced any significant repercussions for anything immoral or illegal he's ever done.

>Vision+Radar

I would imagine that multiple systems with a majority wins type of thinking would be ideal. Would probably need another system for it to be an odd number.

Radar is only turned off if you are accepted into the full self driving beta and turn it on. Then it switches over to full vision.

I believe they're still using radar in cars where the hardware exists (unless you have FSD, in which case it's using vision only).

You accelerate harder to compensate for a car that brakes too quickly? This is considered normal in Tesla-land?

Your fix reminds me of this: https://xkcd.com/1172/

Tesla isn't going to take the vehicle back, nor would I sell the car to someone else, so I am left to complain loudly to regulators, which I admit is a guilty pleasure (especially when I have lucked into having standing).

I also opted out of arbitration for all of my vehicles [1], for obvious reasons. I am simply attempting to make lemonade from lemons.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/8vxnz0/psa_for...

Hah, one time my computer had periodic hiccups where the mouse cursor update rate would slow down and back to normal within a second, it almost turned me into the Hulk... I can't imagine driving a car with that problem.

My vision-based Tesla rarely if ever experiences phantom braking unlike my previous radar-equipped Model 3 (it was pretty common in 2018 / 2019).

All Teslas are "vision-based" now. They no longer use the RADAR even in cars that have it.

This is probably so they can have only one software build rather than supporting one with and one without RADAR. And also so that they can say the RADAR isn't needed anyway.

TL:DR; Radar is not the silver bullet here

>(submitted lengthy dash cam videos and accelerometer data to the NHTSA as a complaint)

Did you upload video to them, or post a link from a streaming site? It would be interesting to see the analytics that a streaming site can provide to know if anyone from the gov't ever actually looks at the video vs the blind upload to a black hole.

I had much worse results with radar several years than I do now with the FSD that doesn’t use radar anymore, so I don’t think radar is the necessary solution here

You cannot turn this behavior off persistently -- you need to open car settings and disable it every time you leave Park. My guess is that some jurisdictions mandate this behavior.

When this "feature" triggers you have a short window in which to do _something_ to tell the car that you are paying attention. Your options are either: accellerate or brake. If you do nothing the car may apply full brakes and bring you to a full stop, regardless what is behind you.

> Reports of “phantom braking” first surfaced last fall

This has been happening for much longer than that -- at least as early as Winter 2019, when I unintentionally brake checked a Prius after merging while going over 101 @ Rengstorf.

What behavior are you referring to? We are talking about autopilot, and possibly FSD, neither of which are engaged by default (obviously!) What do you mean they can't be turned off?

> When this "feature" triggers you have a short window in which to do _something_ to tell the car that you are paying attention. Your options are either: accelerate or brake. If you do nothing the car may apply full brakes and bring you to a full stop, regardless what is behind you.

Again, what is this? I have a Tesla, and I'm not aware of any feature that requires me to accelerate or brake to prevent the car from stopping itself.

> What behavior are you referring to?

Automatic Emergency Braking. You cannot turn off AEB persistently.

> I'm not aware of any feature that requires me to accelerate or brake to prevent the car from stopping itself

Before the car emergency brakes, it will warn you via "Forward Collision Warning"; the screen will show the object it thinks you're about to hit in red. You can set this to "Late" to reduce false positives -- but if you do, you'll have less time to take action yourself. So now I set it to Early.

After a FCW, you have a small amount of time to do something before the car will do something for you. The M3 manual describes AEB here:

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_us/GUID-8EA7EF1...

It also explains "Automatic Emergency Braking is always enabled when you start Model 3. To disable it for your current drive, touch Controls > Autopilot > Automatic Emergency Braking."

This article is about autopilot phantom braking, not AEB. I've never had AEB trigger, or heard of it triggering when it shouldn't, but maybe I'm unaware.

Phantom braking includes self-driving/cruise and ADAS, e.g. "What is phantom braking"

> Phantom braking is a term used to describe when an advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) – or a self-driving system – applies the brakes for no good reason

(AEB is part of ADAS)

i had it trigger twice: once to prevent a frontal crash that would have been my fault, and once during a storm. i am very glad that it is there; works extremely well.

Can you put some tape over the sensors?

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