2021 Tesla Model 3 Complaint
Forward Collision Avoidance
Filed January 5, 2024 · Incident date December 17, 2023
- Vehicle
- 2021 Tesla Model 3
- Component(s)
- Forward Collision Avoidance
- Complaint filed
- January 5, 2024
- Date of incident
- December 17, 2023
- Reported VIN
- 5YJ3E1EB9MF
Owner's description
FSD Computer module (AP3 module) when starting to fail causes all active safety systems to top functioning, including but not limited to Lane Assistance, Automatic Emergency Breaking, Adaptive Cruise Control, Lane Departure Warning, Lane Keeping Assistance, Blind Spot Warning, Pre-collision systems, etc. This is due to the ECU that processes the video feeds from the cameras needed for these function begins to fail, and is not surprising. What is surprising is there are absolutely zero customer or service facing alerts for this issue. Customers simply are unable to manually activate some features, vehicle display has difficulty recognizing objects and lane markings, and the service menu (meant for vehicle service/repair) shows part of the ECU as critical in diagnostics, but does not provide an alert. I can only guess that as previously only half of the module was used at a time, with the second half being for redundancy incase of a failure on one part of the unit, still allowing for full functionality. However, in newer versions of the vehicles software both halfs of the module are used simultaneously to increase processing power, thus eliminating redundancy. It is possible that due to the past redundancy that a failure of one half of the unit was not considered a cause for alarm (though I would have hoped a failing component would have caused an alert, unless the companies hope was that one half would work long enough on its own until it no longer needed to be covered under warranty). However, given both processors and now being actively used there should definitely be alerts and warnings. In addition to losing the convenience of several of these systems there is also a negative safety aspect of systems such as accident avoidance, pre-collision seatbelt tensioning, and others may not work in a pending collision (not that I have seen these systems function properly in past collisions when the module was fully working).
Check a specific vehicle
Enter your VIN to see all NHTSA complaints, recalls, and safety ratings for that exact vehicle.
Related
Data sourced from the NHTSA Complaints database. Complaints are submitted by vehicle owners and have not been independently verified.