NHTSA Complaint #11494262 — 2020 TESLA MODEL Y

In Tesla’s from model years before 2021, the side “repeater cameras” that are rear facing suffer from a light-leak of the blinker. There are three small holes in the PCB circuit board that allow light from the blinker to leak into the camera at night. Tesla subsequently fixed this problem, first by applying a sticker over the holes in the circuit board, and later by redesigning the part entirely. But this “light leak” problem exists on hundreds of thousands of cars. There are two problems with this: 1) Tesla has now changed their “Autopilot” and “Full Self Driving” software to a Tesla Vision system that ONLY uses cameras for the autopilot features, including lane keeping and lane changes. They no longer use ultrasonic sensors or forward looking radar, even though it is still installed on these cars. This reliance on vision makes it impossible for the Tesla side facing cameras to see when the blinker is turned on. This can result in unpredictable behavior when changing lanes or turning at night with autopilot engaged, including unpredictable or erratic driving where the car abandons a lane change mid course and swerves back into the lane. 2) Even when autopilot is not engaged, the blind spot monitoring in this car consists of a pop up window on the center screen showing the side view camera when the turn signal is engaged. At night, with the blinker on, the driver sees a bright light flashing intermittently in the side view camera. This is very distracting and potentially hazardous to the driver. Tesla has refused to replace the cameras on my car under warranty because they state the cameras are “neither a defect of materials nor workmanship” and are an “expected condition based on the inherent capability of the camera design”.