NHTSA Complaint #11524698 — 2023 TESLA MODEL Y

Driving directly north on SR281, about an hour before sunset. Perfectly clear dry sunny day. No traffic for at least 500ft in front of me. A car immediately behind me (about 2 car lengths).. The sun was at the roughly 10 o-clock position (Horizontal plane, 12 o'clock being directly forward/North), and at about 10 o'clock vertically (12 o'clock being directly up, West at 9 o'clock, East at 3 o'clock, centered on my position). Full Self Driving beta visualization was enabled. The vehicle was not in AutoSteer or Full Self Driving mode - but it was in Traffic-Aware Cruise Control mode. My car braked hard and suddenly, causing the car behind me to brake. On the FSD display, a red vehicle was rendered on top of my location (driver position of this "ghost" vehicle would have been ~2 feet in front of where I was sitting). This phantom car appears to have been caused by lens flare from the sun. This sequence of events repeated itself four or five times over the next few minutes, with the ghost car appearing, the car trying to brake, and then disappearing. My safety was put at risk due to hard and unexpected braking under conditions where there was no reasonable expectation that I would need to perform an emergency stop. The risk was from the vehicle behind me having to unexpectedly stop; without an attentive drive this would have caused a collision. The vehicle has not been examined by any dealer or service center, and appears to be a software problem that occurs under specific lighting conditions.