I can't conclusively say that it's because of the missing radar, but I can say that our Model Y is bad at detecting obstructions ahead. Really, really bad. The big issue is false positives, a problem that has become known as "phantom braking" among Tesla owners. Basically, the car often gets confused and thinks there's an obstacle ahead and engages the automatic emergency braking system. You get an instant, unwanted and often strong application of the brakes. This is not a problem unique to Teslas. I've experienced it on other cars, but very, very rarely. On our Model Y this happens constantly, at least once an hour and sometimes much more often than that. In a single hour of driving I caught five phantom braking incidents on camera, two hard enough to sound the automatic emergency braking chime. This is a massive problem. It happens on both the highway and on secondary roads, any time the cruise control is engaged even without Autosteer. It means the car's cruise control is patently unsafe, which means the entirety of Autopilot is unsafe. And that means the car itself is unsafe.

The phantom braking issue is a complete deal-breaker. Our car, which is running the latest production version of Autopilot, is unsafe whenever cruise control is enabled.

Tesla raising price of Full Self-Driving option that still doesn't fully self-drive