While driving forward, the vehicle suddenly, unexpectedly and violently applies the brakes without any driver input whatsoever! there are no other vehicles or pedestrians in the vicinity at the time. this sudden braking problem began on or about 5/15/18 and happened on several occasions after that. twice while entering the underground parking garage at an office building and twice while driving on a city street. vehicle has been at the local nissan dealer for over a week but neither the dealership nor the manufacturer apparently has any idea how to fix the problem. they think that there is a fault in the automatic emergency braking system. the service manager told me that other instances of the same issue have been reported to nissan. the salesperson indicated that there were 4 other similar cases at their dealership alone.they also will not let us take the vehicle home without signing a release of liability document. the obvious concern is that the emergency braking system will again randomly activate while traveling at a higher speed and cause an accident resulting in serious property damage and injuries!
When the brakes are applied moderately at around 40mph to slow down, and if a wheel go on top of some bumps or pot holes, car seems to loose braking power, brake padel drop about 1 inch, have to pedal hard to get the brakes back. at one time i saw a message on dashboard "not available" which i was not able to read and confirm, as this happened in a panic situation. this is occational but has happened to be 4 - 5 times now. my guess is car try to apply regenerative brakes first, if that cannot work due to excessive, bump / pot-hole on the road, it give up, and as a result, car loose braking power for 1-2 seconds. this 2 seconds can be life and death in an emergency braking situation. i took the car to dealer, and they said, no issues found. this problem is hard to reproduce, but can be reproduced. this happened in local roads with 45mph speed limit. one time when there was rough road due to construction. another time when one tire was going on top of road dividers which are about 1 inch tall and 1 foot apart, it had many of these next to each other, when i was applying brake.
This nissan car is equipped with features named, pro-pilot assist (ppa), intelligent cruise control (icc) and emergency brake assist (eba). when engaged, it is supposed to keep lanes and follow distance if there is a car in front. when the car in front is stopped this car is supposed to stop as well. ppa when engaged, if there are good road markings, will show a green stearing on the dash board, to show that car can steer it self. however if there is a car stopped in front on the same lane (ex. stopped for a red light), this car do not detect that there is a car stopped, and keep going forward until crash into the stopped car, driver have to intevene to stop at this time to stop. i took car to dealer and they said this is normal. that is not what nissan advertise. this behavior is quite dangerous of these cars, and my expectation is the car need to stop if there is an obstruction in the road, when the green steering wheel on dash is showing that car is doing auto-steer.