Several owners of the 2026 Chevrolet Equinox EV have filed complaints with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) describing the vehicle's automatic emergency braking (AEB) engaging when, by their account, nothing was in the vehicle's path. AEB is an advanced driver-assistance feature that uses cameras and sensors to detect an imminent collision and apply the brakes; the complaints below describe the opposite of the design intent — braking applied when the system, by the owners' reading of the rear camera and sensors, detected nothing. The reports were filed to NHTSA's public complaints database, which records consumer accounts that have not been verified by the agency.

The most recent of these, ODI report number 11735367, was logged on May 3, 2026, for an incident the owner dated to April 7, 2026. NHTSA classified the report under the components "Back Over Prevention" and "Forward Collision Avoidance," identified the manufacturer as General Motors, LLC, and recorded no crash, no fire, no injuries, and no deaths associated with the report. The owner's narrative focuses on the rear AEB function activating during low-speed reversing maneuvers.

"The Equinox EV has rear Automatic Emergency Braking. On multiple occasions while backing up the vehicle's AEB has activated by slamming on the parking brake. A check of the rear camera and sensor system shows the vehicle detected nothing."— Vehicle owner, NHTSA complaint ODI 11735367, source

The reports describe both forward and reverse activations

The May 3 report is not isolated in the dataset. NHTSA's records for the 2026 Equinox EV include two additional complaints filed on May 1, 2026. One of those, ODI report 11735025, is classified under "Forward Collision Avoidance" and describes the inability, after a software update, to permanently select a warning-only mode for the braking system. According to that report, the owner stated that phantom braking conditions persist after the latest over-the-air (OTA) update and occur at unexpected times, which the owner characterized as creating potential for a rear-end collision with a following vehicle. The phrase "phantom braking" is the owner's term for an AEB or collision-avoidance system slowing or stopping the vehicle with no obstacle present.

The second May 1 report, ODI 11735179, is classified under "Forward Collision Avoidance" and "Lane Departure." In that account, the owner described driving on a freeway at 70 miles per hour with adaptive cruise control engaged when, by the owner's description, the vehicle activated its emergency lights and braked in the middle of the freeway, with no accident occurring. The same report states that the lane-assist function was not working. Adaptive cruise control is a system that automatically maintains a set speed and following distance; lane assist is a steering-support feature that helps keep a vehicle centered in its lane. The report ties both ADAS functions to the single complaint.

A March report references a service warning and a repair visit

An earlier complaint, ODI report 11727678, filed March 28, 2026, is classified under "Power Train," "Electrical System," and "Service Brakes." The owner dated the incident to February 23, 2026, and described a drive home from a Chevrolet dealership following a prior repair visit during which a "Service Park Assist System" warning illuminated — first intermittently, then continuously for the rest of an 11-mile drive. The same report states that while reversing with no objects present, the automatic emergency braking system applied the brakes with significant force without cause. That account links the reported AEB behavior to a vehicle that had already been in for service, though the complaint does not establish a cause and NHTSA has not verified it.

Taken together, the four complaints span the 2026 Equinox EV's forward and rear collision-avoidance functions and reference adaptive cruise control, lane assist, and park-assist warnings. They were filed across late March and early May 2026 and were classified by NHTSA under the back-over-prevention and forward-collision-avoidance component categories, with one report adding power-train, electrical-system, and service-brake codes. None of the four reports records a crash, fire, injury, or death.

What the records do and do not establish

It is important to state the limits of these records precisely. NHTSA's complaints database is a repository of unverified consumer reports; the agency publishes them so that patterns can be observed, but a complaint is an allegation, not an agency finding. The reports here are individual owner narratives. They do not, on their own, establish a defect, a root cause, or a population-wide failure rate, and NHTSA has not, in these records, announced an investigation or a recall tied to the 2026 Equinox EV's automatic braking. What the dataset does show is a small set of contemporaneous complaints describing a consistent behavior — braking applied with no obstacle the owner could identify — across both the forward and rear AEB functions of the same model year and model.

The recurring reference to a software or OTA update across these reports is notable as a matter of what the owners describe, not as a verified mechanism. Over-the-air updates change ADAS calibration and behavior remotely, and at least one report attributes a change in available settings — specifically the ability to keep the system in a warning-only mode — to such an update. Readers can review each of these reports directly on NHTSA's public site by their ODI report numbers (11735367, 11735025, 11735179, and 11727678), where the agency posts the full owner narratives and the component classifications. NHTSA also invites owners who experience a safety problem to file their own reports, which is the mechanism by which the agency builds the trend data that can later support a formal investigation.