Tesla has come up with another way to decontent — er, simplify its flagship cars. Much like the Model 3 and Model Y, the Model S and Model X will no longer come equipped with radar sensors.
It’s all in an effort for the company to move forward with their “Tesla Vision” plan, according to an announcement buried at the bottom of a Tesla support page. The goal is to have all safety features and driver-assist programs run through the vehicle’s onboard cameras. From the announcement:
“As of mid-February 2022, all Model S and Model X built for the North American market utilise Tesla Vision. All Model S and Model X built for the North American market prior are equipped with radar,” the release reads.
During the transition from radar to radar-less cars, the company says Autosteer will be limited to a maximum of 129 km/h and will require a longer minimum following distance. It should only last a little while before over-the-air updates restore the features.
Drive Tesla Canada reports the idea behind using cameras instead of radar comes from — of course — a tweet by Elon Musk.
Vision became so good that radar actually reduced SNR, so radar was turned off.
Humans drive with eyes & biological neural nets, so makes sense that cameras & silicon neural nets are only way to achieve generalized solution to self-driving.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 11, 2021
Basically, he thinks that because we use our eyes to see and react, it means a car should use its “eyes” to do the same thing… which is flawed logic to say the least.
Car and Driver reports Musk says another reason for the change is how our road system is designed. He cites the use of “Real-world AI.”
LIDAR is a seductive local maximum. SpaceX designed & built them to dock with ISS.
However, the road system was designed to work with biological neural nets & eyes, so a general solution to self-driving necessarily will require silicon neural nets & cameras.
Real-world AI.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 25, 2022
Teslas has had some issues with the camera based system already. A ‘phantom braking’ problem is currently being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The organisation has received over 350 complaints in the past nine months about Tesla vehicles jamming on the brakes for no reason while Autopilot is engaged. The NHTSA probe covers 416,000 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.