I’ve made no attempt to hide the fact that I’m not a fan of Tesla. It was never about the technology, but rather their business practices and the way they treat their customers. However, that may be about to change with what I would consider to be a penny wise, but pound foolish decision to remove radar and ultrasonic sensors from it’s vehicles.

In a report from Electrek, Tesla is basically saying that they’re going all-in on computer vision and dropping other sensors with the laughable justification that it’s how humans navigate. Considering the potential consequences, perhaps laughable isn’t the right word.

One of the features that impressed me the most about Tesla’s early self-driving feature was the integration of radar data. A perfect example of this can be found in this 2016 video of a Tesla detecting a vehicle several cars ahead that was moving slowly/braking and was able to avoid an accident. You can’t see the vehicle ahead as it’s completely obscured, but the Tesla radar could. Can a Tesla camera system do the same? Maybe, but I’m not sure I’d want to trust an autopilot system without radar. (or some other form of beyond visual spectrum object detection)

Tesla’s track record with self-driving cars hasn’t exactly been fool-proof either. (even with the additional sensors) I’ve been in Teslas that have had difficulty in daylight with the painted lines of the road. There have also been numerous incidents reported where autopilot didn’t see a crossing/oncoming vehicle resulting in fatalities. Beta testing software features is fine for the consumer smartphone and computer industries, but it shouldn’t be something that happens in cars on public roads with safety-critical systems.

Tesla does state in their announcement that “at this time, [they] do not plan to remove the functionality of ultrasonic sensors in [their] existing fleet.” Hopefully the same is true for the radar sensors as well. This appears to be targeted at new production models only with models 3 and Y, and later the S and X.

This Reuters article from early June explains some of the details of why a camera-only system could be less safe than one with additional radar sensors. Tesla may think they’re saving (making) money removing the sensors and making development easier for themselves, but not tackling the more difficult problem of integrating different sensors leaves gaps that may put people’s lives at risk.

Update 12/2022: Drivers of new vision only Tesla models already running into problems, some features not yet available

Update 12/16/2022: Tesla appears to be reversing course and bringing radar back based on FCC filing. Elektrek quoted the same tesla filing indicating Tesla would be marketing a new HD radar in mid-January of 2023. This is good news for potential new buyers and potentially for improvements in FSD, but what about those who bought the stripped down versions? If I were one of those customers, I wouldn’t be too happy.