Tesla says it will add radar to its cars next month amid concerns about its self-driving suite
Tesla says it will add radar to its cars next month amid concerns about its self-driving suite
Tesla told the FCC that it plans to market a new radar starting next month. The move raises even more concerns about the upgrades that might be needed in its hardware suite to achieve the promised self-driving capability.
Since 2016, Tesla has said that all future production vehicles have “all the necessary hardware” to be self-driving with future software updates.
Turns out that wasn’t true.
Tesla has already had to upgrade its onboard computer and cameras in previous vehicles, and has yet to achieve self-driving capability. The Full Self-Driving (FSD) software is still in beta and does not allow for fully autonomous driving.
In some cases where the automaker had to upgrade its hardware, it even removed some hardware. First, it was the front radar and more recently ultrasonic sensors.
Everything is part of itTesla VisionThe automaker believes the best way to achieve self-driving capability is to have unique camera sensors. The logic is that roads are designed to be operated by humans using cars through vision (eyes) and biological neural networks (brain).
Tesla believes that the best way to replicate this is to use cameras to replace the eyes and neural networks running on a computer to replace the brain.
The company removed radar from its vehicles last year and ultrasonic sensors earlier this year.
That’s why it was so surprising when we reported it earlier this year Tesla has filed with the FCC to use a new radar in its vehicles. The FCC granted Tesla confidential treatment not to publish details of the new radar.
These confidential treatments are generally good for 6 months and it was due tomorrow, but Tesla has filed for an extension:
In the filing, Tesla confirmed that it plans to begin marketing the new device “in mid-January.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Electric In June of last year, after Tesla stopped using its radar:
The probability of safety will be higher with pure vision than vision+radar, not less. Vision has become so good that radar actually reduces signal/noise.
However, the CEO added that Tesla could still use radar if it had “very high resolution radar”:
A very high resolution radar would be better than pure vision, but such a radar does not exist. I mean the sight with a high resolution radar would be better than just sight.
We saw some signs of Tesla working on it. We reported earlier Tesla plans to add a new “4D” imaging radar with twice the range his front radar.
We also reported last weekend Tesla Model 3 prototype which potentially included a whole new Autopilot/Self-Driving hardware suite.
Take the electricity
It looks like what Musk told us last year could happen and Tesla is ready to put a more advanced radar inside its vehicles, and potentially a new set of sensors based on the Model 3 prototype.
There’s also talk of a Tesla in-cabin radar, which is The company has previously introduced the S modelbut given that the app is talking about an ‘HD radar’, it looks like it’s for driver assistance features.
Tesla was always going to keep improving its Autopilot/self-driving hardware, so there’s nothing wrong with what’s going on, but it still fuels growing concerns that Tesla can’t achieve the promised self-driving capability with the current hardware.
So it’s possible that Tesla will unveil a new set of self-driving hardware next month that improves capability and Tesla still envisions self-driving on its current hardware.
But I think there’s room for concern after Tesla’s self-driving blunders so many times already. It may be wrong that current vehicles are able to achieve this.
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