Elon Musk’s controversial approach to autonomous driving is made even more confusing. Last year, Tesla announced that it was removing radar from all its vehicles and will henceforth rely entirely on cameras for Tesla Vision to support FSD.
This announcement made the whole world talk and was seen by many as unsafe and useless, but Tesla nevertheless kept going. The company claimed that all its vehicles produced after 2016 already have all the equipment needed to make them fully autonomous.
With the front-facing radar removed and the ultrasonic sensors gone, Tesla cars were supposed to rely solely on cameras, but it seems like it’s either a bluff or Tesla is taking one of the biggest u-turns in its brief history.
The surprise came thanks to the FCC’s application for Tesla to use new radars in its cars. That application was made 6 months ago but kept secret to protect some design solutions. That secrecy was about to be lifted today, but Tesla applied for another extension.
In the latest request to the FCC, Tesla requests 60 days of additional privacy protection and notifies the FCC that the new radar will be released in January of next year. This is an acknowledgment by the company that a camera-only Tesla Vision powered FSD is not possible.
To understand what really happened, we need to take a closer look at what exactly Elon Musk has to say about Tesla Vision. Until June of last year, “The probability of security with pure vision is higher than with sight and radar because the latter actually lowers the signal-to-noise ratio” had claimed. This was the portion of what he said that was reported by almost every news outlet in the world. While this may seem like Musk’s claim that cameras are better than radars, this is what he later said: “A very high resolution radar would be better than pure vision, but it is not yet available”
It’s a secret plan from the start. Apparently the idea was to remove old (by Tesla’s standards) hardware from their car that was hindering FSD’s performance and quietly work on a new, high-res replacement.
Now it all comes together – Tesla was using a Continental ARS410 automotive radar with a range of 160 meters (525 ft), but by 2020 the company was working closely with Arbe Robotics on the next generation of sensors. The Israeli startup has an interesting 4D scanning technology called Phoenix, and it looks like it’s coming to Tesla cars.
Then there was the Tesla Model 3, which recently wore camouflage covers on the front and rear, and likely disguised new bumpers fitted with new 4D radar. Everything is falling into place, and next month Tesla will complete its latest technological addition. Fixing FSD, making it safe and usable, and removing it from Beta certainly encourages investors, but it takes much longer.