Just last month Elon Musk said Tesla would start to get rid of radar sensors from its production cars, and now Electrek points out a post revealing that the method has begun. New Model 3 and Model Y vehicles built for North America not have radar onboard to enable driver assist features like Autopilot and its “Full Self Driving” system.
As recently as 2016, Tesla was still focused on improving radar technology for Autopilot, but that was before reworking the team to specialise in computer vision and deep learning. However, the change is occurring so suddenly that buyers may receive vehicles with restrictions on the utilization of Autosteer, Smart Summon and Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance. Software updates “in the weeks ahead” will re-enable those features.
As The Verge mentions, in materials released along side its Q1 earnings results, Tesla said “We believe that a vision-only system is ultimately all that’s needed for full autonomy. Our AI-based software architecture has been increasingly reliant on cameras, to the purpose where radar is becoming unnecessary before expected.
As a result, our FSD team is fully focused on evolving to a vision-based autonomous system and that we are nearly able to switch the US market to Tesla Vision.” If you’re awaiting delivery of a Tesla, then the corporate says you’ll be notified of any change in your Tesla account before it arrives. Meanwhile, the Model S and Model X will still ship with radar onboard, a minimum of for now.