Tesla Vision update rolls out to older models, radar plans are binned

30 August 2022

Tesla is not having much luck with its Full Self-Drive system. Once hailed as a pioneer and precursor of what is to come, now is being investigated by NHTSA following a number of accidents and criticism is mounting up. Not deterred, Tesla is pressing on with the tech and pushes it out to more cars including some older models.

Tesla did file a patent for a new radar and it confirmed it was working on a new 4D imaging with twice the range of its existing technology. Despite that all cars leaving the assembly lines come with cameras only and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, is adamant the company will not use radar for the FSD anymore.

The latest OTA software update for Tesla cars is numbered 2022.20.9 and it affects Model X, Model S and Model Y. It adds Tesla Vision to older cars, even the ones equipped with radar but it obviously won’t be using it. For a while Tesla was updating the software that was using still radars but this is no longer the case - sensors will stay dormant.

The updated Tesla Vision features Summon and Smart Summon functions, which allow you to spook all your friends and neighbors with a car driving on its own. The car can even follow the driver as they walk down the car park looking for a suitable parking spot. It’s like walking your dog, just the obedient type and one that flaps its doors instead of wagging the tail.

The Autopilot and FSD maximum speed is being increased to 85 mph instead of the previous limit of 75 mph. This is in fact in excess of most speed limits globally.

As it was with the radar equipped cars which enrolled with the FSD Beta, the radar sensors will be deactivated on all cars that receive Tesla Vision update. Few things are still missing in the US market, though. Europe had the emergency dynamic brake lights activated back in 2020, in this update Australia and New Zealand get it, but the US will have to wait a bit longer.

Tesla is committed to its camera-only FSD technology and while the LiDAR seems like a huge advantage when it comes to safety Elon Musk argues that we have been relying on our eyes for over 100 years to drive cars. He says cameras are much better than our eyes, so in his book that makes them good enough to safely drive our cars.

Radar tech, although fairly complicated, offers what our eyes never could. It gives the car the advantage of seeing the unseen, the availability to see obstacles long before they become visible to us or the cameras. But this tech adds another layer of complicated software development and that, together with high costs of the equipment pushes the prices of electric cars up. As always in situations like this one, in the very end it will be the customers who will decide with their wallets.

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