It’s not the first time that Elon Musk has had his Teslas practically further developed by customers. In any case, he now seems to want to revise his boldly announced and daring decision to replace radar sensors with cameras. The sensors are back in the next hardware generation of his cars.
Yes, Tesla is probably THE electric car pioneer, but over the years there have been many accidents – many of them fatal – which are blamed on the immature software. The authorities are also investigating. In the spring, Tesla has to answer in court for several fatal accidents that are said to be the result of the “Full Self-Driving Beta” software. And then Musk also renounced the use of radar sensors. Even disabled existing sensors in cars that were already in customer hands via over-the-air update. Whether the drivers wanted it or not. How many Tesla fans (or disciples) said “yes, if Tesla does not use radar sensors, then that is definitely the best option”? Common sense contradicted it from the start. Cameras may see as well as a human, but they don’t interpret what they see as well. Despite artificial intelligence. So it’s no surprise that doing without radar sensors for automated driving has caused further problems. About so-called phantom braking due to misinterpreted camera data. For example, the Tesla AI mistook photos of people on trucks for real pedestrians. A radar could only laugh at that, if it could. Experts are convinced that it will come into vehicles with the so-called Hardware 4 generation. This is a so-called 4D system that, in addition to distance, speed and direction of movement, also recognizes the height of objects. The resolution of such systems is also higher than with previous ones. One of the reasons for this is the higher number of radar antennas. One argument from car manufacturers (not only from Tesla) is of course often heard in the event of malfunctions in an assistance system: the driver must have his car under control at all times.
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