They’re going back because the supply chain has eased up and their internally developed hi res radar (“Phoenix”) is reaching production grade, so they no longer have to argue Vision is superior to keep shipping units post pandemic.

My prediction was wrong though, see below. I assumed NHTSA would’ve forced a recall mandating a move back to radar. They didn’t, and Vision was good enough to receive the highest rating in Euro NCAP’s protocol. You don’t need radar for Autopilot (we have Teslas both with and without radar), but if they say it’ll help with FSD, that would be a reasonable thesis to put forth (without arguing the merits of FSD).

> Overall, the Model Y received an Adult Occupant Protection rating of 97%, a Child Occupant Production rating of 89%, a Vulnerable Road User Protection rating of 82%, and a near-perfect Safety Assist rating of 98%. The Model Y’s 98% score in the Euro NCAP’s safety assist category is especially impressive as these are related to features that utilize the company’s radar-less Tesla Vision system.

> In fact, Model Y’s Safety Assist rating is the highest score among the vehicles that have been tested by the Euro NCAP to date. The Model Y’s stellar Adult Occupant Protection rating is also the highest thus far under the agency’s 2020-2022 rating criteria. Overall, the results of the Model Y’s safety tests prove one thing: vehicles equipped with Tesla Vision are just as safe — if not safer — than other vehicles out on the roads today.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31687408

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-vision-model-y-highest-euro-...

https://electrek.co/2020/10/22/tesla-4d-radar-twice-range-se...

> They’re going back because the supply chain has eased up and their internally developed hi res radar (“Phoenix”) is reaching production grade, so they no longer have to argue Vision is superior to keep shipping units post pandemic.

In other words, they lied that vision-only is superior to having a radar, put out a blog post on how Tesla Vision is going to solve FSD and then sold a few hundred thousand cars without radar for over a year.

Exactly.

I think one of Tesla's lead engineers on Lex Fridman’s podcast explained vision is enough and why radar isn’t needed… can’t recall all the details.

Just more BS coming out of Elon’s company… he created that culture.

I’d not trust anything coming of his mouth or sub-mouths… the information just isn’t reliable.

EDIT: Here is the link to the youtube video. The former snr. director giving his reasons why the other sensors are not required

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W1JBAfV4Io

The article actually quotes Elon saying back when radar was removed, that current radar decreased snr, but a high resolution radar would be better than pure vision.

So no lie. This fits perfectly with what he claimed.

He claimed just cameras were sufficient for self driving and sold cars based on that, even though they were working on a high resolution radar. Clearly, based on this article they are not sufficient. He also said phantom braking issues would be solved with radar removal. That didn't happen.

How many people would have bought the car (or FSD) if they knew a better radar was coming a year down the line that not only helps FSD but also regular Autopilot?

How many people would buy an iPhone if they knew a better camera was coming a year down the line?

Wrong analogy. Not many would buy an iPhone if Apple removes the main camera and claims they can magically take pictures from the front camera alone, but reveals they will have a better main camera for next year’s model.

Elon has said it himself. There is never the right time to buy a Tesla. They are always changing things. And next year‘s car will always be better than this year‘s. And to some extend, this is true for anything you can buy in technology. So the idea that „if only people had known“ doesn‘t make any sense. The unspoken criticism here, of course, is that Tesla knew that they were going to re-integrate radar just a year later. And that they were withholding that knowledge from prospective buyers so that they wouldn‘t hold off making the purchase (there‘s a term for that effect, which unfortunately eludes me at this moment). But there is a much simpler explanation. They simply changed their mind. I think it took balls for Tesla to say that radar wasn‘t needed. After all, just a few years earlier they had written one of their big blog posts, which was titled „Seeing the World in Radar“. For them to say, „You know what, we realized we‘ve been on the wrong path. Fusing those sensors is actually making the decision process worse and not better“ - I find that a bold move. And it‘s not like it came out of the blue. Elon had said many times before that many phantom brake events were the result of radar and vision disagreeing with each other. So that issue had been a huge problem for them for a long time. The idea that these people at Tesla are sitting there and thinking about how they can fool the public seems just really crazy to me. From the start, their mission has been very clear: To get as many electric cars on the road as possible. And you just need to look out of the window in order to see that they‘ve kept their word. I‘m really quite puzzled by the amount of suspicion leveled at Tesla on HN. Have they missed their own deadlines on features? Of course they have. Elon promised the first coast-to-coast fully autonomous drive to be accomplished by the end of 2016. He literally said that he has „egg on his face“ in that regard. But it‘s them who said that goal in the first place. And it‘s clear that they are working on the problem, and that they are making progress. Elon Musk has managed to build a rocket company. His team made reusable rockets work - a thing that, to this day, no competitor and no government has been able to do. How can anyone seriously think that this man thinks about fooling the public? If you have power over the physical world - have seen that your team can make things that never existed before - why would you care about having power over people? Power over people is interesting only to those who have no power over nature. It‘s only when you cannot build that you become interested in stealing.

And about those „unrealistic“ deadlines… Tolstoy said something about that. He talked about Christianity. But it applies to big aspirations of any kind. I don‘t have the exact quote. But he said that if a man want to cross a river with a strong current, and he wants to reach a particular point at the other shore, then he cannot afford to just swim towards that point. Instead, he must swim towards a point that is far upstream of that point. He has to tell himself that he want to reach that point upstream, just in order to have a chance of arriving at his destination. It‘s not that he has to fool anyone. Or that he even had to fool himself. It‘s not that he has to swim „as if“ he wanted to reach that upstream target. He actually has to expend the effort it would take to reach that upstream target, and more. And I think that is what Tesla is doing. And Elon has said several times that it just isn‘t possible to communicate two different set of goals to those working inside the company and to the outside world. He has to focus on the target that seems just at the boundary of possibility. And when he does so, he cannot turn around to the consumer and tell them a different story full of disclaimers. He has to lead, and he has to burn his ships. Now, I understand that there are also Trevor Miltons in this world, and Elizabeth Holmes‘. But to put Elon in the same category just because both types of people demonstrate optimism in the future is, in my view at least, a pretty lousy heuristic.

> He claimed just cameras were sufficient for self driving

The latest builds of FSD beta prove that to be true.

The question now becomes what can be done to make it better, and how much better is required.

similarly, humans can clearly drive vehicles "sufficiently" after consuming alcohol. Countries disagree on the amount, and the definition of "sufficient".

> The latest builds of FSD beta prove that to be true.

Unless the latest builds of FSD beta work without requiring a driver, it doesn’t prove anything to be true. To be a self driving car, it has to actually work without anyone in the driver’s seat. That’s literally the definition.

It works a lot better than most people realize.

Obviously there is a person in this seat, but it would have done the same thing if there wasn't...

https://twitter.com/WholeMarsBlog/status/1599146605156130816

It has to be capable of doing it thousands of times to be considered safe enough to remove the driver. Just one drive without disengagement doesn't count. FSD is not repeatable currently, so it's not close L4 self driving. For reference, Waymo and Cruise have a disengagement every 30,000 miles. FSD requires orders of magnitude improvement in reliability to match that.

You originally said:

> He claimed just cameras were sufficient for self driving

And I showed a video where they are, clearly "sufficient".

Now you've moved the goal posts to:

> doing it thousands of times to be considered safe enough to remove the driver

Which is a completely different discussion.

It's coming.

No moving of goalposts. “Sufficient” means you need to demonstrate L4+ self driving with no driver. You’ve shown L2 driver assistance. By your definition, any car doing basic cruise control is self driving.

that isnt basic cruise control though. cruise control doesnt make unprotected left turns ....

dont hate the player, hate the game ra7

Profits and independent safety assessments don’t lie. They made the right call.

Euro NCAP doesn’t assess FSD safety, which was the reason they discontinued radar. If they’ve now decided they need radar, it means they lied in their blog post. They wouldn’t need it again if they thought it was safe without one.

They sure made profits though.

Tying one hand behind their back in a fight proves only someone's ego is willing to take unnecessary risks than use every opportunity available. Elon is that type of a--hole who would gamble lives to be "right".

“Another person’s vanity only bothers us if it goes against our own.” —Nietzsche

Unfortunately, your trolling attempt is irrelevant to the facts such as being unable to see stationary objects in the road when traveling over 80 mph. Would you prefer a less safe and less capable vehicle to "prove" how "smart" you think you are while killing more passengers and bystanders?

I suggest adding something of value in the future rather than try to look smart because you only appear to be a biased fool.

You are calling people a--holes and biased fools.

Doesn't look to me at all as if you're interested in a discussion of sensors. My impression is that you have an axe to grind.

Hence that quote. It points to the observation that when people get defensive about another person's ego, it usually means they see themselves somehow in a competition with that other person. Jung would have called it projection. Girard would have called it mimetic rivalry.

None of that is an excuse for your dismissive attitude and name-calling, which really don't belong on HN.

Their ai model is quite impressive.

Humans are also able to drive with vision only. Same sentiment as Hotz from comma.ai has.

I also think that radar will be a no brainer and make it better over all (night, fog) but I'm not sure if it has to be a must.

Perhaps in 20years when you have overall very good car AI the non radar version is always behind but we are far away from this market saturation. Probably more than 20 car iterations and more.

> Humans are also able to drive with vision only. Same sentiment as Hotz from comma.ai has.

I’ve said this before and I’ll repeat it here. A CMOS sensor is nothing like the human eye both in terms of HW and the SW (ignoring the AI that interprets the signal - I’m talking just in terms of the sensor). Your eye is constantly subconsciously scanning an insanely wide FOV so that not only do you have an insanely high-res image at the center, you have a fairly high fidelity larger FOV that is quite wide. Additionally, the camera will automatically shift its focus insanely fast if there’s any motion in your periphery and start filling in the scene with extremely high fidelity data. It’s hard to really equate the two but some analyses I’ve found on Google estimate the human eye at having hundreds of megapixels worth of fidelity. The Tesla has ~8 1 megapixel cameras.

As for the intelligence behind the camera in terms of command and control, the human brain is significantly better.

At some point in the future, sure. A pure vision system could be equivalent (actually better) to a human driver. Today it’s probably better in some ways (doesn’t have the attention failure modes that the human brain can suffer) but fatally worse in others (distinguishing the white trailer on a semi right in front with a cloud or understanding there’s a dividor right in front of you). Obviously things are going to get better so I’d bet on a pure vision system in a decade or two will probably work. The problem is Musk’s false advertising and the lives it’s cost.