<story><title>Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]</title><url>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W1JBAfV4Io</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>RC_ITR</author><text>The first famous autopilot crash was because a white semi-truck was washed out by the sun and confused for an overhead sign.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s literally trivial for a car with radar to detect.&lt;p&gt;Amazing how people talk about stuff they have no idea about when it comes to Tesla.</text></item><item><author>stefan_</author><text>This thread is unhelpfully mixing radar and ultrasonic sensors. Ultrasonic sensors, as your video explains, are primarily used as a parking aid; they are tuned for too low a distance to be helpful in just about any kind of driving scenario at speed.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, &lt;i&gt;radar&lt;/i&gt; is the principal sensor used in systems like automatic emergency braking across the industry. It has no intersection with any of the parking stuff because it generally has to ignore stationary objects to be useful (hence the whole &amp;quot;Teslas crashing full speed into stopped vehicles&amp;quot; thing).</text></item><item><author>judge2020</author><text>Munro’s cost breakdown is much more informative in just how much it’ll save in terms of parts&amp;#x2F;labor. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;LS3Vk0NPFDE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;LS3Vk0NPFDE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;In general the ‘harm to consumers’ is really just making it more likely they damage the car in a parking lot or their garage, which tells you where their priorities are (sales, Automotive gross profit). Assuming occupancy network works, the only real blind spot left is if something in front of the car changes in between it turning off and on (assuming occupancy will &amp;#x27;remember&amp;#x27; the map around it when it goes to sleep).&lt;p&gt;Also, Tesla’s strategy for safety is seemingly “excel in industry standard tests, ie. IIHS and EuroNCAP”, so this might be a case of the measure becoming a target.</text></item><item><author>flashgordon</author><text>That was hilarious.  Basically (unless this needs a reframing&amp;#x2F;realignment&amp;#x2F;repositioning&amp;#x2F;reorienting):&lt;p&gt;Q: &amp;quot;are less sensors less safe&amp;#x2F;effective?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;A: &amp;quot;well more sensors are costly to the organization and add more tech debt so safety is orthogonal and not worth answering&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>CharlesW</author><text>I thought it was telling that Andrej immediately &amp;quot;reframed&amp;quot; the question because Lex asked the &amp;quot;wrong question&amp;quot;. This is a classic evasion technique one learns from experience and&amp;#x2F;or media training. Lex&amp;#x27;s comment immediately after was a clever and gentle dig at Andrej&amp;#x27;s response.&lt;p&gt;It seemed like all the &amp;quot;full cost&amp;quot; negatives Andrej mentioned were related to Tesla&amp;#x27;s ability to execute, and not what would actually produce better results. Tesla would have to be able to reliably procure parts, write reliable firmware, create designs and processes that won&amp;#x27;t increase unexpected assembly line stops, etc.&lt;p&gt;Regarding results, the best Andrej can do is, &amp;quot;In this case, we looked at using it and not using it, and the delta was not massive.&amp;quot; In other words, the results are better, but not enough to make up for the fact that Telsa can&amp;#x27;t support additional sensors without incurring a prohibitive amount of additional risk &lt;i&gt;to Tesla&lt;/i&gt;. Risk to passengers doesn&amp;#x27;t appear to be a consideration.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Reason077</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;”The first famous autopilot crash was because a white semi-truck was washed out by the sun and confused for an overhead sign.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s literally trivial for a car with radar to detect.”&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That crash occurred on a car which &lt;i&gt;was&lt;/i&gt; using radar. Automotive radar generally doesn’t help to detect stationary objects.&lt;p&gt;Further, that crash occurred on a vehicle with the original autopilot version (AP1), which was based on Mobileye technology with Tesla’s autopilot software layered on top. Detection capabilities would have been similar to any vehicle using Mobileye for AEB at the time.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]</title><url>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W1JBAfV4Io</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>RC_ITR</author><text>The first famous autopilot crash was because a white semi-truck was washed out by the sun and confused for an overhead sign.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s literally trivial for a car with radar to detect.&lt;p&gt;Amazing how people talk about stuff they have no idea about when it comes to Tesla.</text></item><item><author>stefan_</author><text>This thread is unhelpfully mixing radar and ultrasonic sensors. Ultrasonic sensors, as your video explains, are primarily used as a parking aid; they are tuned for too low a distance to be helpful in just about any kind of driving scenario at speed.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, &lt;i&gt;radar&lt;/i&gt; is the principal sensor used in systems like automatic emergency braking across the industry. It has no intersection with any of the parking stuff because it generally has to ignore stationary objects to be useful (hence the whole &amp;quot;Teslas crashing full speed into stopped vehicles&amp;quot; thing).</text></item><item><author>judge2020</author><text>Munro’s cost breakdown is much more informative in just how much it’ll save in terms of parts&amp;#x2F;labor. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;LS3Vk0NPFDE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;LS3Vk0NPFDE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;In general the ‘harm to consumers’ is really just making it more likely they damage the car in a parking lot or their garage, which tells you where their priorities are (sales, Automotive gross profit). Assuming occupancy network works, the only real blind spot left is if something in front of the car changes in between it turning off and on (assuming occupancy will &amp;#x27;remember&amp;#x27; the map around it when it goes to sleep).&lt;p&gt;Also, Tesla’s strategy for safety is seemingly “excel in industry standard tests, ie. IIHS and EuroNCAP”, so this might be a case of the measure becoming a target.</text></item><item><author>flashgordon</author><text>That was hilarious.  Basically (unless this needs a reframing&amp;#x2F;realignment&amp;#x2F;repositioning&amp;#x2F;reorienting):&lt;p&gt;Q: &amp;quot;are less sensors less safe&amp;#x2F;effective?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;A: &amp;quot;well more sensors are costly to the organization and add more tech debt so safety is orthogonal and not worth answering&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>CharlesW</author><text>I thought it was telling that Andrej immediately &amp;quot;reframed&amp;quot; the question because Lex asked the &amp;quot;wrong question&amp;quot;. This is a classic evasion technique one learns from experience and&amp;#x2F;or media training. Lex&amp;#x27;s comment immediately after was a clever and gentle dig at Andrej&amp;#x27;s response.&lt;p&gt;It seemed like all the &amp;quot;full cost&amp;quot; negatives Andrej mentioned were related to Tesla&amp;#x27;s ability to execute, and not what would actually produce better results. Tesla would have to be able to reliably procure parts, write reliable firmware, create designs and processes that won&amp;#x27;t increase unexpected assembly line stops, etc.&lt;p&gt;Regarding results, the best Andrej can do is, &amp;quot;In this case, we looked at using it and not using it, and the delta was not massive.&amp;quot; In other words, the results are better, but not enough to make up for the fact that Telsa can&amp;#x27;t support additional sensors without incurring a prohibitive amount of additional risk &lt;i&gt;to Tesla&lt;/i&gt;. Risk to passengers doesn&amp;#x27;t appear to be a consideration.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eightysixfour</author><text>Not a fan of Tesla removing the sensors but a vehicle on a highway that isn’t moving the same direction as the car is not “trivial” with radar. No AEBs that use radar look for completely stopped objects after a certain speed because the number of false positives is so high.</text></comment>