Tesla will no longer use ultrasonic sensors for its vehicles in future production and will start relying on camera-only autopilot moving forward.
Tech News Boy writes that Tesla is phasing out its ultrasonic sensors to include camera-only "Tesla Vision" in their driver assistant system as announced on October 4.,
Tesla Is Temporarily Losing Some Features For The Upgrade
Jalopnik states that the ultrasonic sensors that Tesla had originally installed in rather vehicles are most commonly used as sensors for short-range parking because its twelve ultrasonic sensors were functional and reliable.
But, according to The Verge, the ultrasonic sensors will not be available this month for the new Model 3 and Model Y Teslas in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Taiwan despite their remarkable abilities.
Tesla will shift from the sensors into a camera-only Tesla Vision driver-assist tech, which is reported to have a vision-only autopilot more precise than radars, according to Yahoo Life.
However, with the new changes, the vehicles will have some features limited or disabled as some owners may lose access to features like Park Assist, Autopark, Summon, and Smart Summon, The Verge writes.
Read More: Tesla Has Delivered 343,830 Vehicles During Q3 2022
Engadget says that these features will eventually be restored through over-the-air updates, and the company believes that the changes should not have any effect on the crash safety ratings of the Teslas.
Despite this, the company said that they intend to restore the features that will be lost in transition once they have been adjusted to perform better in the camera-based system.
"Given the incremental improvements already achieved with Tesla Vision, and our road map of future Autopilot improvements and abilities," says Tesla, Tech News Boy reports.
"We are confident that this is the best strategy for the future of Autopilot and the safety of our customers," the company added.
Tesla Is Following Through Last Year's Decisions
The company had announced a year prior to pulling the plugs on ultrasonic sensors that they would not be continuing the shipment of cars with radars, and it has finally happened.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, according to The Verge, had told members that the move to a camera-based Tesla Vision system for driver assistance is based on the belief that cars should be able to be driven with cameras online.
Electrek also commented that because Musk believes that cars and humans are alike in the sense that they can have natural neural nets in their brains, it is best to replicate that and not pollute the system by adding radars.
However, the shift away from radar last year did not go as smoothly as planned, as it did not go without any problems.
The Verge notes that there was a rise in anomaly reports regarding phantom braking in Teslas, which made the car's driver assistance system apply brakes even if they were not activated.
This follows the sensor mistakenly believing that a collision will happen, warranting attention from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Tesla now believes that today, their cars have tremendously improved, or at least have maintained their active safety ratings well in the United States and Europe.
Nevertheless, the automaker wholeheartedly believes that its vision-based system will be a better approach to Tesla and to navigation in general, Electrek writes.
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