Tesla’s Radar Pivot
In a confusing move, Tesla has filed to use a new radar in their vehicles according to FCC entries published on June 7th.
CEO Elon Musk has famously been confident that Teslas would not be using radar for their autopilot systems, preferring to use cameras instead, as roadways are based on visual information.
He did say he’d be open to changing that if a high resolution radar was ever to be invented, but at the time he was confident such a device did not exist.
It would be interesting if this radar ended up being the sort of hi-res device Elon was talking about, something that could make the suite of sensors and cameras feeding data into the FSD even better. That’s something that could help smooth out the wrinkles keeping FSD from reaching actual full autonomy.
The thought of another hardware upgrade, however, is making Tesla owners wary. In 2016, Tesla boasted that all vehicles were equipped with all the hardware they’d need to achieve full self-driving.
That plan already changed once with an upgrade to the onboard computer, so it’s maybe not a stretch to be worried about another upgrade making their vehicles obsolete, or requiring a drive to the service center for an upgrade.
But until anything concrete develops, it’s just an interesting piece of tech. It could even be for a different project altogether! Stay tuned folks.