Tesla Inc. announced on Tuesday that it will stop using ultrasonic sensors in its cars as of this month and instead use cameras for all of its safety and driver-assistance capabilities. The front and rear bumpers of Tesla cars currently feature 12 ultrasonic sensors, and short-range sound sensors are mostly used for parking and object detection.
“It’ll save them a few dollars. I mean those things are pretty cheap,” Guidehouse Insights analyst Sam Abuelsamid said, referring to ultrasonic sensors. “It’ll also save them some chips.”
Tesla last year started dropping radar sensors amid a chip shortage
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has claimed that the automaker can achieve complete autonomy using only cameras, but he has fallen short of his goal of introducing driverless taxis. Following crashes, the manufacturer is under increased regulatory, legal, and public scrutiny about its Autopilot technology.
Tesla announced that it will globally remove ultrasonic sensors from the Model 3 and Model Y over the coming months, with the Model S and Model X following in 2023. According to Tesla, the switch will temporarily restrict autonomous parking functions but have no impact on crash safety ratings.
Automaker relies only on cameras and artificial intelligence to help a vehicle recognize the environment
It is yet unclear whether this will be “two leaps forward and one step backwards” or the opposite, according to Carnegie Mellon University electrical and computer engineering professor Raj Rajkumar.
Tesla relies only on cameras and computer intelligence to help a car detect the environment, in contrast to other self-driving tech companies and automakers that use many sensors, such as pricey lidars. “The question is how well the cameras can see nearby the car, which sometimes can be limited,” said Professor Philip Koopman of Carnegie Mellon University.
On Tuesday, a well-known Tesla researcher who goes by the handle “Green” on Twitter claimed that Autopilot also uses ultrasonic sensors as a “fail-safe” mechanism for lane changes.
“Autopilot’s effect on safety is probably minimal. On the other hand, manual parking may have a significant impact on safety “Parking bells, he continued, “assist motorists to avoid running into walls and other obstructions.”