Tesla Autopilot drives into Wile E Coyote fake road wall in camera vs lidar test

[mahatmakanejeeves]

TESLA
Tesla Autopilot drives into Wile E Coyote fake road wall in camera vs lidar test

Fred Lambert | Mar 16 2025 - 10:21 am PT


Tesla Autopilot drove into Wile E. Coyote-style fake road wall in the middle of the road in a camera versus lidar test.

While most companies developing self-driving technologies have been using a mix of sensors (cameras, radar, lidar, and ultrasonic), Tesla insists on only using cameras. … The automaker removed radars from its vehicle lineup and even deactivated radars already installed in existing vehicles. … The strategy has yet to pay off as Tesla’s systems are still stuck at level 2 driver assist systems.

CEO Elon Musk claims that Tesla’s advantage is that once it solves autonomy, it will be able to scale faster than competitors because its vision plus neural net system is designed to work like a human driver and, therefore, will be able to adapt to any road.

Critics have pushed back against those claims, especially since Musk mentioned Tesla achieving “level 5 autonomy”, which means “in any conditions,” and cameras have limitations on that front that are fixed by lidar sensors. … A new video by engineering Youtuber Mark Rober has provided a very interesting demonstration of that very problem:

{snip}