For many years, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sworn up and down that the use of radar and lidar sensors for autonomous driving is a waste of time.
His counterargument has been that cameras and powerful AI-powered hardware are all you need for safe self-driving, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.
That decision is now risking a major roadblocks for the company in New Jersey. As The Verge reports, a bill that’s coming up for a vote this year would require fully autonomous vehicles to use both cameras and at least two other sensing technologies — in most cases, lidar and radar.
If the bill were enacted, it would effectively banning Tesla’s fully autonomous fleet of Robotaxis. Other states could soon follow — including New York, which is pondering a similar bill — in a domino effect that could completely derail the automaker’s current trajectory.
“This is not anti-Tesla,” bill sponsor and senator Andrew Zwicker (D-NJ) told The Verge. “I’m pro-New Jersey safety.”
Zwicker argued that there isn’t enough evidence to suggest that a single sensor, plus software “can handle situations that humans can.”
“Can we get there? Maybe,” he told the publication. “But we’re not there yet.”
Relying entirely on cameras that can be blinded by the Sun, fog, or heavy rain is part of Musk’s major bet on AI. He has argued that adding extra sensors may end up being less safe thanks to what he called “sensor contention” in a tweet last year.
“We turned off the radars in Teslas to increase safety,” he wrote. “Cameras [for the win].”
However, Musk is largely alone in that belief. Competitors, most notably Waymo, have made major headway by relying on both cameras and other sensor tech, such as lidar and radar, which perform far better in inclement weather and the dark.
“To run 24/7 across the majority of public roads in New Jersey today, it needs lidar,” Carnegie Mellon professor and autonomous vehicle expert Philip Koopman told The Verge. “It’s pretty clear that today camera-only technology is not up to the challenge.”
Tesla’s current fleet of 42 fully autonomous Robotaxis on public Texas roads is still dwarfed by Waymo’s, which has 577 authorized robotaxis in the state, in addition to several thousand more spread across ten US metropolitan areas.
That’s despite Musk promising Tesla’s fleet would grow to hundreds of thousands by the end of this year, a characteristically brazen prediction with little bearing on reality.
The company’s slow rollout has been mired by setbacks, which Musk has rationalized is the result of Tesla being “paranoid about safety.” The EV maker has gone to great lengths to censor the circumstances surrounding the Robotaxi crashes it has reported to regulators so far.
Unsurprisingly, Tesla is already lobbying to fight the New Jersey bill. Zwicker told The Verge that company representatives are discussing the subject with lawmakers.
The EV maker has also turned to New Jersey residents, telling its customers in the state in a message that they should “contact members of the New Jersey legislature” to oppose the bill.
It’s a precarious situation, especially considering the complete lack of comprehensive federal laws providing oversight over the rollout of autonomous vehicles. Each state has been left to fend for itself, a legal patchwork that’s allowing Tesla to push forward despite safety concerns.
More on Tesla’s robotaxis: Tesla’s Robotaxis Are a Complete Disaster
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