Tesla to remove ultrasonic sensors from vehicles

SAN FRANCISCO Reuters - Tesla Inc said on Tuesday it will remove ultrasonic sensors from its vehicles starting this month, as it moves ahead with using only cameras in its safety and driver-assistant features.

The Tesla vehicles now have 12 ultrasonic sensors on the front and rear bumpers, and short-range sound sensors are mainly used in parking applications and to detect close objects.

Guidehouse Insights analyst Sam Abuelsamid said that those things are pretty cheap and that's why they're referring to ultrasonic sensors. It'll save them some chips. Elon Musk said that Tesla can achieve full autonomy with cameras only, but he has missed his targets to roll out self-driving taxis that require no drivers.

After crashes, the Automaker is facing more regulatory, legal and public scrutiny over its Autopilot system.

Tesla plans to remove ultrasonic sensors from Model 3 and Model Y around the world over the next few months, followed by Model S and Model X in 2023.

The move will temporarily limit automated parking features, but it won't affect crash safety ratings, according to Tesla.

Rajkumar, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, said it is still to be seen whether this will be two steps forward and one step backwards.

While self-driving tech firms and automakers use multiple sensors like expensive lidars, Tesla relies only on cameras and artificial intelligence to help a vehicle recognize the environment.

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.

A widely followed Tesla researcher, known as Green on Twitter, said on Tuesday that ultrasonic sensors are also used in Autopilot as a fail-safe feature for changing lanes.

The safety of autopilot isn't likely to be affected. He said that parking chimes help people avoid hitting walls and other obstacles, because it's a big impact on the safety of manual parking on the other hand.