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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].”
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