Some early Tesla Model 3 Highland owners aren’t very happy with Tesla Vision
The first deliveries of Tesla’s highly anticipated Model 3 ‘Highland’ were received by European customers last week, and they quickly took to the internet to reveal what they like… and what they don’t like.
Within EVs discovered one wire on the r/TeslaModel3 subreddit where customers gave their first impressions of their recently purchased updated Highland models. It was typical subreddit stuff, with insights into comfort and overall build quality all seeming pretty positive.
However, there was a common thread of dissatisfaction surrounding the Tesla Vision system, which already exists drawn criticism from certain quarters after Musk made the decision to remove ultrasonic sensors for short-range object detection and instead rely solely on his cameras.
A Reddit The user explained how the new Model 3 told him to stop immediately even though there was nothing in front of the car. Another time it said there was a 50 cm (19.6 in) space in the front, when in reality there was only 10 cm (3.9 in).
Of course, it is very difficult to verify the purchases and user experiences of Reddit posters, but removing ultrasonic sensors has already proven to be a difficult problem.
According to the website Notebook controla number of Tesla owners turned to Reddit (it seems to be the soapbox of choice) after their front cameras fogged up and stopped working in cold weather, rendering several features, including the $10,000 Full Self Driving Beta, useless.
Tesla is one of the few automotive companies to do away with ultrasonic sensors, as these are now ubiquitous devices found on virtually every car with parking sensors, as they allow the vehicle’s onboard computer to effectively “see” and measure distances between objects.
In addition, every vehicle with any level of autonomous functionality has a combination of sensors and radar to operate safely.
To take care of the problem
Tesla’s original Autopilot suite included eight cameras, a forward-facing radar and a host of ultrasonic sensors, but Musk decided to take the system back to basics as he believed the different pieces of technology sometimes contradicted each other.
He said in a recent one Tweet on
“People drive with eyes and biological neural nets, so (it) makes sense that cameras and silicon neural nets are (the) only way to achieve a general solution for self-driving.”
As a result, the company announced last year that all Model 3 and Model Y cars built for certain regions would no longer be built with ultrasonic sensors and would instead rely solely on Tesla Vision. This included North America, Europe, the Middle East, Taiwan and Korea.
Tesla then had to roll out a software update to enable Tesla Vision to offer Park Assist, Auto Park, Summon and Smart Summon functionality – options that were available on cars equipped with ultrasonic sensors.
The Model 3 Highland has yet to go on sale in the US, so it’s hard to say whether Tesla will offer just its Vision package or a more advanced radar system in the final production cars.
But if the Reddit forums are to be believed, Musk may want to reconsider his camera-only strategy.