A fan of Tesla might think that the automaker just can’t catch a break when it comes to its autonomous driving tech. It’s already subject to several federal investigations over its marketing and deployment of technologies like Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD), and as of last week, we can add another to the list involving around 2.4 million Tesla vehicles. This time, regulators are assessing the cars’ performance in low-visibility conditions after four documented accidents, one of which resulted in a fatality.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says this new probe is looking at instances when FSD was engaged when it was foggy or a lot of dust was in the air, or even when glare from the sun blinded the car’s cameras and this caused a problem.
What the car can “see” is the big issue here. It’s also what Tesla bet its future on.
First of all, Elon isn’t that smart.
Second, it would cost more money to put multiple types of sensors on the car. Spending money bad!
Personal speculation based on Elon’s past behavior follows:
Plus he wanted to focus on visual recognition stuff likely because it would have multiple possible income streams compared to a sensor that is just good at keeping a car from running into things. Focusing on the visible light spectrum means the possibilities for facial recognition, data collection by a fleet of Teslas, including the ones people bought, taking pictures, etc.
Basically he wanted to focus on the one thing that seemed more profitable and didn’t want to spend money on that stupid thing that just kept the car from crashing.