What is the new 'Tesla Vision'?

Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) and its CEO Elon Musk have repeatedly talked about moving its cars to a complete camera-based autopilot system called ‘Tesla Vision’.

The company released its plans yesterday to continue the transition. The current cars being manufactured use a combination of camera and radar system for its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features (FSD).

Shares of Tesla are down 17% year-to-date and up a staggering 270% for the trailing one-year period after the strong run in its stock last year. The company has the highest market capitalization among auto peers by some distance. Its currently trading at a valuation of around $585 billion.

More details on the Tesla Vision

Tesla announced that its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles for the North American market will not be equipped with radar starting in May 2021.

The company is focusing on transitioning Model 3 and Model Y to Tesla vision as they are the higher volume vehicles, which will allow the electric vehicle manufacturer to gather and analyze large amounts of data potentially speeding up the roll-out of features in the future. All other models and vehicles built for markets outside North America will continue to feature both camera and radar.

Some of the features will be limited during this transition period including Autosteer which will be limited to a maximum speed of 75 mph and a longer minimum following distance. The features will be restored via over-the-air updates in the coming weeks.

Tesla Vision vs. other technologies

The company as well as Musk have been vocal about their criticism of the LiDAR systems used by other companies for their autopilot features due to the technology’s prohibitively high cost as compared to a system based on cameras.

LiDAR is a type of sensor that uses lasers to build a three-dimensional map of the world around the car.

In the past, Elon Musk has said the following regarding LiDAR:

And Andrej Karpathy, director of artificial intelligence and Autopilot Vision at Tesla, has this to say about LiDAR: