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Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

reuters.com

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Re: Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

#11

Post by bpodgursky »

dragontamer wrote: post #7
TameAntelope wrote: post #3

I'm having trouble figuring out if this is just another battle in Elon's War with Regulators, if this is NHTSA being too slow to keep up with evolving technology, or if Teslas without radar are actually worse, deserving the loss of these designations. Or what the mix is of all three of those things, I guess.

There's all sorts of rumors for why Elon / Tesla is doing this. The most probable rumor IMO is that the chip-shortage has hit the Tesla radar especially hard. Instead of idling plants (like other automakers https://www.autonews.com/manufacturing/ford-idles-f-150-plan... ), Tesla decided to cut out the radar entirely. That means cars can be produced, and sold, without these radars / chips.

Tesla has been pushing camera-only autonomous driving (ditching LIDAR) since well before the chip shortage. I would assume this is part of the same drive.

Re: Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

#12

Post by akmarinov »

TameAntelope wrote: post #3

I'm having trouble figuring out if this is just another battle in Elon's War with Regulators, if this is NHTSA being too slow to keep up with evolving technology, or if Teslas without radar are actually worse, deserving the loss of these designations. Or what the mix is of all three of those things, I guess.

Well they’re not removing radar on 3/Y in Europe…

Re: Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

#13

Post by paxys »

I'm having difficulty understanding the timeline here.

- Tesla is going to remove radar from new Model 3 & Y cars starting later this month.

- Tesla is going to add back the removed features via software updates at some point in the future.

- All Model 3 & Y cars sold since April 27 will not have these NHTSA check marks.

Why is there a one month overlap? What's different about the cars shipped on April 27?

Re: Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

#15

Post by PragmaticPulp »

TameAntelope wrote: post #3

I'm having trouble figuring out if this is just another battle in Elon's War with Regulators, if this is NHTSA being too slow to keep up with evolving technology, or if Teslas without radar are actually worse, deserving the loss of these designations. Or what the mix is of all three of those things, I guess.

NHTSA tested Tesla cars that had radar modules. Tesla has decided to remove the radar modules and use only vision systems. The new vision-only models are not NHTSA certified yet, so the NHTSA had to clarify that the safety certification only applies to vehicles shipped before the vision-only transition. That is, any vehicle with radar is still certified, but the new vehicles will apparently ship untested.

Re: Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

#16

Post by _Microft »

bpodgursky wrote: post #11
dragontamer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's all sorts of rumors for why Elon / Tesla is doing this. The most probable rumor IMO is that the chip-shortage has hit the Tesla radar especially hard. Instead of idling plants (like other automakers https://www.autonews.com/manufacturing/ford-idles-f-150-plan... ), Tesla decided to cut out the radar entirely. That means cars can be produced, and sold, without these radars / chips.

Tesla has been pushing camera-only autonomous driving (ditching LIDAR) since well before the chip shortage. I would assume this is part of the same drive.

Tesla did not ditch LIDAR, they never actually used it (not in production cars at least?).

Re: Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

#17

Post by TeMPOraL »

TameAntelope wrote: post #3

I'm having trouble figuring out if this is just another battle in Elon's War with Regulators, if this is NHTSA being too slow to keep up with evolving technology, or if Teslas without radar are actually worse, deserving the loss of these designations. Or what the mix is of all three of those things, I guess.

Despite the occasional media spin, Musk isn't waging a war with regulators (the way some well-known startups are). He had a spat with SEC over his dumb Twitter shenanigans, but other than that, AFAIK, both Tesla and SpaceX are mostly on friendly terms with regulators. In particular, NHTSA ratings were always a strong marketing angle for Tesla.

Re: Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

#18

Post by bpodgursky »

TameAntelope wrote: post #3

I'm having trouble figuring out if this is just another battle in Elon's War with Regulators, if this is NHTSA being too slow to keep up with evolving technology, or if Teslas without radar are actually worse, deserving the loss of these designations. Or what the mix is of all three of those things, I guess.

> The agency said it "only includes check marks for the model production range for the vehicles tested."

It seems pretty clear to me that the NHTSA just hasn't tested this version, so it won't certify them.

Re: Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

#19

Post by natch »

tapoxi wrote: post #2

Why are they removing these features from a car with a promise of patching them back in later? Shouldn’t that be ready to go before committing to a hardware change?

They test software changes with different beta fleets long before releasing them. So it could be that the feature is already there.

Also there’s a lag time between manufacturing and delivery, so that gives them time to do a software update if needed. And it’s possible the cars manufactured this way will have the software to support vision only from day one.

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