NHTSA has escalated its investigation into Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” system’s inability to handle reduced visibility conditions, upgrading the probe to an Engineering Analysis covering an estimated 3,203,754 vehicles — the step that typically precedes a recall.
The agency found that FSD’s degradation detection system fails to warn drivers when cameras are blinded by common road conditions like sun glare and fog, and that Tesla may be under-reporting related crashes.
The central finding is damning for Tesla’s camera-only approach to autonomous driving. According to NHTSA, FSD’s degradation detection system — the software designed to recognize when cameras can’t see properly and alert the driver — fails under common roadway conditions.
NHTSA states that in the crashes it reviewed, the system “did not detect common roadway conditions that impaired camera visibility and/or provide alerts when camera performance had deteriorated until immediately before the crash occurred.”
Worse, the vehicles either lost track of or completely missed other cars directly ahead of them before impact. The system essentially went blind and didn’t know it — or told the driver too late to do anything about it.
Hyundai’s system of TACC is also bad in that way. It insists that its blind even though hours of diagnostics have been run on it and reported no error codes. The auto-follow does not work anymore at all, but it lets you turn on autofollow and set the distance - creating the expectation that it is working, until it tries to run up someone’s bumper on the highway. Point being, this software is hard - and even after the years and hundreds of millions Tesla has spent on its engineering, it’s proving impossible to automate some challenging scenarios. (I’ve had good “blindness” warnings from my Tesla’s “Autosteer” for the life of the car).
However, let’s be clear about status here so that we don’t end up with the round robin we have on the paid Tesla board. Tesla’s FSD is being investigated for some possible limitations in FSD. No final judgement has been reached although this announcement is triggered by advancement to the highest level of analysis. Consequently, we don’t yet know whether a recall of any kind will be ordered, much less the nature of the recall, Tesla having responded satisfactorily to many prior recalls with over-the-air fixes. Yes, the article sounds a lot more serious … welcome to journalism.
You can’t recall a dirty camera with an over-the-air update - unless you are simply going to have FSD completely turn off when a camera is dirty. Certainly lowers the utility of FSD if that is the solution.
I seem to recall someone being concerned about this very thing just a few months ago.
One can speculate left, right, and center, but the bottom line is all we know at this point is that they are in an analysis queue. Even if a flaw is found to exist, there is only speculation at this point as to what kind of response, if any, will be required. Every windscreen I’ve ever seen can be made opaque by natural conditions, requiring the driver to manually clear it in order to safely proceed … should all windscreens by recalled?
Well, every windshield can be made opaque by natural conditions: snow, ice, fog, yet we haven’t banned cars because the windshields aren’t perfect. We have required that they have some mimnimum capabilities: windshield wipers, for example. It doesn’t seem unreasonable that FSD be un-permitted unless there is some system to keep them operational in all but the most dire circumstance, and that the car be disabled unless they can “see”. See?
If the car was sold as something specifically not requiring any action - like “full self cleaning” then ya, it may perhaps it may need to be recalled.
If I purchased car with tires that were billed as “full self-inflating” I would be pretty bummed if I then had to inflate them myself. I would probably want my money back.
That’s actually the solution. Shut FSD off until the driver cleans the camera.
Same thing with driving in fog. If the camera can’t see, shut down FSD and let the driver decide if he wants to continue driving in the fog unassisted.
Of course, our actual situation is that there is no Full Self Cleaning product, either described on its own or as a part of FSD so how much handling of dirt is not a question of advertising.
Musk has a better solution. If he can’t make his “self-driving” cars work, have a person pull them around in a display case saying that autonmous is the future. LOL!
Waymo is way ahead of Tesla on this. They already have an integrated, automated sensor cleaning system featuring air puffers, liquid sprayers, and wipers to keep cameras and LiDAR clean of debris in real time.
By “first principles” did you mean “last principles?” LMFAO!
I can’t say that I agree with all Tesla is doing, wrt cleaning sensors. But I have had my model 3 give me warnings that my cameras are dirty and FSD will be degraded. If it is the front it will automatically wash the windshield. I’ve also had it say the sun glare is too much and I must take control for both the front cameras and one of the side cameras.
Edit: I should also add that after a rain I’ve had a drop of water on the rear camera that obscured the view but FSD works
