Tesla Vision fails as owners complain of Model 3 cameras fogging up in cold weather::A number of Tesla owners have taken to Reddit after their front cameras fogged up and stopped working in cold weather, leaving several features, including the US$10,000 FSD Beta, inoperable. Tesla has declined to assist to these customers, despite many of their vehicles being covered under warranty.
Every other car uses LIDAR and Elon thinks he’s such a forward thinker for shunning it. So dumb
Think of it this way: He is such a visionary that fog is blinding his vehicles.
Radar. Only a small handful of cars have LIDAR. But your point still stands. Outside of Elon being a humongous douche and completely unpredictable, the lack of sensors is the major reason for not wanting a Tesla.
Very few production vehicles have lidar. Like almost zero
The driving assist features of my Honda CR-V also stop working whenever there’s snow or ice on the front of the car. Bad design for cold climates is not just a Tesla issue.
You shouldn’t be out of park while there’s snow or ice on your vehicle. Clean off your fucking vehicles.
Of course, and I do. I’m talking about the snow or ice that accumulates around the front bumper and grille while driving down the highway. At some point the car will notify me that driver assistance features are no longer available due to the sensor being obstructed.
I mean the stuff builds up on the front of your car while driving. Moisture sticks to the front and then refreezes.
As yet another guy who is sick and tired of clumps of snow flying off of people’s vehicles onto my windshield, thank you for your service.
His argument makes sense. Human vision is not too different from just a camera. I see the argument for lidar but it can also be a bit more expensive to accomplish the same task. I’m open to listening to your argument as to why lidar technology would be a better path for self driving cars.
It seems to me that we want to make self-driving cars safer that human drivers. And to make them safer, you want them to use every kind of sensor that is practical to avoid accidents. LIDAR alone isn’t the path. Neither is visual alone.
Also, suggesting that a car with cameras is equivalent to a human with a human brain that has eyes attached to it is a little silly.
The eye is the fucking whole argument for the stupid creationism. The most complex piece of machinery in the human body and shit.
That man thinks he’s god, to create similar functionality.
Has he fucking tried to keep his eyes open in fucking cold weather?
Why not just use humans eyes outside of earth’s atmosphere?!
He’s just so fucking stupid. Rich and stupid. The shit he spends his “hard earned” money would be so much better and efficient if spent controlled by mostly anyone else.
That’s ironic, because the evolution of the human eye is a good example of a case where iterative change has led to a clunky and suboptimal design.
I suppose that analogy is oddly appropriate for Tesla Vision.
Yeah i’m sure all these lemmy know it alls could produce a functional self driving car
Humans don’t just use eyes when driving. Sound, and touch also play big roles, for example when it comes hearing ambulances nearing or to feel road conditions. And we have a really good sense for depth and distance, that’s much harder to replicate with just cameras. And even Humans aren’t allowed to drive with headphones on (at least here in Germany), because it’s dangerous to limit the amount of sensors available to us.
Besides that, even our sight is faaaar from perfect either and there are quite a lot of accidents caused by drivers just not seeing another driver or some other obstacle. Our vision is pretty good, yes, but the amount of guessing our brain has to do for us to actually see what we do isn’t exactly small.
I don’t know about you, but I would prefer a self driving vehicle to be safer than a human. Because if it isn’t, why bother? And how could it be safer, if it uses less information than humans, who are shit drivers already?
And yes, lidar is more expensive but so what? It’s cheap enough to add it to phones. Expensive phones, yes but in the grand scheme of things, they’re still quite a bit cheaper than a car and Teslas aren’t exactly cheap cars either. And Tesla used to include radar in their cars until they didn’t. And the cars didn’t get that much cheaper…
And to give a positive example: Mercedes Benz are the first to launch a Level 3 autonomous vehicle. And guess what? It uses Lidar, audio sensors, road condition sensors, etc. and actually achieved L3 autonomy, while Tesla’s FSD is constantly tested to be one if the worst performing Level 2 systems in the industry, despite their claims of greatness…
Lidar is not just more of expensive, it is extremely fragile in a vehicle which is bouncing around at highway speeds.
Well, doesn’t seem to bother any other car manufacturer much. Probably because the benefits outweigh the complexity disadvantages
Which car manufacturers do you think are shipping lidar to consumers?
Mercedes-Benz is. And others will certainly follow since Mercedes-Benz are the first to reach L3 autonomy
Human vision is not too different from just a camera.
Oh yeah, human vision also causes people to mistake a blue truck for the sky and drive right into it. /s
It was a white/gold truck, not a blue/black truck…
Hah even worse
Literally yes? Humans hit way dumber shit every single day.
Sure but usually because they weren’t looking or couldn’t see it…not because they mistook a truck for the sky or some of the other dumb shit computer vision algorithms do.
couldn’t see it
Not seeing something and mistaking something for another thing are pretty different problems. One can be corrected with glasses while correcting the other requires a brain transplant (or a brain in the first place).
Edit: or, ya know adding another sensor would work and make it so the vision system wouldn’t have to be so good at object recognition and could just not hit things…but we can’t add the couple hundred dollars worth of parts for that.
That’s literally what happened.
The obvious argument is that eyes are far from perfect and fail us all the time, especially when going fast. We are quite good at making up for it, but saying “We have eyes so my self driving cars will have eyes too” is pretty fucking dumb.
We also recognized that we need to keep our windshields clear of fog in order for our eyes to work properly.
That argument doesn’t make sense because human vision isn’t that great either. When it’s dark or raining or snowing or foggy our vision is pretty shit.
I’m not saying LIDAR is better but rather point out that actually you want different types of sensors to accurately assess the traffic, because just one type of sensor isn’t likely to cut it. If you look at other manufacturers they’re not using only LIDAR or only camera. Some use LIDAR + camera, some user RADAR + camera, some user LIDAR, RADAR and camera. And I’m pretty sure that as manufacturers will aim for higher SAE levels they will add even more sensor into their cars. It’s only Tesla who thinks they can somehow do more with less.
I think it’s undeniable the combination of camera and lidar will be the best solution. I just hope this can be coss effective. Maybe over time we can be able to adapt and improve the technology and make it more economical so that it is safer for our roads.
People here have no idea what they are talking about, or how absurdly difficult it is to actually deploy lidar to a consumer vehicle. There’s a reason why Tesla is shipping more advanced driver assist tech than anyone else, and it’s because they went against the venture capitalist Lidar obsession which is holding everyone back. There’s a reason why there are basically zero cars shipping with lidar today.
You don’t need mm depth maps to do self driving. Not that you get that from lidar on rough roads anyway.
There are some test cars with lidar. It has the spinny thing on top and looks pretty interesting. I believe those cars are pretty successful. I don’t think they’re being mass produced though, because the costs might be a little prohibitive.
The most advanced that’s not even on autonomous level 3. It’s funny that Mercedes is the first to get level 3 approval in California and they don’t even boasting that as much.
That aside, a secondary sensor that help verifying if the vision get it right would be nice. It could be just a radar or whatever. Imagine if the vision fail to recognize a boy in a Halloween costume as a person, at least the secondary sensor will the car to stop due to contradict perception.
I might be misremembering but I think Teslas are actually more capable, they’re just deliberately stating they’re SAE level 2 so they could skirt the law and play loose and dangerous with their public beta test.
I haven’t researched this enough, but Tesla says that they are level 3, but never bother to get the actual approval is like how I kept saying that I’m smart, but too lazy back in my school years.
Put your money where your mouth is. Life are at stake here.
Think of that Coyote and the roadrunner cartoon. If there’s a graffiti that looks like a tunnel the coyote may run into the tunnel based on vision alone, but a secondary sensor will help telling that there’s a wall.
Irl, If the vision failed to recognize that there’s something on the road, at least a secondary sensor will protest that there’s something on the road.
You can also test driving in direct sunlight without sunglasses or the suncover. You get notifications and beeping noises whenever the sun hits them directly, making the lane assist (I refuse to call it autopilot) quite irrational in most weather… It’s actually worse for me than driving in cold weather.
While I disagree with you that you think his argument makes sense, I’m upvoting your comment because it encourages discourse and provides more insight and depth to this topic. I wish more people on Lemmy did the same.
What irks me about this is I own an ev (not a Tesla obviously fiat 500e) and I slog/bash that thing through mud/snow/rain/several inches of water on the regular and even do what id consider rally driving with it at times and it’s fine. You know why? Because this was always a Tesla engineering failure and not an ev failure. But it sucks because people will think ev= unable to get wet which just is not true.
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The quality control is seemingly nonexistent though. The sucker that had theirs kick the bucket after getting rained on probably doesn’t care how well the core features work.
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and submerge the battery.
So why wouldn’t the battery be sealed? Why is this a mode of failure that you believe is somehow acceptable? Short of the car going the route of a particular 500k P1… Why wouldn’t we expect the batteries to be sealed if they’re that sensitive to water ingress?
You realize that outside has a lot of water? And it’s pretty normal for some of that to get on the underside of your vehicle… Why wouldn’t tesla as a car design/manufacturer account for that and take reasonable precaution to stop water ingress on the battery? You even hear of an ICE car doing this short of driving into a lake?
You even hear of an ICE car doing this short of driving into a lake?
All the time. Cars are not amphibious vehicles. The ones made for that generally have a snorkel. We’re advised to not drive in high water for reasons including causing damage to your vehicle and your vehicle floating away.
For reference, the car in question’s model was noted by a Tesla rep as “We def don’t recommended this, but Model S floats well enough to turn it into a boat for short periods of time. Thrust via wheel rotation.“ source
Cars are not amphibious vehicles.
Where did I make such a claim?
I’ve driven my non-EV through deep puddles more than once, just by accident. They kept working, didn’t catch fire, etc. Maybe Tesla should plan for that not especially uncommon scenario for their cars?
I heard of so many gaps in the bodywork, fogging up of the headlights or even the interior, stiff like that. It seems like there is a huge range of quality, even with the same model.
Some of that (not all) is anti EV propaganda, both funded by competitors or exaggerations and sometimes outright fabrication by people who (justifiably) dislike Musk.
All the core features, eh? Try your door handle when the battery’s dead then say that again with a straight face.
I don’t know much about this world, but I do know it’s ironic that a car feature called Vision is fogging up.
It’s like they only ever tested it in SoCal on sunny days.
Speaking as someone who lives in a wet/cold climate in Canada - many products (especially tech) are only ever tested on sunny SoCal days. It is actually quite shocking just how many products are completely unfit for use elsewhere in the world. I honestly wish it was something that was brought up more often.
I’d never really thought about that, could you please give a few examples of products that surprised you when they failed in cold weather?
Numerous adhesives and construction supplies (too many to list), everything from light fixtures to patio decorations and furniture that are made of plastic that goes brittle in the cold. We just had to replace several outdoor light fixtures because they weren’t properly weather sealed and snow melt and rain got inside and ruined the internals with water damage and mold. My grandparents have gone through several shovels and snowblowers because they seemingly don’t make them sturdy enough to handle anything more substantial than a light dusting of snow.
Just a few examples off the top of my head. Some of it is down to the general poor quality of modern products for sure, but it doesn’t help that things just aren’t made for life here where it can get to -30c and lower.
I guess it doesn’t get that cold in whatever county these things are manufactured in and they don’t think about it. You’d think snow shovel and snow blower makers would know better though.
That’s been evident for years. Like the 3 that when it was released hadn’t been tested in rain so when you opened the back door all water poured into the car…
I mean how hard is it to give us tiny wipers on them. Cmon now.
Or just heat the lenses, air force and army have been doing it for fucking decades. You never hear about an F18 TGP or Abrams commander sight “fogging up” lol
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The commenter is talking about adding heaters, not anti-aircraft weaponry. There’s plenty of examples of things developed by the military that are used in civilian products.
He said nothing of the sort about heaters, only to “heat” the lenses
What do you suppose could “heat” the lenses?
Seems Reddit has joined us. Only a matter of time.
It’s probably internal fogging because the units aren’t well sealed.
They aren’t normally sealed in most integrations, but will often have heater wires around them or embedded in the windshield that will heat up the windshield/sensor enclosure, just like the defog on a rear window or mirrors.
So, the only way to have anything covered under warranty is to never have your Tesla leave the indoor track which is temp/humidity controlled.
Oh how far we’ve advanced.
No point in doing warranty work when you don’t have a fix for the problem, this is what happens when you buy hard goods from a manufacturer that runs itself like a software company.
Camera fogging has been an issue since at least 2019… Tesla forums usually have threads from new owners surprised by this each year…
It was 100% predictable that ‘vision only’ would fail in these circumstances.
Can confirm it’s terrible all around. FSD is horrendous. It also has problems in bright sun and rain.
Why do people still buy Teslas? Serious question
Edit - great responses everyone. It was a genuine question & I appreciate the candor
I bought mine in 2019 before I knew Elon is a lying turd. I bought FSD because I like tech stuff and I was doing a lot of highway driving at the time. My opinion of Elon and the car might be less negative if I didn’t feel like I got scammed out of $6000 for FSD. It’s been a good car otherwise, but I wouldn’t buy another one.
From an Australian perspective, I wanted an ev and I wanted to be able to take it on road trips. The supercharger network is the most comprehensively built out infrastructure here and frankly the only way to reliably make long road trips.
The minute they open it up to other manufacturers that advantage disappears; similarly if we had any genuine effort from any corner to build out competing infrastructure.
It’s easy to shit on Tesla because, well, , but in some markets they still hold a distinct and compelling competitive advantage.
Meanwhile my anecdotal n=1 stranger on the internet story is that I’ve not had any issues with my model 3 so far: for me, it’s been a great car. When I purchased it, the decision came down to the 3 or the polestar 2, and at the time polestar had zero service capability here: based on 12 months of driving I feel I made the right decision.
That is extremely funny
Elmo’s douchbaggery rears its ugly head again.
But he can save $2 in costs on your $30,000 car
I was very happy with my 2019 model 3. I upgraded to a new model y a month ago, and the vision stuff definitely feels like a downgrade. I already have a scratch because the vision based park assist is so bad.
That interesting. I find the auto park so slow to use, it just bugs me that it can’t park in one swift motion. I have a model Y that went from radar to vision and FSD is definitely better now than before, but they also don’t have car-length based follow distance anymore.
The latest update added “follow the speed/flow of traffic” and that works excellent. I drive 200 miles a day in heavy traffic a few times a week and it is far less stressful in the Tesla w/ FSD.
I wouldn’t know how well auto park works bc so far it’s never been enabled… 😆
I try it every now and then and yeah, it’s never worth it.
I’ve successfully used autopark twice since 2019.
All the other times, if it sees a parking space at all (which is very rare) it has either aborted immediately or tried to reverse into an obstacle.
This is why I don’t park near Teslas lol. There are other cars with that feature now but boy does Tesla seem to not care that stuff isn’t ready.