For many years now, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been adamant that self-driving cars don’t need radar or the laser-based imaging tech known as LIDAR, arguing that they can instead get by exclusively with a camera-based system.
He’s called LIDAR a “fool’s errand,” going as far as to claim that it and radar “reduce safety due to sensor contention.”
But in 2026, Tesla’s competitors in the self-driving space that have embraced the sensors continue to hold a major edge over Musk’s EV maker.
And after the Sun sets, being able to see in the dark is a whole lot easier with those additional sensors, a lesson Musk is seemingly still in the process of learning. Over the weekend, Musk announced that operating hours of the company’s Austin-based robotaxi system had “moved from 10 pm to 11 pm.”
