For many years, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sworn up and down that the use of radar and lidar sensors for autonomous driving is a waste of time.
His counterargument has been that cameras and powerful AI-powered hardware are all you need for safe self-driving, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.
That decision is now risking a major roadblocks for the company in New Jersey. As The Verge reports, a bill that’s coming up for a vote this year would require fully autonomous vehicles to use both cameras and at least two other sensing technologies — in most cases, lidar and radar.
If the bill were enacted, it would effectively banning Tesla’s fully autonomous fleet of Robotaxis. Other states could soon follow — including New York, which is pondering a similar bill — in a domino effect that could completely derail the automaker’s current trajectory.
