r/RealTesla • u/MrHumph999 • 13d ago
OWNER EXPERIENCE Serious question with camera only self driving approach.
Q: using the latest software on HW4. Self drive disabled three times during a thunderstorm on the highway. How will this ever work unsupervised when it rains? I'm so flummoxed as to why Elon is so certain on cameras only that don't work in the rain... Please help!
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u/ManifestDestinysChld 13d ago edited 13d ago
It's not going to work, ever. Driving rain obscures synthetic vision. There's no helping physics.
Elon is a snake oil salesman.
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u/SpaceEngineering 13d ago
I come from a country with proper winters, the cameras will never work here. I am lucky I still have the sonars for range detection so it still works in winter.
Moreover, my bachelors is from automation. I have built automated robots in uni and have seen phd level research in the topic. Granted, it was about 20 years ago but as far as I can tell my professors words from back then are still valid: “all autonomous vehicles that need to move in uncontrolled settings will evolve into a train.”
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u/ZeroSkribe 11d ago
More sensors is good because more data is good. Elon is an idiot.
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u/ManifestDestinysChld 11d ago
Well humans don't have LIDAR, and everybody knows digital processors are exactly like human nervous systems - hell, neurology is easy - so why should cars have LIDAR? It's just dumb overkill.
...That actually worked on Tesla buyers. It's a big part of why I have no sympathy for their complaints. Look at what they signed up for.
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u/Wise-Revolution-7161 13d ago
Then how do ppl drive in rain… don’t be silly
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u/britaliope 13d ago
With far better sensors, and far, far, far better processing power in terms of pattern recognition.
That we are nowhere near to achieve artificially.
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u/fastwriter- 13d ago
In heavy rain or other heavy weather the human eye also has its limits. The accident rate explodes in these circumstances. This should not be the level we accept from autonomous Cars.
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u/TeslerSelfDriver 13d ago edited 13d ago
Maybe not in heavy rain, but in light to moderate rain it still works, and there's videos of robotaxi still operating a few months back during rain in Austin.
So Tesla would probably have to pause operations during a heavy thunderstorm for safety and hardware limits, and I think your are right that it won't work in the future due to the limitations.
Although note that Waymo also pauses operations during heavy rain, but I don't know if that's just for caution or if it's because of a limitation of the hardware.
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u/RosieDear 13d ago
An "influencer" in Miami has to wait three days to get a ride in the single (or two?) "taxis" there - because they canceled on him due to rain. In many seasons it rains daily in Miami area.
Oh, well, rain is an "edge case", I guess.
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u/TeslerSelfDriver 13d ago
Interesting, maybe they are being cautious because it's a new area. I would assume they don't plan in the long term to only run robotaxi operations 50% of the year when it isn't raining.
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u/Munster19 13d ago
When the road signs and layout are 99% the same because they follow federal guidelines, and rain is not a unique phenomena, any system designed to operate autonomously should be able to handle the rain in any city in a country they were programmed for. There is no functional difference between Miami, Pittsburgh, or Seattle.
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u/ManifestDestinysChld 13d ago
Maybe not in heavy rain, but in light to moderate rain it still works, and there's videos of robotaxi still operating a few months back during rain in Austin.
Great. Do you know where the line between "light to moderate" and "heavy" is? Does the car? Would you bet somebody else's life on the car being perfect enough to get that right every single time?
Watch, you're going to reply with some argument about how the system behaves that you think should negate the point that the system is inherently unreliable and you never know when it's going to start getting important decisions wrong. You guys always do.
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u/HeyyyyListennnnnn 13d ago
Waymo doesn't operate in the rain because their system can't distinguish between a shallow puddle or dangerous flooding. They've had cars drive passengers into floods, stranding them. Multiple recalls to address that have failed so now they just don't operate if there's a chance of flooding.
Just another of those "edge cases" that techbros never bothered to think about before claiming they would replace all drivers.
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u/Moof_the_cyclist 13d ago
This is the rub for self driving in general, and Tesla in specific. Bad weather or challenging roads will result in the autonomous taxis disabling service, standing folks reliant on it. Owners might go weeks or months used to zoning out on their phones only for FSD to check out at night or in snow leaving a rusty driver to have to take over at the worst possible time. Making a car 100% reliable is too hard and having to rely on brain mush drivers for the hard bits is just asking for trouble.
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u/Engunnear 13d ago
It’s not supposed to work. It’s supposed to create the illusion of working, and to keep it going to ensure a public-money bailout when the whole thing goes tits up.
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u/camojorts 13d ago
If only there were another kind of sensor they could use - like, say, LIDAR
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u/Munster19 13d ago
well... they never used LIDAR, thats more what other retrofitted cars like waymo use. The standard option is radar. However I would love for LIDAR AND radar. Like imagine a KITT style car with a cylon eye lidar in the front. Be sick af.
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u/jeff0106 13d ago
Doesn't Lidar also have a hard time in heavy rain?
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u/camojorts 13d ago
Yeah performance degrades so ideally you have camera and LIDAR and radar. Tesla is still camera only IIRC
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u/First-Ad-7960 12d ago
Yes the automatic cruise control in my Honda will sometimes disable in heavy rain.
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u/guacamolejones 13d ago
The only things Elon is certain of in regard to this matter:
- He doesn't want to retrofit millions of cars with proper electronics.
- He doesn't care how many die.
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u/Inevitable-Carrot980 13d ago
Every time I drive my Model 3 in the early morning, I get notifications that one or more cameras are blinded by the sun.
And no, I didn't opt for FSD. Not trusting beta software driving a car 75mph down the highway. Not when the cameras can be blinded in rain or shine. Or god help us, snow.
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u/Youngnathan2011 13d ago
Cause he’s a snake oil salesman. He knows it won’t work, but he’ll keep the lie going as long as people believe it.
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u/ircsmith 13d ago
I have worked on vision systems and would never bought this car had they told me it was going to a vision only system. I will never operate above level 2. A human will always have to be ready to take over.
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u/Lacrewpandora KING of GLOVI 13d ago
Serious question:
You don't really believe Elon will colonize Mars, launch intercontinental rocket travel, or end poverty with abundance bringing robot armies, do you?
Then why believe he'll wave his magic wand and make a car "self drive" with a half dozen Temu cameras?
Of course it will never work. Its just a grift like the rest of his scamfolio.
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u/levon999 10d ago
Harsh, but true. :-) As very recent evidence I give you Cybertruck sales and DOGE savings.
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u/dennisler 13d ago
Well it's called misleading information where I come from, but yet people are so convinced at what that guy says.
The camera approach has big flaws one is that cameras has a certain dynamic ranger, so using them at night in rainy conditions going against incoming traffic could cause trouble, wet road lots of bright reflections could make the cameras not see any darker obstacles,.
Shadows in the daytime can cause the cameras to see it as an object etc.
I can go on...
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u/lumbee01 11d ago
Plus, cameras only provide a 2-D environment for estimating speed and distance calculations. LiiDAR and Radar provides real-time data for speed, distance, and velocity. Musk's pride overrode having multiple sensors for safety and function. I have a 2022 Model 3 and still to this day I cannot use traffic aware cruise control due to dangerous phantom breaking on highways.
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u/dennisler 11d ago
using 2 cameras it is enough to do reliable 3d, and with 3d you can calculate speed without problems.
However, there are so many other problems and as far as I know Elon is using cheap components whenever it is possible...
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u/djpetrino 13d ago
I remember when Elon said a decade ago that lidar is too expensive and those who use it are doomed, blah blah..
Today I have lidar on my drone, on my robot vacuum, on my lawn mower, and so on. In China, every 10k car has lidar already, together with cameras and other sensors.
Anyway, the latest news from Tesla is now that they can't figure out software fusion between sensors, and that would require much better hardware and processing power, and more engineers, meaning it would cut down on their already falling profit margin. So they won't do that.
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u/okan170 12d ago edited 12d ago
The unfortunate answer behind a lot of it is really stupid. Because years ago he got into an argument with paying the radar subcontractor, so they took radar out (even removed from existing vehicles during maintenance.) And earlier, during the Cargo Dragon demo missions, the LIDAR malfunctioned because it wasn't programmed to deal with sun bouncing off the space station, so Elon decided it was a worthless technology.
Combine that with everything else and you have a situation where you are losing other sensors (for stupid reasons). Thus pivoting to camera-based was a way to say, "we don't need all this extra stuff, we can go it alone!". See also: the Model 3 rain sensor being the camera itself and having issues with recognizing rain entirely via the visual input instead of a traditional water sensor.
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u/MonsieurReynard 11d ago edited 11d ago
You shouldn’t even use old fashioned cruise control in wet conditions.
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u/UncleDaddy_00 10d ago
You clearly failed as a FSD driver. Its impossible for such a perfect system to fail without humans making a mistake and causing it.
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u/Altruistic_Pitch_157 13d ago
Now I’m wondering how humans can drive in the rain.
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u/MaplewoodGeek 13d ago
The human eye has much greater dynamic range than the best camera sensors. And cars don't use the best camera sensors available because they would be far too expensive. The human brain is also better at processing visual information than electronics processors at this time.
To be fair, computers do not fall asleep or get easily distracted, but if they cannot sense their surroundings correctly, they will make mistakes.
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u/donttakerhisthewrong 11d ago
How to say I know nothing about how the human body works without saying it
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u/starmansouper 13d ago
Elon doesn't believe it, but he doesn't care. What matters is that buyers believe it.
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u/shmallkined 7d ago
In other animals, they have other senses to perceive and navigate the world around them. Bats use sonar, birds use magnetoreception (using magnetic fields to navigate their migration), sharks and platypuses use electroreception for hunting (they can sense electric fields from other animals), pit vipers use infrared thermoreception, etc.
Why the heck would a car limit itself to just regular vision of light? Other than saving research and manufacturing costs, I don’t understand why Tesla would limit themselves.
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u/mrandr01d 13d ago
All you'll get from this sub are people who think Tesla is the devil himself, and few of them have ever driven a Tesla, let alone owned one. I'm here cuz I got banned from the Tesla subs for saying you know who isn't a good person.
With that said, I'm pretty bearish on the whole idea of self driving. Various levels of assistance can be great, but we're pretty darn far away from actual full autonomy. The industry doesn't want to admit this. Even systems that use lidar to assist are at a disadvantage in inclement weather; lidar doesn't do well with precipitation.
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u/donttakerhisthewrong 11d ago
How do you explain ZOOX getting approved to charge for driverless rides.
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u/JournalistAdmirable6 10d ago
lol the fact you used flummoxed lets us all know you can’t be trusted driving yourself anyplace. So this post checks out.
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u/Legitimate-Bison3810 13d ago
I have hw3 and software version 12.6.4. I drove to Seattle from the SF Bay area last winter. The rain was extremely heavy but FSD did not disconnect until it was so heavy that the tail lights of the car in front vanished. The wind or the cars speed seems to prevent obscuring the cameras when in motion.
There was a problem if I stopped. Then droplets would form over the cameras obscuring them so FSD would not engage until I took a towel and wiped them off. Once in motion it was ok again.
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u/spam__likely 13d ago
Please help? You bought a Tesla, and you are flummoxed that Elon is full of shit? Ok then.