On April 13, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in an interaction with users that the company will “soon” increase the maximum speed limit of pure visual driving assistance systems to more than 80 miles per hour (about 129 kilometers).
A Tesla owner asked Musk on his personal social media Twitter whether Tesla could increase the maximum speed limit of an electric car with a purely visual self-driving solution from 80 miles per hour to 85 miles or 90 miles per hour. Musk replied, “Soon.”
In 2021, Tesla began a gradual transition from its electric vehicles to a fully camera-based Tesla Vision driver assistance system. This means that Tesla electric cars are no longer equipped with onboard radar, relying only on camera images and neural network processing to achieve the active safety features promised by advanced driver assistance systems such as Autopilot and FSD.
But tesla limits the maximum speed of the pure visual driver assistance system to 75 miles per hour (about 120 kilometers), and the following distance is the length of 3 parking spaces. two months later, tesla increased the maximum speed of the pure visual driver assistance system to 80 miles per hour, and the following distance was reduced to the length of 2 parking spaces.
At the same time, functions that were not previously available in pure visual driver assistance systems, such as intelligent car calling and emergency lane departure dodge, have been reintroduced through updates.
The fly in the ointment is that Tesla electric cars with onboard radar can activate radar sensors to allow autopilot-controlled electric vehicles to travel at a maximum speed limit of 90 miles per hour ( about 145 kilometers ) per hour.
According to musk’s latest statement, tesla may soon increase the maximum speed limit of pure vision driving assistance systems. Increasing the speed limit will allow the pure visual Autopilot system to provide a better driving experience for Tesla users.
However, the distance between electric vehicles and vehicles with pure vision solutions is still not as good as electric vehicles equipped with onboard radar. At present, the follow-up distance of Tesla’s pure visual electric vehicles can be set to two parking spaces, and the follow-up distance of electric vehicles equipped with radar can be set to one parking space.
Tesla’s choice to remove the onboard radar from the driver assistance system has attracted criticism from many people. But the driving data shows that the pure visual Autopilot system performs equally well compared to the onboard radar and camera-based system.
it’s important to note that Musk has said in the past that many other features are “coming,” and there is no clear time for tesla to raise the maximum speed limit for purely visual driver assistance systems. this update can take several weeks, months, or even longer.
However, this news indicates that tesla’s confidence in pure vision driving assistance systems has increased. (Tatsumi)