Tesla had ruled the auto industry for a long time, with its dedicated technologies that drive the modern-day feature of Autopilot has been its biggest achievement. The industry is nowadays slowly shifting its focus towards a different approach, more likely following the steps of its rival Subaru.
The two sole companies have their independent ways of showing strengths. Tesla turns heads with its modern and luxurious features, on the other hand, Subaru is all about outdoor hauls for families. Now the sole culture is a little hampered as both the industries believe in the concept of cameras for autopilot.
Tesla has recently announced the inclination of autopilot on cameras rather than radars, the system was previously used in the best selling models of Tesla and had shown immense gain on behalf of the industry, but the concept is soon going to take a turn.
The announcement was followed by a lot of questions regarding the quality of the system and questions were raised on how the cameras can successfully replace the radar system. The question prevails as not just users but also different industrialists question the notion of replacing the radars. Why such a concern? Let’s see them in detail.
Radar is a technology that drives the vehicle based on the judgment of the speeds of different vehicles surrounding it. It also takes into consideration the weather and different conditions before making the judgments for cruising the car at a particular speed or even driving on the road without tampering with the safety of others. Sam Abuelsamid, associate director of the consulting group Guidehouse Insights, also pointed to the fact that removing the radar system of the Tesla cars will be like stepping the game down in terms of quality as well as safety.
Tracing the track record of Subaru for the last decade claims some criticism a little feeble, the industry has bagged many awards and has strongly marked Its presence based on the camera system and this can be its standing proof of things can go right if the right amount of strategies and work is put forward in building the various aspects of the camera-based tech. Are the challenges still present? Yes, camera-based systems still can pose a major challenge in terms of different aspects.
According to various experts like Glen de Vos, chief technology officer of Aptiv, and many others have put forward the fact that cameras are not as precise as radars for recognizing the different speeds of the vehicles and also can limit the vehicle’s ability on emergency brakes and cruise control. Many believe the two technologies “Cameras and Radar” need to go hand in hand for more precise and effective results.
Though the claims are still nascent, Subaru has proved for many years through its technology “Eyesight”, which uses two cameras for all the navigation, cameras can be enough to take into consideration all safety needs of vehicles as well as a smooth drive if implemented and monitored properly. The claims of Subaru are proved to the world by 57 awards for safety pick awards by the company.
Though the difference still lies in the approach, as Tesla and Subaru will have a difference in camera setup for the cars. It is still early to judge whether the technologies will be coercive or will it go down the hill for the new company. In the end, trial and error are all it takes to understand the future of a particular implementation.
Tesla has not yet announced which cars or models will have this new feature, it is said that the versions before May, might not be in the case for camera trials. The entire news is still to unleash.
As Musk said, ” Vision has more precision than radar”, and also it was said, “T, the car should almost always hit the brakes correctly even if a UFO were to land on the freeway in zero visibility conditions,”.
