Tesla falls after senators voice skepticism about FSD and lack of lidar

Tesla Vice President of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy testified Wednesday before a Senate committee hearing on the future of self-driving to advocate for federal autonomous driving standards — something that would make Tesla’s goal of an autonomous future that much more possible. While many of the senators were excited about the prospect of furthering self-driving tech in general, overall Tesla seemed to face more criticism than Google’s Waymo, whose chief safety officer, Mauricio Peña, also testified at the event.

Tesla’s stock is down roughly 4% today.

Senator Ben Ray Luján focused on one of the central philosophical divides in autonomous driving: lidar vs. cameras. (Waymos are outfitted with numerous relatively expensive lidar sensors, while Tesla relies solely on cameras to detect objects in its path, a choice that it has said saves money and is just as reliable.)

Luján to Waymo’s Peña:  “Can you explain the role of redundant systems in safety critical systems?”

Peña:  “Having redundancy allows you to have higher reliability and higher levels of safety. You always have to plan for the unexpected.  So if some of your systems malfunction, you want a backup system to be able to come into play and allow you to continue to travel safely.”

Luján to Tesla’s Moravy:  “Can you explain to me why Tesla has decided to limit redundancy for its sensing systems  by removing radar and relying solely on cameras?”

Moravy: “Our human roads are designed to be operated by pure vision, and I reject the notion that we don’t have redundancy. We have nine cameras, and each of them is independently wired to our central control. So in that sense, we have redundancy across the vision system that you mentioned.”

Luján:  “When Elon Musk, your CEO, said that lidar and radar reduced safety, do you agree with that?”

Moravy:  “We believe strongly that we can solve all of the self-driving needs with vision alone.”

Senator Luján also said he has evidence Tesla salespeople teach buyers how to thwart its systems meant to keep drivers’ hands on the wheel by buying weighted devices off Amazon.

Senator Ed Markey criticized Tesla’s Full Self-Driving tech as being misleading and not properly constrained.

Markey to Waymo’s Peña:  “Does Waymo restrict its vehicles to safe, pre-mapped operational design domains?”

Peña:  “ We have a very well-defined operational design domain — different road types, weather, different conditions.”

Markey to Tesla’s Moravy:  “Does Tesla restrict its partially autonomous driving systems, such as Full Self-Drive and Autopilot, to safe, pre-mapped operational design domains?”

Moravy: “ Our driver’s assistance system that you mentioned, Full Self-Driving, supervised, [is available] in all public roads.  On the other hand, our fully autonomous solution that is in operation in Austin is geofenced and mapped to a limited area.”

Markey: “Unlike Waymo, Teslas do not have technology that prevents drivers from triggering Full Self-Drive and Autopilot in unsafe conditions. So from my perspective, that’s outrageous, because Autopilot and Full Self-Drive have already been involved in dozens of deaths because, in part, Tesla drivers can enable these driving systems on any road under any conditions. And by failing to follow the best practices of every other AV company, Tesla is putting American lives at risk, and that is unconscionable...  Tesla’s vehicles say Full Self-Drive, but really they are only partial Full Self-Drive for the driver. That’s very misleading to call something Full Self-Drive when you cannot, in fact, meaningfully use that technology without increasing the danger.”