Tesla Model 3 prototypes spotted with strange camera set ups in Boston and Concord but questions remain

Tesla Model 3 prototypes were spotted with strange cameras in Boston and Concord, New Hampshire.

No one knows what those cameras are for, which means everyone is speculating and coming up with different theories.

We know that Cybertrucks use the same type of camera, but that doesn’t necessarily mean much.

And now some people are beginning to think these extra cameras might be required for FSD.

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There are two potential explanations

Tesla Model 3 prototypes were spotted in Boston, Massachusetts and Concord, New Hampshire.

These prototypes look just like every other Model 3, but they have extra cameras on the front bumper, front wheel arches and even on the rear window.

Some people pointed out that Cybertruck has a similar camera setup, but this might be because the truck needs it to cover the huge blind spot at the front.

For this reason, others are now suggesting these cameras might be necessary for the unsupervised version of FSD, Full Self-Driving.

That would make sense considering Tesla is investing a lot of time and money trying to develop its self-driving system which, as most people know by now, doesn’t use anything other than cameras.

Why Tesla doesn’t want to use to lidars

Most automakers are using a combination of cameras and lidars, which are simply improved radars using things like heat and light detection.

Waymo, arguably the world’s most popular autonomous robotaxi company, also uses lidars.

By contrast, other companies like Xpeng and Tesla are using cameras but no lidars.

This is because Tesla and Xpeng argue that lidars have technical limits, while cameras, especially with AI, don’t.

Using a lidar is the same thing as blindly following the sat nav instead of simply looking at the road ahead, or at least that’s the argument these companies are making.

If you’ve got good cameras, enhanced by AI, you don’t need a lidar to tell the difference between, say, a deer or a lamppost.

Several YouTubers are beginning to test the difference between lidars and cameras with Wile E. Coyote-style fake walls, but viewers argued that some of these videos were biased.

The truth is we don’t have enough hard data to make a meaningful comparison – yet – so only time will tell.

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