3:02 PM PDT · May 25, 2021 Tesla Model Y and Model 3 vehicles bound for North American customers are being built without radar, fulfilling a desire by CEO Elon Musk to only use cameras combined with machine learning to support its advanced driver assistance system and other active safety features. Like many of Tesla’s moves, the decision to stop using the sensor runs counter to the industry standard. For now, the radar-less cars will only be sold in North America. Tesla didn’t state when or if it might remove the radar sensor in vehicles built for Chinese and European customers. Automakers typically use a combination of radar and cameras — and even lidar — to provide the sensing required to deliver advanced driver assistance system features like adaptive cruise control, which matches the speed of a car to surrounding traffic, as well as lane keeping and automatic lane changes. Musk has touted the potential of its branded “Tesla Vision” system, which only uses cameras and so-called neural net processing to detect and understand what is happening in the environment surrounding the vehicle and then respond appropriately. Neural nets are a form of machine learning that work similarly to how humans learn. It is a sophisticated form of artificial intelligence algorithm that allows a computer to learn by using a series of connected networks to identify patterns in data. Many companies developing self-driving tech use deep neural networks to handle specific problems. But they wall off the deep nets and use rules-based algorithms to tie into the broader system. When radar and vision disagree, which one do you believe? Vision has much more precision, so better to double down on vision than do sensor fusion.