Tesla has made a high-stakes bet on a“ vision-only” approach for its autonomous driving technology, removing radar and relying solely on an eight-camera suite.

The company’ s core belief is that the rich, high-bandwidth data from cameras is the only sensor needed to solve real-world navigation. This data feeds the Full Self-Driving( FSD) computer, where a powerful neural network processes video from all cameras simultaneously to construct a unified 3D vector space representation of the world around it. This allows the system to perceive depth, velocity and object permanence in a way that mimics biological vision. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, says:“ Humans drive with two eyes. A biological neural net. So it really follows that with a silicon neural net and eight cameras, we should be able to achieve a result that is dramatically better than a human.”

This principle drives Tesla’ s entire R & D effort. By training this silicon neural net on millions of miles of real-world driving data, Tesla aims to create a system that not only matches human capability but vastly exceeds it in safety and reliability, proving that sight is the only sense a car truly needs. aimagazine. com 101

AI Magazine November 2025 | Page 101

Tesla has made a high-stakes bet on a“ vision-only” approach for its autonomous driving technology, removing radar and relying solely on an eight-camera suite.