Elon Musk secretly contradicted his own claims about Tesla’s self-driving tech—can we still trust his vision?

Musk’s Mixed Signals on Radar and Cameras

The conversation about Tesla’s approach to autonomous driving is far from over—and, if anything, it just got a lot more complicated. Elon Musk has landed in hot water after reports surfaced that he’s been contradicting himself about the role of radar in Tesla’s technology. Officially, Musk stands by his camera-only approach, dismissing radar as unnecessary. Yet, privately, he’s admitted that pairing cameras with radar could be safer than relying on cameras alone. The plot, as they say, thickens.

« Vision plus high-resolution radar would be safer than vision alone. »

This leaked admission, reported by Electrek journalist Fred Lambert, flies squarely in the face of Tesla’s public strategy—one that, since 2021, has seen the company strip radar from its vehicles entirely to champion what it calls Tesla Vision, a camera-based system. Musk argued that extra sensors create “noise” and supposedly make the system less safe. But his private messages reveal doubts, or at least a lot more nuance than he usually shows on social media.

The Gold Standard: LiDAR or Just Cameras?

Let’s talk about sensors. In the world of autonomous vehicles, LiDAR—these fancy lasers that map surroundings in 3D—is regarded by most in the industry as the gold standard. They work with impressive precision, even when the lighting is far from optimal. There’s a catch, though: LiDAR is expensive and gets thrown off by bad weather. Cameras, by contrast, are much cheaper and mimic human eyesight, but they lack depth information and can struggle badly with darkness or rain. In other words, they’re not perfect—especially when you want your car to play “robot chauffeur” in the middle of a Texas thunderstorm or a London fog.

While rivals such as Waymo go for a belt-and-suspenders approach—using both LiDAR and radar—Tesla steers down its own lane, for better or worse. The irony won’t be lost on careful observers: Waymo now has cars on public streets capable of true autonomy, even in rain and mist, while Tesla’s vision-only gamble feels like a high-stakes experiment—with regular drivers as the guinea pigs.

Reputation and Regulatory Heat

Tesla’s bumpy ride doesn’t end there. The brand has come under fire on both sides of the Atlantic for what critics describe as misleading marketing. The issue? Systems like Autopilot have sometimes been presented as fully autonomous, yet in reality, human supervision is still mandatory by law. And Musk himself has confessed that cars fitted with Hardware 3 will never achieve true self-driving capabilities without upgrading to Hardware 4—something he’s called a “painful and difficult decision.”

The plot thickens further for Tesla’s robotaxi service, currently active in Austin since June. Users have reported « phantom braking, » incorrect lane changes, and trouble with rainy conditions—hardly the seamless robo-chauffeur experience that was promised. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is now investigating these incidents, and Tesla shareholders have even filed a lawsuit over potentially exaggerated claims about the company’s tech prowess.

The Trust Deficit and the Road Ahead

One could argue that this controversy is just the latest chapter in a bigger Tesla saga—one marked by grand promises that often arrive late or remain out of reach. Think back to the 2016 promise of fully autonomous Teslas, or ambitious side projects like the Hyperloop and humanoid robots, which, for now, seem more aspirational than imminent.

For enthusiasts of electric vehicles and autonomous technology, the big question is clear: Can Tesla deliver a genuinely safe and reliable path to self-driving cars?

• Without transparency,
• and without a mix of robust sensors,
• true autonomy might just remain a distant dream.

All eyes are on Tesla—and by extension, Musk himself. Until promises are matched by transparent, demonstrable progress, the horizon for full autonomy remains farther away than the press releases might have you believe. Watch this (camera-only) space.