Tesla Vision fails as owners complain of Model 3 cameras fogging up in cold weather
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from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 03 Nov 2023 20:00
https://lemmy.world/post/7748420
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 03 Nov 2023 20:00
https://lemmy.world/post/7748420
Tesla Vision fails as owners complain of Model 3 cameras fogging up in cold weather::A number of Tesla owners have taken to Reddit after their front cameras fogged up and stopped working in cold weather, leaving several features, including the US$10,000 FSD Beta, inoperable. Tesla has declined to assist to these customers, despite many of their vehicles being covered under warranty.
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It’s only a problem if you use your cars outside…
I swear I saw an article about someone whose tesla shorted out in the rain and they basically said you shouldn’t have gotten it wet.
edinburghlive.co.uk/…/edinburgh-couple-fume-hande…
Happened ~3 weeks ago
That’s mind boggling. I do not understand why people continue to buy cars from that trash company. Tesla has had a long history of shit build quality/quality control. With so many EV options on the market now, there’s literally no incentive to go for Tesla anymore.
Can confirm it’s terrible all around. FSD is horrendous. It also has problems in bright sun and rain.
Why do people still buy Teslas? Serious question
Edit - great responses everyone. It was a genuine question & I appreciate the candor
They don’t know better
Status symbol
Weird obsession with Elon
It use to be this was excusable. But there are a lot of options now, no?
There are so many options. Manufacturers that have been in the market basically since the inception of cars, and have decades upon decades of experience designing and building them all have EVs. You can easily get a higher quality EV for much less.
As someone who does not follow cars. What’s a budget EV considered these days?
There are alternatives. Fiat 500e is probably the cheapest, here in Sweden it goes for about 260k. Not as cheap as a Dacia Sandero (Petrol), which goes for ~180k.
There’s also the Nissan Leaf and the Renault Zoe, which will bump the price up to around 380-390k.
1USD is about 10.88SEK currently, so the 500e goes for about $24kUSD~, rounded up.
Petrol vehicles are cheaper. The Sandero is a fantastic car, particularly given the price. It doesn’t feel cheap at all. Hopefully with petrol vehicles getting phased out and more battery technologies maturing, that will change.
Personally, I don’t see myself buying an EV. I won’t drive very often, most likely not more than once or twice a month. I don’t want to spend much on a car, so I’d rather get a used one. Problem is one of the reasons I need a car would be for emergency stuff, like taking my dog to the nearest vet hospital, 166 kilometres away. A second-hand EV won’t have much range, and in an emergency you can’t afford to stop and charge for 20 minutes.
Yeah. Wanting a Tesla 5 years ago is very different from still wanting a Tesla today, in 2023, after Elon has told everyone, in public, exactly who he was.
Elon was pretty out and out an asshole back then too. He just wasn’t in the news 24/7 for being an asshole, just once every week or so.
Because they’re pretty great in most ways. They are one of the most energy efficient EVs, they are the most fun to drive of all the EVs I’ve driven (best acceleration and handling), I love not needing keys anymore. I love being able to control my car from the app. Tesla has almost twice as many high speed charging stations as every other charging company combined. They are more affordable than most other EVs. The lane assist is better than any other car on the market. Sure Elon is a dick, but Tesla has some adults in the room making good design decisions. It’s certainly not perfect but it’s a solid choice if you’re looking for an affordable, fun, and efficient car.
This is definitely not true. Teslas are expensive, and you have so few models! The Model 3 will go for about 520K here. I could get an Opel Mokka for 40k less. If I’m not aiming for an SUV but just a standard car, then a Peugeot e-208 costs 240k. I could get two of those and still have money to spare, or a base-level Tesla.
If I wanted a battleship more akin to a Tesla, I’d probably go for the Volvo XC40. A car that actually works if it rains on it, and doesn’t try to murder cyclists. Or perhaps a Toyota bZ4X, since Toyota has crazy good warranty on their vehicles. If I wanted luxury, then Polestar has that base covered.
The nice thing is that these are all established and reputable companies, they’ve been in the business for many, many years. They’re well known, and don’t pull things like “well maybe you shouldn’t let your car get rained on.”
As a quick point of comparison, lets compare a Mach-E to a Model 3 in the US.
The Mach-E starts at $43k and is eligible for a $3,750 tax credit, bringing it’s cost to $39,250. And that is before the dealer fucks you over.
The Model 3 starts at $39k and is eligible for a $7,500 tax credit, bringing it’s cost to $31,500. And there is no dealer to fuck you.
The Tesla is the much more economical car.
Compare something like an MG4… £27k, so about $33k. Model 3 base model is £39k, so $48k.
US Tesla price is subsidised like crazy…
The affordability is probably more US centric. Because they are made in the US using mostly US parts they qualify for huge tax rebates. I got mine for about $28k which beats most of the EV market here, and is a fairly good deal even for an ICE car.
Most of the other companies you mentioned don’t sell cars in the US so I can’t make much of a comparison but I’m glad Europe has a better variety of EV options than the US. Seems like more companies are switching to EV every year.
That makes sense. They’re not exactly prohibitively expensive here, but they’re not a good value for your money. Particularly not with the dealers (being Tesla themselves) monopolising repair. All that coupled with the fact that they’re trying to skirt regulations and doesn’t respect workers rights makes them an incredibly shitty company, and if you buy a Tesla here you’re equally shitty for supporting them.
The way they operate today should disqualify them from the EU market.
I’m only answering because you sound sincere in your desire for the opinion of others. I’m not a Musk fanboy (years ago I was, admittedly). I’m not looking for a fight. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, here is mine because you asked for it:
Other EV brands are shockingly (no pun intended) behind in technology or implementation. Most other EV manufacturers are making cars today that are closer to what Tesla was making 5 or 10 years ago, including lots of design or construction mistakes with those other manufacturers. Add to that, I know the idea that Tesla cars are expensive in still in most people’s minds, but Model 3 (available now at $31k USD) is one of the least expensive EVs on the road today with the tax credit from its fully domestically built battery. Non-Tesla charging infrastructure (in the USA, and even in Canada) is a joke to try to depend on it. Its also nice to be able to buy a car that supports the American workforce. A Tesla (bought in the USA) is the most American car you can buy! The top 4 “most American made cars” are Y, 3, X, and S. The number 5 slot is the Honda Passport.
Lastly, at least in the USA, buying a car from any other brand (except maybe Polestar now) means having to go through a local dealership, which is a horrible and exhausting experience. Buying a Tesla is refreshing in how transparent and low pressure the sales process is. No surprise fees, no dealer markup, no high pressure extended warranty or service plan sales.
I despise Musk’s childishness and politics, but the product and buying experience tops every other EV on the market today. The other brands have need to mature very quickly. However it doesn’t appear that Tesla is slowing down its growth either.
TLDR; Tesla makes the cheapest, most domestically produced, highest performance, most charging supported, best buying experience, most advanced mass market EV on the road today by a large margin.
Yeh I completely understand in your situation, fortunately this is all a USA problem. None of these issues exist in Europe. It will get better I’m sure.
I’m envious of Europe’s public charging infrastructure. The USA and Canada will be in better shape in a few years with the mass adoption of the NACS connector for nearly all EVs.
I bought mine in 2019 before I knew Elon is a lying turd. I bought FSD because I like tech stuff and I was doing a lot of highway driving at the time. My opinion of Elon and the car might be less negative if I didn’t feel like I got scammed out of $6000 for FSD. It’s been a good car otherwise, but I wouldn’t buy another one.
Same here. Waiting for a good Porsche SUV EV to come around. Same price range as Tesla, none of the bullshit.
With all of their flaws, they remain one of the best EVs on the market. And at least for the very short future, they are some of the few cars that can use the only charging network that doesn’t suck. Though, that very notable advantage will be gone in about a year.
From an Australian perspective, I wanted an ev and I wanted to be able to take it on road trips. The supercharger network is the most comprehensively built out infrastructure here and frankly the only way to reliably make long road trips.
The minute they open it up to other manufacturers that advantage disappears; similarly if we had any genuine effort from any corner to build out competing infrastructure.
It’s easy to shit on Tesla because, well, , but in some markets they still hold a distinct and compelling competitive advantage.
Meanwhile my anecdotal n=1 stranger on the internet story is that I’ve not had any issues with my model 3 so far: for me, it’s been a great car. When I purchased it, the decision came down to the 3 or the polestar 2, and at the time polestar had zero service capability here: based on 12 months of driving I feel I made the right decision.
No Teslas in the wet or the cold. Pretty soon they’ll only function, most of the time, in a climate controlled area.
The car works just fine. You shouldn’t be using autopilot in bad weather anyway.
Cold = bad weather? How elitist.
Nah, relying on FSD and whining when it goes out is elitist.
Obviously cold counts as bad weather to the machine if it messes up your camera system, so just drive it like a normal human.
When you spend $10k on FSD do you get a map of all the places you’re not allowed to live or visit?
I wouldn’t know. I’m not stupid enough to spend money on an unproven product.
So 3-6 months of the year is just bad weather?
That’s a good year in the UK
You know you can build camera to not fog, no matter the weather? All it takes is the will to build quality products.
Oh yeah, the engineering is shit for sure. Just noting that FSD is an optional, experimental, expensive feature and rich people who whine about it are being babies.
Who said anything about bad weather? Jeez, you can always count on muskrats to make the dumbest arguments based on ridiculous assumptions when Daddy Elon needs to be defended.
Nah Musk is a total asshole, that’s obvious. I’m just pointing out ALL cars can still be driven when the cameras are foggy. Too many people in this thread seem to pretend that the entire car refuses to drive because it got a little chilly.
There are a million legitimate reasons to criticize Elon, (like the fact he’s a raging transphobe), but this one is kinda meh.
I am not a fan of Elon Musk but it is quite funny watching lemmy users because experts in topics way out of their leagues because they saw a tabloid article that gives them another reason to hate musk. I promise you that you are not smarter than the 100’s of engineers working on tesla cars.
WE GOT A LIVE ONE!!
Honestly can’t tell if it’s sarcasm without an /s
Since you seem to know a lot about Tesla: when people pay those $12,000 for the “Full Self-Driving package,” does Tesla tell them they can’t use it when it gets cold outside?
Not very “full” then is it?
It’s full of something.
I don’t know a lot about Tesla, but we all know their marketing is lies.
Lol, right? Every time there’s a new article about Tesla and their issues with weather it’s like reading a page out of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
…And the Tesla said “Oooh dear this porridge is too hot! And this porridge is too cold!”
maybe its because you are blowing issues that affect a couple people and assume it affects everyone. like that time a tesla was flooded and the news went with “tesla’s can’t operate in wet conditions” and here you are repeating what you heard from tabloid articles.
In this particular case, it’s likely a manufacturing defect that caused the sensors to not be sealed properly causing moisture to get in. You are not smarter than 100’s of engineers.
Too much computer and not enough car 🥲
Well, designed and built in SoCal, an area not known for its incliment weather, and Tesla is too cheap to do any sort of environmental testing. No real surprise they have so many issues the moment it rains or the temp drops below 50F
It’s like they only ever tested it in SoCal on sunny days.
Speaking as someone who lives in a wet/cold climate in Canada - many products (especially tech) are only ever tested on sunny SoCal days. It is actually quite shocking just how many products are completely unfit for use elsewhere in the world. I honestly wish it was something that was brought up more often.
I’d never really thought about that, could you please give a few examples of products that surprised you when they failed in cold weather?
Numerous adhesives and construction supplies (too many to list), everything from light fixtures to patio decorations and furniture that are made of plastic that goes brittle in the cold. We just had to replace several outdoor light fixtures because they weren’t properly weather sealed and snow melt and rain got inside and ruined the internals with water damage and mold. My grandparents have gone through several shovels and snowblowers because they seemingly don’t make them sturdy enough to handle anything more substantial than a light dusting of snow.
Just a few examples off the top of my head. Some of it is down to the general poor quality of modern products for sure, but it doesn’t help that things just aren’t made for life here where it can get to -30c and lower.
I guess it doesn’t get that cold in whatever county these things are manufactured in and they don’t think about it. You’d think snow shovel and snow blower makers would know better though.
That’s been evident for years. Like the 3 that when it was released hadn’t been tested in rain so when you opened the back door all water poured into the car…
So, the only way to have anything covered under warranty is to never have your Tesla leave the indoor track which is temp/humidity controlled.
Oh how far we’ve advanced.
No point in doing warranty work when you don’t have a fix for the problem, this is what happens when you buy hard goods from a manufacturer that runs itself like a software company.
What irks me about this is I own an ev (not a Tesla obviously fiat 500e) and I slog/bash that thing through mud/snow/rain/several inches of water on the regular and even do what id consider rally driving with it at times and it’s fine. You know why? Because this was always a Tesla engineering failure and not an ev failure. But it sucks because people will think ev= unable to get wet which just is not true.
Neighbour in my old area got one of those “Gone to Plaid” (???) models, supposedly quite expensive. It had more panel gaps than my roomie’s Golf, which was only a fraction of the price.
In fact the Golf has held up really well! He bought it second-hand for 160k, and is now looking to switch to a Miata. The dealership offered him 150k for it. He’s been driving it for over a year.
Currency here is Swedish Crowns.
I was going to say, is this golf made of gold.
We’re both genuinely baffled by it, definitely not telling the dealer.
That’s funny, I had a Golf GTI that the engine died on and bought a Tesla to replace it. 95k miles
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The quality control is seemingly nonexistent though. The sucker that had theirs kick the bucket after getting rained on probably doesn’t care how well the core features work.
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So why wouldn’t the battery be sealed? Why is this a mode of failure that you believe is somehow acceptable? Short of the car going the route of a particular 500k P1… Why wouldn’t we expect the batteries to be sealed if they’re that sensitive to water ingress?
You realize that outside has a lot of water? And it’s pretty normal for some of that to get on the underside of your vehicle… Why wouldn’t tesla as a car design/manufacturer account for that and take reasonable precaution to stop water ingress on the battery? You even hear of an ICE car doing this short of driving into a lake?
All the time. Cars are not amphibious vehicles. The ones made for that generally have a snorkel. We’re advised to not drive in high water for reasons including causing damage to your vehicle and your vehicle floating away.
For reference, the car in question’s model was noted by a Tesla rep as “We def don’t recommended this, but Model S floats well enough to turn it into a boat for short periods of time. Thrust via wheel rotation.“ source
Where did I make such a claim?
I’ve driven my non-EV through deep puddles more than once, just by accident. They kept working, didn’t catch fire, etc. Maybe Tesla should plan for that not especially uncommon scenario for their cars?
Great range … 😂
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I heard of so many gaps in the bodywork, fogging up of the headlights or even the interior, stiff like that. It seems like there is a huge range of quality, even with the same model.
Some of that (not all) is anti EV propaganda, both funded by competitors or exaggerations and sometimes outright fabrication by people who (justifiably) dislike Musk.
All the core features, eh? Try your door handle when the battery’s dead then say that again with a straight face.
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I was very happy with my 2019 model 3. I upgraded to a new model y a month ago, and the vision stuff definitely feels like a downgrade. I already have a scratch because the vision based park assist is so bad.
That interesting. I find the auto park so slow to use, it just bugs me that it can’t park in one swift motion. I have a model Y that went from radar to vision and FSD is definitely better now than before, but they also don’t have car-length based follow distance anymore.
The latest update added “follow the speed/flow of traffic” and that works excellent. I drive 200 miles a day in heavy traffic a few times a week and it is far less stressful in the Tesla w/ FSD.
I wouldn't know how well auto park works bc so far it's never been enabled... 😆
I try it every now and then and yeah, it’s never worth it.
I’ve successfully used autopark twice since 2019.
All the other times, if it sees a parking space at all (which is very rare) it has either aborted immediately or tried to reverse into an obstacle.
This is why I don’t park near Teslas lol. There are other cars with that feature now but boy does Tesla seem to not care that stuff isn’t ready.
Every other car uses LIDAR and Elon thinks he’s such a forward thinker for shunning it. So dumb
His argument makes sense. Human vision is not too different from just a camera. I see the argument for lidar but it can also be a bit more expensive to accomplish the same task. I’m open to listening to your argument as to why lidar technology would be a better path for self driving cars.
The eye is the fucking whole argument for the stupid creationism. The most complex piece of machinery in the human body and shit.
That man thinks he’s god, to create similar functionality.
Has he fucking tried to keep his eyes open in fucking cold weather?
Why not just use humans eyes outside of earth’s atmosphere?!
He’s just so fucking stupid. Rich and stupid. The shit he spends his “hard earned” money would be so much better and efficient if spent controlled by mostly anyone else.
That’s ironic, because the evolution of the human eye is a good example of a case where iterative change has led to a clunky and suboptimal design.
I suppose that analogy is oddly appropriate for Tesla Vision.
Yeah i’m sure all these lemmy know it alls could produce a functional self driving car
It seems to me that we want to make self-driving cars safer that human drivers. And to make them safer, you want them to use every kind of sensor that is practical to avoid accidents. LIDAR alone isn’t the path. Neither is visual alone.
Also, suggesting that a car with cameras is equivalent to a human with a human brain that has eyes attached to it is a little silly.
While I disagree with you that you think his argument makes sense, I’m upvoting your comment because it encourages discourse and provides more insight and depth to this topic. I wish more people on Lemmy did the same.
Humans don’t just use eyes when driving. Sound, and touch also play big roles, for example when it comes hearing ambulances nearing or to feel road conditions. And we have a really good sense for depth and distance, that’s much harder to replicate with just cameras. And even Humans aren’t allowed to drive with headphones on (at least here in Germany), because it’s dangerous to limit the amount of sensors available to us.
Besides that, even our sight is faaaar from perfect either and there are quite a lot of accidents caused by drivers just not seeing another driver or some other obstacle. Our vision is pretty good, yes, but the amount of guessing our brain has to do for us to actually see what we do isn’t exactly small.
I don’t know about you, but I would prefer a self driving vehicle to be safer than a human. Because if it isn’t, why bother? And how could it be safer, if it uses less information than humans, who are shit drivers already?
And yes, lidar is more expensive but so what? It’s cheap enough to add it to phones. Expensive phones, yes but in the grand scheme of things, they’re still quite a bit cheaper than a car and Teslas aren’t exactly cheap cars either. And Tesla used to include radar in their cars until they didn’t. And the cars didn’t get that much cheaper…
And to give a positive example: Mercedes Benz are the first to launch a Level 3 autonomous vehicle. And guess what? It uses Lidar, audio sensors, road condition sensors, etc. and actually achieved L3 autonomy, while Tesla’s FSD is constantly tested to be one if the worst performing Level 2 systems in the industry, despite their claims of greatness…
Lidar is not just more of expensive, it is extremely fragile in a vehicle which is bouncing around at highway speeds.
Well, doesn’t seem to bother any other car manufacturer much. Probably because the benefits outweigh the complexity disadvantages
Which car manufacturers do you think are shipping lidar to consumers?
Mercedes-Benz is. And others will certainly follow since Mercedes-Benz are the first to reach L3 autonomy
That argument doesn’t make sense because human vision isn’t that great either. When it’s dark or raining or snowing or foggy our vision is pretty shit.
I’m not saying LIDAR is better but rather point out that actually you want different types of sensors to accurately assess the traffic, because just one type of sensor isn’t likely to cut it. If you look at other manufacturers they’re not using only LIDAR or only camera. Some use LIDAR + camera, some user RADAR + camera, some user LIDAR, RADAR and camera. And I’m pretty sure that as manufacturers will aim for higher SAE levels they will add even more sensor into their cars. It’s only Tesla who thinks they can somehow do more with less.
People here have no idea what they are talking about, or how absurdly difficult it is to actually deploy lidar to a consumer vehicle. There’s a reason why Tesla is shipping more advanced driver assist tech than anyone else, and it’s because they went against the venture capitalist Lidar obsession which is holding everyone back. There’s a reason why there are basically zero cars shipping with lidar today.
You don’t need mm depth maps to do self driving. Not that you get that from lidar on rough roads anyway.
There are some test cars with lidar. It has the spinny thing on top and looks pretty interesting. I believe those cars are pretty successful. I don’t think they’re being mass produced though, because the costs might be a little prohibitive.
The most advanced that’s not even on autonomous level 3. It’s funny that Mercedes is the first to get level 3 approval in California and they don’t even boasting that as much.
That aside, a secondary sensor that help verifying if the vision get it right would be nice. It could be just a radar or whatever. Imagine if the vision fail to recognize a boy in a Halloween costume as a person, at least the secondary sensor will the car to stop due to contradict perception.
I might be misremembering but I think Teslas are actually more capable, they’re just deliberately stating they’re SAE level 2 so they could skirt the law and play loose and dangerous with their public beta test.
I haven’t researched this enough, but Tesla says that they are level 3, but never bother to get the actual approval is like how I kept saying that I’m smart, but too lazy back in my school years.
Put your money where your mouth is. Life are at stake here.
I think it’s undeniable the combination of camera and lidar will be the best solution. I just hope this can be coss effective. Maybe over time we can be able to adapt and improve the technology and make it more economical so that it is safer for our roads.
Think of that Coyote and the roadrunner cartoon. If there’s a graffiti that looks like a tunnel the coyote may run into the tunnel based on vision alone, but a secondary sensor will help telling that there’s a wall.
Irl, If the vision failed to recognize that there’s something on the road, at least a secondary sensor will protest that there’s something on the road.
You can also test driving in direct sunlight without sunglasses or the suncover. You get notifications and beeping noises whenever the sun hits them directly, making the lane assist (I refuse to call it autopilot) quite irrational in most weather… It’s actually worse for me than driving in cold weather.
The obvious argument is that eyes are far from perfect and fail us all the time, especially when going fast. We are quite good at making up for it, but saying “We have eyes so my self driving cars will have eyes too” is pretty fucking dumb.
We also recognized that we need to keep our windshields clear of fog in order for our eyes to work properly.
Oh yeah, human vision also causes people to mistake a blue truck for the sky and drive right into it. /s
It was a white/gold truck, not a blue/black truck…
Hah even worse
Literally yes? Humans hit way dumber shit every single day.
Sure but usually because they weren’t looking or couldn’t see it…not because they mistook a truck for the sky or some of the other dumb shit computer vision algorithms do.
Not seeing something and mistaking something for another thing are pretty different problems. One can be corrected with glasses while correcting the other requires a brain transplant (or a brain in the first place).
Edit: or, ya know adding another sensor would work and make it so the vision system wouldn’t have to be so good at object recognition and could just not hit things…but we can’t add the couple hundred dollars worth of parts for that.
That’s literally what happened.
The driving assist features of my Honda CR-V also stop working whenever there’s snow or ice on the front of the car. Bad design for cold climates is not just a Tesla issue.
You shouldn’t be out of park while there’s snow or ice on your vehicle. Clean off your fucking vehicles.
As yet another guy who is sick and tired of clumps of snow flying off of people’s vehicles onto my windshield, thank you for your service.
Of course, and I do. I’m talking about the snow or ice that accumulates around the front bumper and grille while driving down the highway. At some point the car will notify me that driver assistance features are no longer available due to the sensor being obstructed.
I mean the stuff builds up on the front of your car while driving. Moisture sticks to the front and then refreezes.
Think of it this way: He is such a visionary that fog is blinding his vehicles.
Radar. Only a small handful of cars have LIDAR. But your point still stands. Outside of Elon being a humongous douche and completely unpredictable, the lack of sensors is the major reason for not wanting a Tesla.
Very few production vehicles have lidar. Like almost zero
I mean how hard is it to give us tiny wipers on them. Cmon now.
Or just heat the lenses, air force and army have been doing it for fucking decades. You never hear about an F18 TGP or Abrams commander sight “fogging up” lol
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The commenter is talking about adding heaters, not anti-aircraft weaponry. There’s plenty of examples of things developed by the military that are used in civilian products.
He said nothing of the sort about heaters, only to “heat” the lenses
What do you suppose could “heat” the lenses?
Seems Reddit has joined us. Only a matter of time.
It’s probably internal fogging because the units aren’t well sealed.
They aren’t normally sealed in most integrations, but will often have heater wires around them or embedded in the windshield that will heat up the windshield/sensor enclosure, just like the defog on a rear window or mirrors.
I don’t know much about this world, but I do know it’s ironic that a car feature called Vision is fogging up.
Elmo’s douchbaggery rears its ugly head again.
But he can save $2 in costs on your $30,000 car
That is extremely funny
Camera fogging has been an issue since at least 2019… Tesla forums usually have threads from new owners surprised by this each year…
It was 100% predictable that ‘vision only’ would fail in these circumstances.