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Weather Performance

How different sensor types perform in rain, snow, fog, and other adverse conditions, claims about Tesla's photon counting capabilities being false

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The debate over Tesla’s vision-only system centers on whether camera technology can truly match or exceed human perception, particularly when facing extreme dynamic range issues like direct sunlight. While some users argue that FSD handles blinding glare better than a human with a visor, others highlight persistent failures in adverse weather and the logistical challenge of keeping sensors clean from road salt and grime. A major point of contention is the skepticism surrounding Elon Musk’s claim that "photon counting" resolves visibility issues in fog or snow, a statement critics dismiss as a technical impossibility given that current automotive cameras lack the necessary hardware for such specialized tasks. Ultimately, these perspectives suggest a significant gap between marketing promises and the reality of how these sensors perform in unpredictable, real-world environments.

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What doesn’t make sense to me is that the cameras are no where as good as human eyes. The dynamic range sucks, it doesn’t put down a visor or where sunglasses to deal with beaming light, resolution is much worse, etc. why not invest in the cameras themselves if this is your claim?
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I always see this argument but from experience I don't buy it. FSD and its cameras work fine driving with the sun directly in front of the car. When driving manually I need the visor so far down I can only see the bottom of the car in front of me. The cameras on Teslas only really lose visibility when dirty. Especially in winter when there's salt everywhere. Only the very latest models (2025+?) have decent self-cleaning for the cameras that get very dirty.
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FSD doesn't "work fine" driving directly into the sun. There are loads of YT videos that demonstrate this.
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For which car? The older the car (hardware) version the worse it is. I've never had any front camera blinding issues with a 2022 car (HW3). The thing to remember about cameras is what you see in an image/display is not what the camera sees. Processing the image reduces the dynamic range but FSD could work off of the raw sensor data.
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Well, given that Elon openly lies on investor calls... One of his latest, on the topic of rain/snow/mist/fog and handling with cameras: "Well, we have made that a non-issue as we actually do photon counting in the cameras, which solves that problem." No, Elon, you don't. For two reasons: reason one, part A, the types of cameras that do photon counting don't work well for normal 'vision'/imagery associated with cameras, and part B, are not actually present in your cars at all. And reason two, photon counting requires the camera being in an enclosed space to work, which cars on the road ... aren't. What Elon has mastered the art of is making statements that sound informed, pass the BS detector of laypeople, and optionally are also plausibly deniable if actually called out by an SME.