Teslas used to have a forward looking radar that was used with Autopilot. But, they stopped installing it in 2021, as I recall, and have stopped using the radars in those cars that have them.Yeah, this all makes sense. I guess I just wanted to try them once and determine they weren't worthwhile but I guess what concerns me more is people who are saying that not having these USS functions (and I keep hearing conflicting opinions on whether Tesla's ever had radar in them to assist with auto-driving) actually makes the car less reliable in traffic because it's less able to picture the other vehicles without USS and or radar. For instance when it's on full self-drive. I don't know if that's just talk or not but so far I have not felt confident enough to let it FSD for more than a few minutes at a time. I'm hoping I eventually get more confident in it because I would like to relax driving, especially when I have a cross-country drive coming up. When it is on FSD, it continually checks that not only are my hands on the wheel but the car keeps insisting that I make a slight turning motion of the wheel apparently to prove I'm still there and very alert, but the effect is that I inevitably pop it out of FSD a certain percentage of the time, while I'm trying to do a slight turning motion to prove I'm still awake. As if I could relax much, since I don't trust it anyway. I don't know if these kind of ultra careful measures where it's checking every few minutes for a human being is new or it's always been that sensitive.
I used to have a car that had a certain amount of lane assist and it just needed to know my hands were on the wheel which it sensed I guess just by the pressure and weight of my hands on the wheel. That was a lot more comfortable for me. I always did remain alert with the road anyway because that's an obvious responsibility of a driver whether you're on FSD or not, but I suppose not everyone feels that way. I think of these driver assist modes as more of a kind of backup, if my reactions aren't as quick as a machine might be in a surprise situation. Hoping that the Tesla will prove to be useful in that possible someday situation.
USS is completely different than radar. USS is not used for normal driving functions as the range is very short. It is only used for parking functions at very slow speed. In any Tesla with current software, cameras alone are used for Autopilot and FSD.
There is a new high-resolution radar installed on newer Model S and X cars. But, so far as we know, it is not yet used for any driving functions. Tesla has said very little about it and is likely evaluating data from cars that have it to determine whether it's worth integrating into FSD.