Reduced front Radar Visibility & No visualization

[2putt4]

I updated my 2021 Model S Plaid with 2022.16.1.2 a few days ago and everything was fine. Seems like the issues I’m having started since this update and I’ve tried rebooting the car several times but I can not get autopilot to work. It gives me a warning saying “Reduced front Radar Visibility”. I also notice that there a no longer visualizations on the dash display. I see lanes, crosswalks, and signs, but no cars, pedestrians, cones, or garbage bins. I remember it working clearly and it just disappeared while driving in the city. This is when autopilot stopped working. There are no active alerts and it only warns me and show up in the notifications when I try activate the autopilot.

 

[2putt4]

I have 6,400 miles on my vehicle and in reading other threads similar to this, it seems like the radar unit gives out at around that time. I just thought that they went all on vision and disabled the radar and the software is buggy.

 

[mswlogo]

I have 6,400 miles on my vehicle and in reading other threads similar to this, it seems like the radar unit gives out at around that time. I just thought that they went all on vision and disabled the radar and the software is buggy.

They only disable radar on FSD Beta.

 

[Proppilot]

I updated my 2021 Model S Plaid with 2022.16.1.2 a few days ago and everything was fine. Seems like the issues I’m having started since this update and I’ve tried rebooting the car several times but I can not get autopilot to work. It gives me a warning saying “Reduced front Radar Visibility”. I also notice that there a no longer visualizations on the dash display. I see lanes, crosswalks, and signs, but no cars, pedestrians, cones, or garbage bins. I remember it working clearly and it just disappeared while driving in the city. This is when autopilot stopped working. There are no active alerts and it only warns me and show up in the notifications when I try activate the autopilot.

Curious. Do you have PPF on your bumper ? I had the exact issue when it got below freezing all winter and Tesla told me it was the PPF causing it which was BS. Once the car got FSD the issue was gone as radar is disabled. Push them hard to replace the radar.

 

[2putt4]

Curious. Do you have PPF on your bumper ? I had the exact issue when it got below freezing all winter and Tesla told me it was the PPF causing it which was BS. Once the car got FSD the issue was gone as radar is disabled. Push them hard to replace the radar.

I do have PPF and had it since September of 2021. I live in San Francisco and the weather has been 50-90 deg and the average is around 65. It was fine before and it was only after the recent software patch that it started acting up.

 

[2putt4]

I'm also wondering if high temperatures could affect the radar unit. It has been really warm in the Bay Area and I had parked my car in 95+deg weather where the cabin overheat protection would fire off many times. I can see the car reaching 110+ temps. The film is clear and clean, with no damage. I think it's BS if they blame it on PPF.

 

[DerbyDave]

Blaming PPF may be BS, but you have given them a reason to blame something you did to alter the car.

 

[Proppilot]

Blaming PPF may be BS, but you have given them a reason to blame something you did to alter the car.

Yes you are correct. I engaged asking if they would compensate for replacing the PPF if it did not resolve the issue and I got a blank stare. I had over 10,000 miles on the car when the issue appeared and in hindsight the cycle of failure was all through the cold/winter and disappeared. A device like a radar would have to have temperature compensation for stability so I do believe that extreme hot/cold could affect a failing radar. I am running FSD and have a new issue now that we are into the 80's and 90's that happens every afternoon starting up for my drive home. I park the car facing South and when I start up I get an error that says something to the affect that 'parking sensor may be blocked. check for blockage or correct installation'. As an Engineer and always troubleshooting in my mind, I think it may be said same radar having a temp compensation issue at the other end of the temp spectrum but this time, as I am running FSD, it is tagging it as a parking sensor vs it being a key component to the AP/cruise operation if you are not running FSD. I had the same issue that all visualizations disappeared. I knew the radar was working (or not) by the appearance of the 'greyed out' little steering wheel circle on the right side of the drivers display. It would disappear when the radar was offline and all of a sudden it would reappear and I knew AP would work again. Thousands of cars are running with PPF but it does give them something to push back on.

 

[2putt4]

The folks at Tesla San Francisco is definitely cool about it and I don't see them giving me any problems with PPF. They are smart enough to understand that non-metallic films should not affect the radar and the fact that the modification is external it should not damage the radar unit. The argument would not stand in court. The last month two months, SF has had a heat wave and I traveled inland where temperatures reached the high 90's+ and internal cabin temperature reached 120+. My toll tag adhesive melted and even with cabin overheat protection, the surface of the car and windows still get very hot. I just feel that the hardware such as cameras, radar, and systems that are exposed to these extreme temperatures were not thoroughly tested. It is also annoying that I paid $10k for FSD and can't even qualify for beta. I've scored 93-97 on the safety score and I feel that many of the aggressive and close following was not my fault. Someone cuts me off at high speeds and is stuck in front of me. I honk, flash, and back off but when I look at that day's activity, it seemed to have faulted me for the unsafe following. Anyways, I don't feel safe in the car if the only safety system is radar based which means early collision warning will not work.

I also don't understand how the visualization is connected to the radar. If the radar is front facing, I can see visualization for cars coming from my left and right blind spots. Is pedestrian visualization also radar based on the Model S?

Also if there is something wrong with the radar, you would think the car computer would know. There are no notifications or warnings, only when you try to activate it. I have had little problem with the Plaid, but if this is a software update glitch, it would be the second time and it's annoying. The first time, my car was bricked after its first software update 2 days after I picked it up from the delivery center.

 

[Proppilot]

I wondered the same thing about the visualization and connection to the radar failure. Prior to getting FSD (I will comment on that) I was using a slider on the screen that was something to the effect of 'show advanced visualization' so my theory is that what we were seeing pre-FSD was a sample of visualization but also tied to the AP/FSD system. So, when the radar goes offline, it takes the AP/FSD offline and does not have all of the inputs needed for the highest reliability of visualization (the radar would be confirming distances only) so it just turns it all off. That is my theory. NOW ! On the FSD. I drove like Ms Daisy for about 6 weeks maintaining/fighting against random forward collision warnings every day a score of 98 and then I got sick of it, the snow melted and I opted out of the FSD beta. After some time my safety score disappeared from the app and I enjoyed driving Sparky like it was stolen. Magically at the beginning of this month, I got the FSD download pushed to the car. Unless fixed, there must be a back-end bug in that if you opt in and opt-out it does not deregister one from the list of candidates so I enjoyed the June 4th push of FSD. The juice was not worth the squeeze but it is beta and (when safe) I use it to provide feedback.

Final comment. When I was kibitzing with the Service Manager months ago about the radar, he commented to me that sometimes the sun could blind the radar. That was my moment of conscious clarity to stop trying to technically explain what was happening.

 

[2putt4]

I wondered the same thing about the visualization and connection to the radar failure. Prior to getting FSD (I will comment on that) I was using a slider on the screen that was something to the effect of 'show advanced visualization' so my theory is that what we were seeing pre-FSD was a sample of visualization but also tied to the AP/FSD system. So, when the radar goes offline, it takes the AP/FSD offline and does not have all of the inputs needed for the highest reliability of visualization (the radar would be confirming distances only) so it just turns it all off. That is my theory. NOW ! On the FSD. I drove like Ms Daisy for about 6 weeks maintaining/fighting against random forward collision warnings every day a score of 98 and then I got sick of it, the snow melted and I opted out of the FSD beta. After some time my safety score disappeared from the app and I enjoyed driving Sparky like it was stolen. Magically at the beginning of this month, I got the FSD download pushed to the car. Unless fixed, there must be a back-end bug in that if you opt in and opt-out it does not deregister one from the list of candidates so I enjoyed the June 4th push of FSD. The juice was not worth the squeeze but it is beta and (when safe) I use it to provide feedback.

Final comment. When I was kibitzing with the Service Manager months ago about the radar, he commented to me that sometimes the sun could blind the radar. That was my moment of conscious clarity to stop trying to technically explain what was happening.

LoL. He is somewhat correct since radar operates on a radio/microwave wavelength. Solar flares or sunspots do happen and it can cause interference, but that's a long shot

Tesla Service just sent me a message saying:

"The Remote diagnostic team has reviewed the vehicle data and have determined the vehicle needs some hands on diagnosis and have left a proper plan for the service techs"

So they are asking me to come in and is not something they can do through mobile service. They will likely disconnect the 12v battery and need to do a hard reboot of the car if not a faulty radar. It seems like it's trying to work after parking the car. It shows visualization for a second or two and then disappears. My guess is that the extreme temperatures may have damaged the radar and some circuit is malfunctioning. Reading other threads, it seems like early signs of inconsistent availability will end-up being permanent overtime.

 

[2putt4]

My gut feel is that post Feb Model S' no longer ship with radar and some stressed out highly pressured software engineer didn't thoroughly test cars equipped with both radar and vision. Systems are conflicting! I feel that they could easily enable vision without full FSD similar to how they did it with the 3 and Y. Not sure why the S and X would be any different when its hardware is the latest.

From the Tesla support site around Transitioning to Tesla Vision

Does the transition to Tesla Vision affect the availability of active safety features on vehicles delivered on or after May 2021?
The following standard features are available upon delivery on vehicles equipped with radar or Tesla Vision.

Features	Radar Included	Tesla Vision
Forward Collision Warning	✓	✓
Automatic Emergency Braking	✓	✓
Lane Departure Warning / Avoidance	✓	✓
Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance	✓	✓
Pedal Misapplication Mitigation	✓	✓
Auto High Beam	✓	✓
Autowiper	✓	✓
Blind Spot Collision Warning Chime	✓	✓
Side Collision Warning	✓	✓

Do Model S and Model X still use radar?
As of mid-February 2022, all Model S and Model X built for the North American market utilize Tesla Vision. All Model S and Model X built for the North American market prior are equipped with radar.

 

[Proppilot]

LoL. He is somewhat correct since radar operates on a radio/microwave wavelength. Solar flares or sunspots do happen and it can cause interference, but that's a long shot

Tesla Service just sent me a message saying:

"The Remote diagnostic team has reviewed the vehicle data and have determined the vehicle needs some hands on diagnosis and have left a proper plan for the service techs"

So they are asking me to come in and is not something they can do through mobile service. They will likely disconnect the 12v battery and need to do a hard reboot of the car if not a faulty radar. It seems like it's trying to work after parking the car. It shows visualization for a second or two and then disappears. My guess is that the extreme temperatures may have damaged the radar and some circuit is malfunctioning. Reading other threads, it seems like early signs of inconsistent availability will end-up being permanent overtime.

BTW the Ranger that came today told me they have had quite a few radar problems and to the other comment, you are probably closest to the pin with it being unclean transition software as none of the new cars have radar. This is why I chose to wait it out and not cut a hole in my PPF as I knew the radar was going to be disabled at some point.

 

[2putt4]

I'd be very curious if the fix is to remove the radar unit permanently and the software will not have to decide what to use

 

[2putt4]

BTW the Ranger that came today told me they have had quite a few radar problems and to the other comment, you are probably closest to the pin with it being unclean transition software as none of the new cars have radar. This is why I chose to wait it out and not cut a hole in my PPF as I knew the radar was going to be disabled at some point.

Send this video to your service rep:

 

[quickstrike12]

Not positive but it would seem the sensor is not showing the distance from objects back to sensor itself but rather is calibrated to be show the distance to the front bumper in the middle. Which probably is close to 22” rather than the 24 measured back to the sensor itself.
regardless I dont believe the reading is altered at all by PPF.

 

[quickstrike12]

I believe Tesla is still utilizing radar to some degree in cars equipped with it regardless of what they claim. Even in the beta FSD
there is some evidence out there to show this.

 

[DerbyDave]

No, FSD Beta is entirely vision only. They are planning on merging the various versions of code this year. Musk says this summer, but I know Musk time by now. General release of FSD Beta he says this year as well,
which means vision only for everybody.

 

[quickstrike12]

See this tweet from Green. Evidence shows otherwise.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1537546001183035394

 

[DerbyDave]

See this tweet from Green. Evidence shows otherwise.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1537546001183035394

It is very possible that when you are not using FSD Beta, like anytime on interstates, that the radar may still be in use. That is still Navigate on Autopilot. The city and rural code is FSD Beta. Radar in some "legacy" cars built before 2/15/2022 may still be used. It would be impossible for the cars built after February 15, 2022 to still use radar, as they don't even have one installed. It is nonsensical to think that the cars without a radar use anything other than vision only on all roads.