"I'm not understanding the reliance on cameras in the back and side. When is this so necessary? Parking? It's not like it's some land yacht. Rear-view and side-view mirrors work pretty great."
Do you see how ridiculous this sounds? Why rely on cameras when you already have 3 different mirrors on the car that work pretty great? I mean after all people have been backing their cars into garages using just mirrors for the past 75 years.. why do you need to rely on a camera for backing up? While we are at it.. Maybe we can all go back to hanging those tennis balls in our garages too!
The point is the technology was ALREADY there and worked absolutely awesome. To a large degree, it was accurate within inches which is what made it one of my favorite features. And redundancy is king! When the image on the cameras became distorted (rain, dirt, bright lights..), or the camera app sometimes was just a blank/black screen.. or someone touched the screen and the camera app disappeared.. those sensors gave me confidence any obstacles were still properly recognized.
Technology should progress.. not regress.. especially on a vehicle that prides itself on having top technology. It's practically an insult that something like a $20K Nissan or KIA has these features and Tesla thought it was a good idea to remove them. Not just remove them btw. But replace them with a worse solution. Even if you can't admit USS was awesome, it's pretty easy to look around and see just how many other people agree it's something they very much want.