GM Executive Criticizes Tesla’s Camera-Only Approach to Autonomous Driving

General Motors (GM) is sticking with cameras, radar and lidar for its upcoming eyes-off autonomous driving system, with a senior executive taking aim at Tesla’s decision to rely exclusively on cameras.

According to GM Chief Product Officer Sterling Anderson, removing radar and lidar from autonomous driving systems makes little sense, particularly when considering the limitations of cameras in certain driving conditions.

Anderson made the comments during an interview with The Verge‘s Andrew J. Hawkins following a recent GM event, where he was asked whether the automaker might eventually follow Tesla’s camera-only approach. (via InsideEVs)

“If you scale back to vision-only, physics suggests you’ll be in trouble in certain situations. Radar is so cheap that dropping it doesn’t make sense — dropping it is a weird religious stance that ignores physics.”

Anderson went on to explain why GM believes using multiple sensors provides an advantage over relying on cameras alone.

“Lidar operates on a similar wavelength to visible light and helps co-train camera systems to get better faster. Cameras can’t see through dense fog or measure instantaneous velocity like radar can. Having a multisensor suite provides obvious safety advantages that physics simply demands.”

The comments are particularly interesting given Anderson’s background. Before joining GM, he led Tesla’s Autopilot program and later co-founded autonomous driving company Aurora.

Tesla has taken the opposite approach, removing radar and relying on cameras for its Full Self-Driving (FSD) (Supervised) system in consumer vehicles. CEO Elon Musk has also been a longtime critic of lidar.

GM, meanwhile, is developing an eyes-off highway driving system scheduled to debut in the Cadillac Escalade IQ in 2028, using cameras, radar and lidar.

Anderson also explained that GM’s system won’t unexpectedly hand control back to the driver when it encounters a situation it cannot handle.

“We’re not handing back dynamically. This is not an exchange of “you drive, now I’ll drive, oops, I don’t recognize this.” This is not Level 3.”

Instead, drivers will receive a “graceful countdown,” potentially giving them 10 minutes to resume control before the vehicle safely stops off an exit ramp.

Anderson said GM is designing the system to remain safe even if the driver falls asleep, with the Escalade IQ still scheduled to introduce the technology in 2028.