Tesla With Lidar Spotted At Parking Tests

Our reader Jens Lehmann spotted this Model Y with Texas license plates and a lidar sensor setup in a CostCo parking lot, performing multiple tests while parking. Jens commented:

They deliberately drove and maneuvered next to the shopping cart return corral a few times like beginners and probably checked to see if the sensors would react to the pipes.

Vehicles with these Luminar lidars racks have been observed several times in the past and until then were probably ground truth tests in which new cameras or sensor settings were verified. For Full Self Driving (FSD), driving alone is not enough; the vehicles also have to learn how to park. This differs slightly from robotaxis such as Waymo or Cruise, which only park in the depot, but otherwise only drive up to the curb, let passengers in or out and then drive on. However, they never have to park parallel or at an angle, drive in or out of garages or park at supermarkets. Teslas that are not in fleet operation but for private use do.

To explain: the lidars themselves will not be installed in the series-produced cars themselves, they will only be used to calibrate and compare the cameras and algorithms in these tests.

This article was also published in German.