Is Tesla switching to new repeater cameras with wider angles?

Could Tesla be upgrading the repeater camera with a wider angle?

Cyber Owners/YouTube

Tesla continues to roll out Full Self Driving and has also increased the cost of FSD. The system is logging millions of miles and constantly improving as Elon Musk continues his quest to make driving safer, preventing injuries and saving lives. However, there are still many skeptics of the program that has the potential to revolutionize transportation as we know it.

Some of Tesla's most prominent supporters are its harshest critics, but Musk said at the Tesla shareholders meeting in August that he welcomes honest evaluations. The YouTube channel for CyberOwners has a truthful, well-explained assessment. Mike Hoffman of CyberOwners demonstrates and clearly explains one of the most significant issues with Tesla's ability to see its surroundings and navigate safely. The blind corner.

Video Explanation

We've all encountered these situations while driving. Something obstructs our view, and we must lean over the steering wheel while slowly creeping forward to see if it's safe to proceed. As Hoffman shows, the current camera setup has a large area it can not detect. But there are solutions, some that would cost a lot of money and some that could be a simple camera swap.

Hoffman believes Tesla may already be testing a new repeater camera. The repeater camera, more commonly known as the blind spot camera, is on the front fenders. These cameras capture video to the side and back of the vehicle. But Hoffman noticed something different in a video posted by Ashok Elluswamy (below), Tesla's Director of the Autopilot Program.

It appears the program is gathering data from the repeater camera that is further forward than the current camera view. There is also speculation that the video Elluswamy shows is from the b-pillar, the one that is between the front and rear doors. Hoffman says the camera sees much further ahead and is convinced a new repeater camera is being used.

Alternative solutions to this blind corner dilemma include adding cameras to the front bumper and fog lights or moving the b-pillar camera to the side mirror housing. However, this would require new cameras and wiring, which would mean the computer would have to analyze more video streams. This action would be a considerable cost for Tesla, and Hoffman believes a camera swap is much more probable.

Hoffman might be right. It would not be the first time Tesla has changed the repeater camera. When a software update in 2021 included the blind spot feature, some users discovered the repeater camera had glare and was not much help. Tesla changed those cameras out for free.

Most of Tesla's cameras are made to be quickly swappable. Repeater cameras and b-pillar cameras can be swapped out in less than five minutes. That said, this change would require Tesla to swap out potentially millions of cameras. Not a cheap solution, but perhaps the best one to improve another aspect of a system on the cutting edge of technology.

NHTSA to Streamline Approvals for Control-Free Vehicles Like Tesla’s Cybercab

Not a Tesla App

In a letter to industry, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has announced that it is overhauling its approvals process for vehicles designed without human controls.

The change addresses a regulatory bottleneck that has slowed down American companies like Tesla from deploying purpose-built Robotaxis, rather than relying on using traditional vehicles with steering wheels and pedals. The policy shift is outlined in a letter posted to the NHTSA’s website, which you can find here.

Reducing Approvals From Years to Months

Under the existing rules today, any vehicle that is built without a steering wheel or brake pedals must receive a special exemption from federal safety standards.

Obtaining exemptions for a particular vehicle was a time-consuming process for both the companies requesting exemptions and the NHTSA. The process was often a black box—nobody knew when an exemption might be granted, and approvals could take years.

The NHTSA, under the new administration’s guidelines for autonomous vehicle development, is now committed to streamlining this process. The agency will be implementing a new, faster approach immediately for receiving exemptions for autonomous vehicles without standard controls. The NHTSA expects decisions on exemption requests to be determined within months rather than years. 

Accelerating the Cybercab

This change has massive implications for Tesla, which is banking on the production of the simplified and easy-to-maintain purpose-built Cybercab. The Cybercab is developed from the ground up as an autonomous Robotaxi and will be one of the key beneficiaries of this move by the NHTSA.

Knowing that a final design won't be caught in a multi-year regulatory limbo provides a level of certainty that has been missing. It allows Tesla to confidently plan the manufacturing, development, and deployment processes without worrying whether the project will get stuck in regulatory approvals.

According to the letter, the agency will publish its improved instructions for the streamlined process "shortly." With Tesla already having begun Cybercab pre-production and the goals for its deployment as soon as late 2026, there’s still a lot to be done to make autonomy a part of Tesla’s new sustainable abundance mission statement.

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You Can Now Track Tesla’s Robotaxi Deployment

Not a Tesla App

Thanks to Tesla Yoda on X, we have found out that Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet is registered on the Texas Department of Transportation’s public-facing Automated Vehicle Deployment website. This makes the fleet’s movements publicly viewable and trackable, and marks a first for Tesla.

This isn’t just any old FSD test - this is the first officially acknowledged, government-tracked, and sanctioned deployment of a Tesla Model Y operating as a ride-share vehicle. But that’s not all - Texas DOT’s tracker notes that the Tesla does not have a safety driver.

View on the Map

Visitors to the Texas DOT website can filter for “Tesla”, and see, currently, a single active vehicle operating in the Austin Metro area. According to the state’s official data, here’s what we know:

Company: Tesla

Description: Ride-share service

Status in Texas: Testing

Safety Driver: No

The final point is definitely the most interesting here. While Tesla has been testing FSD with safety drivers for some time in Austin and LA for employee-only testing, this is the first time that a vehicle has been officially registered and deployed on public roads without a human behind the wheel for safety. 

The fact that there is no safety driver officially shifts the liability from the occupant of the driver’s seat to Tesla, for the first time in a public setting. That’s already pretty significant - we previously dove into how Tesla plans to insure its own vehicles, and potentially owner vehicles in the Robotaxi fleets. 

The status currently lists Tesla as “Testing,” confirming that the service isn’t available to the public, but this is expected to change in the coming weeks.

This testing phase is likely part of a short but crucial period that lets Tesla capture data on the safety levels of its current iteration of Unsupervised FSD without a driver supervising. Tesla already stated that they’d be avoiding difficult areas, so this testing can also expose additional areas Tesla may want to avoid, such as school zones or blind driveways.

Tesla will need to prove, both internally and externally, that FSD Unsupervised has the necessary performance to safely navigate the streets without any incidents.

Regulatory Milestone

For years, the concept of a Tesla Robotaxi has been a future promise. Now, it's a present-day reality, albeit in a testing capacity.

Having an official government body list a Tesla as an active, driverless vehicle shows that they’ve been able to clear regulatory hurdles, which Tesla has often pointed to as the issue. It demonstrates a level of confidence from both Tesla and Texas regulators in the system's capabilities.

While it's just a single vehicle for today, we’ll likely see this list slowly expand over time. Alongside being able to track Robotaxi incidents at the City of Austin’s website, we’ll be able to closely watch Tesla’s progress with its first Robotaxi deployments.

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