Tesla's cameras-only autonomous system stirs controversy

A vehicle with Luminar's lidar-based Proactive Safety pre-collision braking crash avoidance sensors stops to avoid a child-sized test dummy at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas

Luminar's lidar-based Proactive Safety pre-collision braking crash avoidance sensors are mounted on a test vehicle at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas

As it pursues the goal of fully autonomous driving, Tesla has bet entirely on cameras and artificial intelligence, shunning other commonly used tools such as laser detection.

Musk's method is to take real-time readings from a camera that is fed into an artificial intelligence system built around data collected over the years by Tesla sensors.