Tesla’s Forward-Facing Camera Module Includes A Fake Camera And I Cannot Think Of A Good Reason Why

I know for more hardcore Tesla admirers, this news is over a month old or so, but I just found out about it, and I’ll admit, it has me baffled. It’s a little detail, sure, but it’s one of those details that, the more you think about it, the more questions it raises. It has to do with the forward-facing camera module used on Tesla’s Hardware 4 revision for the Model S and Model X. The previous hardware revision used three 1.2 megapixel cameras for Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Beta and other optical needs, while the new version uses a pair of 5-megapixel cameras. Okay, that all sounds fine, right, the new cameras are of better quality and I assume provide as good or better an image to work with as the old three-camera setup did. Great. Except, for some reason, Tesla included a realistic-looking dummy camera in the housing. Why?

So you know I’m not making this up, there’s been plenty of articles about it already, and videos, too, like this one:

And, just so we all know what we’re talking about here, this is a picture of the camera module, both from the outside, and look at the unit itself:

(images: YouTube)

By the way, you may notice that the cameras with real glass lenses instead of opaque plastic have a little red reflection on them; I’ve been told this is due to the sorts of anti-reflective coatings used, and some types reflect more blue, some reflect more red. Huh!

In both of these, you can see the camera on the right there isn’t real; in fact, the Tesla Model S service manual just calls it a “Dummy Camera,” as you can see here:

(image: YouTube)

Oddly, the Model S Owner’s Manual still lists this unit as having three cameras:

Maybe this manual hasn’t been updated for the Hardware 4 revision just yet?

I can’t stop thinking about this because it’s such a peculiar decision; what’s the motive, exactly? I mean, I get that Tesla is by no means the first to include ridiculous dummy components on cars – Trojan built cars with fake radiators  since the 1910s, and more recently there has been a whole bunch of BMWs with fake headlights. The difference in nearly every other example I can think of is that the fake whatever is actually some sort of crucial styling element: Trojans wanted to look like conventional cars, BMW wanted to keep their established quad-headlight look, that sort of thing.

Hell, even some modern mainstream cars still resort to the embarrassment of fake stitching on the dashboard to give the illusion that some poor bastard was hand-stitching your glovebox padding together:

These are all aesthetic choices, done because all of these bits of silly fakery are places where they will be seen, by the owners or people near the cars. It’s still kind of absurd, but I get it.

But in the little camera housing sandwiched between the rear-view mirror and the windshield? How visible is that, really?

Yes, if you’re looking, you can see the housing, and if the light is just right, sometimes you get a glint off one or more of the lenses of the cameras, maybe, but usually the reflection from the windshield obscures it all. You have to be really, really looking at the damn cameras to see them, usually to the point of getting right up to the windshield and cupping your hand right over the glass. This isn’t a styling element, at all; in fact, if anything, those components are deliberately hidden by the designers, as much as possible.

So, why go through the hassle of designing and molding a fake plastic camera lens to install in that housing? If the housing is re-purposed from the previous three-camera housing, why not just a simple, flat blanking plate? Sure, people don’t like seeing those on their dashboards, reminding themselves of their own crippling perfidy, but inside the camera housing up there? Who would know? Who would care?

A blanking plate just means that your new solution didn’t require a third camera. That’s fine, they’re better cameras. But a blanking plate that’s disguised to look like a camera, that says something completely different. That says, for whatever reason, you’re insecure that you no longer need a third camera. That says you’d rather people thought you had three cameras. Because…why?

There’s no way to spin a fake camera that doesn’t involve at least some attempt to fool people. Maybe the reasons aren’t especially subversive or evil, but it’s still a deception, and, when it comes to components on cars, that feels weird. I know it’s a minor thing, and I read plenty of comments in that YouTube video reminding the world that this is a tiny little insignificant detail, but that just makes the fact that Tesla decided to make a fake camera even weirder.

Is this going to be some future car-styling trend, like opera windows and half-vinyl tops, or like the opposite of a Continental-style fake spare tire hump, where instead of aping some idealized past, there’s pretend versions of high-tech components?

Can we all just admit that there’s something deeply fucked-up about this and it needs to be discussed? Because there is. I’d ask Tesla themselves about it, but they haven’t responded to press inquiries, especially from dirtbags like me, for years.

So now it’s up to us to just guess at their motives, I suppose.