New Jersey lawmakers are trying to settle a decade-long engineering debate with a bill. And if it passes, Tesla’s camera-only robotaxis won’t be welcome in the Garden State.
The proposed law would require companies operating fully autonomous vehicles to use cameras plus at least two other sensing technologies — lidar and radar being the obvious candidates. That’s a direct hit at Tesla, which bet billions on cameras-plus-AI being sufficient. Nearly everyone else in the AV space — Waymo, Zoox — already uses the multi-sensor approach.
State Sen. Andrew Zwicker, the bill’s sponsor and a physicist at Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, says it’s not about targeting Tesla. “I’m pro-New Jersey safety,” he told The Verge.
Zwicker rode in a Waymo in Phoenix and came away convinced AVs could transform transportation. Just not with a single sensor package. “At this point, I don’t think the evidence is sufficient that a single sensor with software can handle situations that humans can,” he said.
The bill would establish a three-year pilot program for fully autonomous vehicles. Companies would need multiple sensor types, report crashes, and get state authorization before operating commercially. They’d also have to log 50,000 miles of supervised testing in New Jersey without a major incident before ditching the safety driver.
Elon Musk argues lidar and radar actually reduce safety because the software has to reconcile conflicting data. He’s said this publicly: “If lidars/radars disagree with cameras, which one wins?”
Carnegie Mellon professor Philip Koopman disagrees flatly. “It’s pretty clear that today camera-only technology is not up to the challenge,” he said. He supports the bill but wants even stronger measures — like requiring steering wheels so first responders can move disabled vehicles.
Tesla’s been lobbying against the bill and sent missives to New Jersey owners claiming it would ban their cars. Zwicker’s office got roughly 4,000 emails in a day. He says the messaging was misleading — the bill only applies to fully autonomous operations, not driver-assist features like Autopilot.
The bill is expected to come up for a vote later this year. If it passes, New Jersey would be the first state to mandate specific autonomous vehicle hardware. And Tesla would have a real problem in the nation’s most densely populated state.
