No single sensor can ever give you that kind of resilience. Sure, it is easy in that you never have ambiguity, but that means that when you're wrong there is also nothing to catch you to indicate something might be up.
This goes for any system where you have such a limited set of inputs that you never reach quorum the basic idea is to have enough sensors that you always have quorum, and to treat the absence of quorum as a very high priority failure.
Admitting this would be admitting their Tesla will never be self driving.
If you include minor fender-benders and unreported incidents, estimates drop to around 100,000–200,000 miles between any collision event.
This is cataclysmically bad for a designed system, which is why targets are super-human, not human.
So while he might turn out to be wrong, I don't think his opininon is uninformed.
However, if you think about this for 2 seconds with even a rudimentary understanding of sensor fusion, more hardware is always better (ofc with diminishing marginal value).
But ~10y ago, when Tesla was in a financial pinch, Musk decided to scrap as much hardware as possible to save on operational cost and complexity. The argument about "humans can drive with vision only, so self-driving should be able to as well" served as the excuse to shareholders.
The cameras on Teslas only really lose visibility when dirty. Especially in winter when there's salt everywhere. Only the very latest models (2025+?) have decent self-cleaning for the cameras that get very dirty.
The thing to remember about cameras is what you see in an image/display is not what the camera sees. Processing the image reduces the dynamic range but FSD could work off of the raw sensor data.
There is an argument for sure, about how many sensors is enough / too much. And maybe 8 cameras around the car is enough to surpass human driving ability.
I guess it depends on how far/secure we want the self-driving to be. If only we had a comprehensive driving test that all (humans and robots) could take and be ranked... each country lawmakers could set the bar based on the test.
However, notice that deaf people are allowed to drive, ie. you are not expected to be able to have full hearing to be allowed on the road.
I would firmly disagree with that.
What Musk has done is bring money to develop technologies that were generally considered possible, but were being ignored by industry incumbents because they were long-term development projects that would not be profitable for years. When he brings money to good engineers and lets them do their thing, pretty good things happen. The Tesla Roadster, Model S, Falcon 9, Starlink, etc.
The problem with him is he's convinced that he is also a good engineer, and not only that but he's better than anyone that works for him, and that has definitively been proven wrong. The more he takes charge, the worse it gets. The Model X's stupid doors, all the factory insanity, the outdoor paint tent, etc. Model 3 and Model Y arguably succeeded in spite of his interference, but the Dumpstertruck was his baby and we can all see how that has basically only sold to people who want to associate themselves closely with his politics because it's objectively bad at everything else. The constant claims that Tesla cars will drive themselves, the absolute bullshit that is calling it "Full Self Driving", the hilarious claims of humanoid robots being useful, etc. How are those solar roofs coming? Have you heard of anyone installing a Powerwall recently? Heard anything about Roadster 2.0 since he went off claiming it would be able to fly? A bunch of Canadian truckers have built their own hybrid logging trucks from scratch in the time since Tesla started taking money for their semis and we still haven't seen the Tesla trucks haul more than a bunch of bags of chips.
The more Musk is personally involved with a project the worse it is. The man is useful for two things: Providing capital and blatantly lying to hype investors.
If he had stuck to the first one the world as a whole would be a better place, Tesla would probably be in a much better position right now.
SpaceX was for a long time considered to be further from his influence with Shotwell running the company well and Musk acting more as a spokesperson. Starship is sort of his Model X moment and the plans to merge in the AI business will IMO be the Cybertruck.
I never claimed he‘s a good engineer, nor that he has high EQ, nor that he is honest, nor that he has sole responsibility for the success of his companies.
Long-distance amateur psychology question: I wonder if he's convinced himself that he's a smart guy, after all he's got 12 digits in his net worth, "How would that have been possible if I were an idiot?".
Anyway, ego protection is how people still defend things like the Maga regime, or the genocide; it's hard for someone to admit that they've been stupid enough to have been fooled to vote for "Idi Amin in whiteface" (term coined by Literature Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka), or that the "nation's right to self-defense" they've been defending was a thin excuse for mass murder of innocents.
Or did I miss the sarcasm?
This is - to me - entirely separate from the fact that his companies routinely revolutionize industries.
One of his latest, on the topic of rain/snow/mist/fog and handling with cameras:
"Well, we have made that a non-issue as we actually do photon counting in the cameras, which solves that problem."
No, Elon, you don't. For two reasons: reason one, part A, the types of cameras that do photon counting don't work well for normal 'vision'/imagery associated with cameras, and part B, are not actually present in your cars at all. And reason two, photon counting requires the camera being in an enclosed space to work, which cars on the road ... aren't.
What Elon has mastered the art of is making statements that sound informed, pass the BS detector of laypeople, and optionally are also plausibly deniable if actually called out by an SME.