My Tesla has Full Self Drive (for various definitions of “Full”). The camera monitors the driver for attention to the screen. If the camera isn’t working, there’s no Self Drive possible. (I know, the camera glitched - software? - and I had no FSD for a full day on a road trip, then the next morning it had risen from the dead, and is still amongst us. )
There were stories in the good old days of people dozing off and letting the car drive. The original “are you paying attention?” was a test to see if there was a minor torque on the wheel every so often, as if you had a hand on the wheel. The running joke was you could jam an orange or potato in the steering wheel and road bumps provided the necessary torque. (I saw a bit where someone 3D-printed a little arm that attached to the wheel and held a weight.)
Considering that the action of the car when it encountered something it could not deal with, was to turn control back to you, these inattention gimmicks were extremely dangerous, so now it uses the internal camera. (A view much like Echoreply’s photo) If I stare at the screen or otherwie are inattentive for more than about 30 seconds, it warns me. If it doesn’t see me looking back at the road, after about 20 seconds or so it cancels FSD for the remainder of the trip. Too many cancels and FSD can be disabled for a month… and so on. The downside I’ve found, is driving in deep night darkness, if I put my hand on the wheel where it blocks the dim light from the screen, the camera can’t see me well enough.
First, Tesla gets map data - as I understand - from the cellular modem. I once rented a Tesla from Hertz, and it had a communication issue. There was detailed mapping around the airport, but as I got further out the map was progressively less detailed and more pixilated, although the GPS worked fine. Software updates must happen while parked for the duration, it prefers to do through WiFi, since if it’s parked at a wifi source less likely to drop signal (and the $10/year for the basic connectivity probably doesn’t cover the amount of data in some updates).
So I presume, if you disable or block the camera - no cruise control or self-driving. If you remove the modem, no map data. (Different from my 2014 BMW, where the internal GPS was showing me driving through empty fields because I wasn’t going to pay over $100 to update the map). And with enhanced connectivity, Tesla with upgraded connectivity option ($10/month) can show you the satellite photo view and mark real-time traffic congestion in red and orange.
Could Tesla brick a car or stop it from driving? Probably. But I haven’t heard of them doing so; one thing they do do (doodoo?) is disable fast charging on their network, for example if the credit card information is invalid or the car has registered (data back to Tesla) a serious accident. Whether you drive is your problem, but they aren’t going to pump 250kW into a possibly damaged battery pack until their technicians have checked it out. Note that the car also communicated with their fast chargers when plugged in, giving VIN number etc. back to the network. I won’t say Big Brother is everywhere, but we are surrounded by annoying little brothers who will happily snitch…
