Tesla Semi spotted using a sensor array

A Tesla Semi was spotted driving on the highway with a sensor array on top of the vehicle. The automaker has long been quiet about the autonomous driving capacity of its commercial trucks.

At Tesla’s annual shareholders meeting earlier this month, CEO Elon Musk said that he approved Tesla’s long-delayed plan to bring the Tesla Semi class 8 electric truck to volume production.

After the original unveiling of the Tesla Semi in 2017, Tesla has refrained from talking too much about the vehicle’s autonomous driving capabilities.

But Tesla has always claimed that all its vehicles produced since 2016 are equipped with all the hardware necessary to achieve self-driving through software updates and the Tesla Semi was seen sporting cameras all around the vehicle.

Now, a Tesla Semi vehicle was spotted with a new array of sensors on top:

The sensors do look like lidar sensors:

Tesla doesn’t use lidar sensors for its autonomous driving system, but it has used lidars for validation or “ground truthing” of its own systems.

This is likely what is happening here, which makes it interesting as it could imply development on Tesla deploying its supervised autonomous driving systems to its class 8 electric truck.

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