Model 3 HW4 vs HW3 vs USS parking tests demo better Tesla Vision as smaller objects still a challenge

In late 2022, Tesla pulled out all of the ultrasonic parking sensors (USS) from its vehicles, replacing their parking assistance duties with the camera-based Tesla Vision software only.

While waxing poetic how Vision has become good enough for such tasks and its vehicles don't need USS, Tesla probably made this decision because it saved it about $144 per car by removing the sensors and their respective connector harness from the inside of the bumpers.

After all, Tesla was the top EV seller with more than 19% of the market and shipped 1.8 million electric cars last year, so the USS savings alone amounted to hundreds of millions. Tesla, however, took its sweet time to bring a good enough camera-only Vision replacement for the USS Park Assist feature. In the meantime, owners of newer vehicle batches were left with neither ultrasonic parking sensors, nor with Park Assist, Autopark, Summon, or Smart Summon functionalities for months on end.

Tesla Vision HW3 vs HW4 vs USS parking

Even when Tesla finally brought the Vision-only Park Assist to its vehicles with Hardware 3.0 kits, it was a bit half-baked and had issues with calculating distances and detecting obstacles compared to the USS solution. The company then started installing Hardware 4.0 across its lineup, including cameras with higher resolutions.

To settle the "who does it best" Tesla Park Assist discussion once and for all, a parking test of the Model 3 Highland with HW4 was carried out against the previous versions with Hardware 3.0 and ultrasonic sensors.

Long story short, the video of the Tesla HW4 vs HW3 vs USS parking chops here shows that the Tesla Vision-only High Fidelity Park Assist solution has come a long way in terms of reliability as a daily driver.

The ultrasonic parking sensors, however, still have that competitive advantage of being able to pick smaller objects at bumper height better than Park Assist provided by either the HW3 or HW4 camera kits.

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