New Jersey's Proposed Robotaxi Law Could Bar Tesla's Camera-Only Vehicles from Operating in the State

A long-running debate in the autonomous vehicle industry — whether cameras alone can safely replace human drivers, or whether additional sensors like lidar and radar are essential — has mostly been fought by engineers and executives. Now, lawmakers in New Jersey are attempting to settle the question through legislation.

A bill expected to face a vote later this year would require companies operating fully autonomous vehicles in New Jersey to use cameras combined with at least two other sensing technologies, most commonly lidar and radar. If passed, New Jersey would become the first U.S. state to codify such a hardware mandate into law, ahead of a nearly identical proposal still pending in neighboring New York.

The measure would effectively prevent Tesla's camera-only robotaxi system from operating in New Jersey unless the company alters its hardware approach. Tesla has invested heavily in the belief that artificial intelligence paired with cameras is sufficient for full autonomy, while most other major autonomous vehicle developers have taken a different path.

The Bill's Key Provisions and Safety Rationale

Democratic State Senator Andrew Zwicker, the bill's primary sponsor, emphasized that the legislation is not aimed at any single company. "This is not anti-Tesla," he told The Verge. "I'm pro-New Jersey safety."

Zwicker, a physicist who works at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, said he became convinced of autonomous vehicles' potential after riding in a Waymo robotaxi in Phoenix. He believes the technology could expand mobility, reduce traffic deaths, and improve transportation access. However, he argues it should be deployed cautiously in the nation's most densely populated state.

"At this point, I don't think the evidence is sufficient that a single sensor with software can handle situations that humans can," Zwicker said. "Can we get there? Maybe. But we're not there yet."

The proposal would establish a three-year pilot program governing the testing and deployment of fully autonomous vehicles in New Jersey. Companies would need to use multiple sensing technologies, report certain crashes, and obtain state authorization before launching fully driverless commercial services. They would also have to complete at least 50,000 miles of supervised testing in New Jersey without a major incident before removing human safety drivers.

The Industry Divide Over Sensor Technology

Elon Musk has long maintained that cameras paired with increasingly capable AI represent the best and most cost-effective path to autonomous driving. He has argued that humans navigate using vision alone, so sufficiently advanced AI should eventually do the same. Eliminating lidar and radar also significantly reduces hardware costs, making it easier to build robotaxis cheaply enough for large-scale deployment.

Musk has even contended that additional sensors can compromise safety by forcing software to reconcile conflicting data. "Lidar and radar reduce safety due to sensor contention. If lidars/radars disagree with cameras, which one wins?" he wrote on X last year. "We turned off the radars in Teslas to increase safety. Cameras ftw."

Most of the autonomous vehicle industry disagrees. Companies including Waymo and Zoox combine cameras with lidar and radar, arguing that each technology has distinct strengths and weaknesses. Cameras capture rich visual detail for recognizing colors, traffic signs, lane markings, and pedestrians, but can struggle in poor weather, darkness, or glare. Radar performs better in rain and fog and excels at measuring distance and relative speed of nearby objects. Lidar uses lasers to create detailed three-dimensional maps of a vehicle's surroundings, making it particularly effective at determining the shape and distance of objects.

Philip Koopman, a Carnegie Mellon electrical and computer engineering professor and autonomous vehicle safety expert, said camera-only systems may eventually become capable enough for fully autonomous driving, but he does not believe they are today. "Eyeballs are better than cameras for many reasons," he said, "and human brains are fundamentally more powerful than AI because we understand."

Koopman supports the New Jersey proposal but said he would prefer even stronger safeguards, such as requiring conventional driving controls like steering wheels and pedals so first responders could move disabled vehicles, and limits on how many autonomous vehicles could be on the road during the pilot — a provision Zwicker said he is considering.

"The difference between 100 cars and 10,000 cars is night and day," Koopman said, pointing to Waymo, which now operates more than 3,500 commercial robotaxis across 11 U.S. metro areas. He noted that when fleets are small, rare scenarios simply do not arise often enough to expose weaknesses.

Lobbying, Pushback, and a Regulatory Vacuum

Despite considerable fanfare, Tesla currently has only a handful of unsupervised robotaxis on the road, mostly in Texas, according to data from Robotaxi Tracker, suggesting the camera-only approach has not been as easy to scale as Musk previously promised. Last year, he predicted Tesla would have hundreds of thousands of fully self-driving vehicles operating by the end of 2026. Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.

Many of the bill's provisions mirror recommendations from SAVE-US, a nonprofit advocating for stricter autonomous vehicle regulation. Physicist and SAVE-US national campaign director Shua Sanchez said the group formed because Congress has failed to establish national rules while autonomous vehicle companies have expanded into states with dramatically different levels of oversight. "California has the best safety regulations in the country," he said. "Texas, Arizona, and Georgia have almost no state oversight."

Nearly every major stakeholder has sought changes to the bill. Waymo successfully pushed to remove a requirement that safety drivers remain in vehicles throughout the pilot, and Uber argued the state should continue requiring human drivers for most rides. Tesla has been lobbying against the legislation, with company representatives meeting lawmakers to argue that AI advances make additional sensor types unnecessary.

Tesla also mobilized its New Jersey owners, sending a message stating: "As written, the legislation imposes restrictions so severely that Tesla's autonomous vehicle technology couldn't legally operate in New Jersey." Zwicker said his office received roughly 4,000 emails within a day, with most messaging focused on the claim that he was trying to take away Autopilot — a characterization he rejects. The legislation applies only to fully autonomous vehicles under the proposed pilot program, not to driver-assistance systems requiring a licensed human driver.

The fight in New Jersey underscores a broader regulatory vacuum. Congress has debated national autonomous vehicle legislation for years without passing a comprehensive framework, leaving states to develop their own rules. Robotaxi services already operate in California, Texas, Arizona, and Georgia under vastly different regulatory systems. While California requires extensive testing permits and public reporting, it does not specify which technologies vehicles must use. Texas has taken a lighter-touch approach, allowing automakers to self-certify readiness.

Sanchez sees the sensor requirement as a common-sense safeguard rather than a restriction on innovation. "There are absolutely brilliant people working at Tesla trying to make camera-only autonomy work," he said. "But they're trying to do it with one arm tied behind their back."

As states grapple with how to regulate a rapidly evolving technology, New Jersey's bill could set a precedent that reverberates far beyond its borders. Will other states follow suit with their own sensor mandates, or will the industry's fragmented regulatory landscape persist? Share this article with your network and join the conversation about the future of autonomous vehicle safety.

Source: The Verge