Musk No Longer Insists On A Pure Visual Solution? News Says Tesla Is Beginning To Test Lidar Technology

Entering 2021, disputes surrounding the development direction of autonomous driving technology have gradually subsided, and more and more manufacturers are more inclined to a variety of sensor fusion solutions instead of pure visual autonomous driving solutions in the past.

  Earlier, Tesla CEO Elon Musk mocked lidar sensors, believing that purely visual autopilot solutions are the future. But now there is news that Tesla is beginning to test autonomous driving technology equipped with lidar sensors.

  Recently, according to foreign media reports, Tesla Model Y is using Luminar lidar to develop autonomous driving technology. After the news was announced, Lidar company Luminar once rose more than 15% before the market on Monday.

According to reports, Tesla has signed a contract with lidar company Luminar for testing and development using laser sensor technology. As part of the agreement, Luminar sold the sensors used on the Model Y to Tesla.

  Tesla started testing the LiDAR technology solution, which may indicate that Musk's previous "pure vision" solution has been shaken. Musk previously stated on social media that "it's really stupid to put lidar on the car." He also believes that lidar is a "useless thing" in autonomous driving technology, and Tesla only needs to rely on vision technology.

  It is worth mentioning that the Polar Fox Alpha S Huawei HI version equipped with Huawei’s autonomous driving solution was released not long ago. This is the world’s first mass-produced model capable of autonomous driving in urban areas. Related road test videos have attracted netizens after being published on the Internet. Our appreciation has also triggered a surge in the autonomous driving sector in the capital market.

  It is understood that in addition to highly intelligent algorithm software, the Polar Fox Alpha S Huawei HI version is also equipped with 3 lidars, 6 millimeter wave radars, 12 ultrasonic radars, 9 ADS cameras, and 4 surround view cameras. Azimuth provides automatic navigation view. In addition, the car is also equipped with Huawei's self-developed chip with 400TOPs computing power.

From the perspective of vehicle owner safety, the "fusion scheme" of multiple sensors is obviously more reliable, because the pure vision scheme has limitations in some scenarios. For example, when facing strong light, the camera may not be able to identify obstacles ahead. The reason why Musk was not optimistic about the lidar solution before was because the high-end lidar is extremely expensive, which is not conducive to reducing vehicle manufacturing costs.