Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Autopilot will not be possible until 2035.

Musk, who insisted on not using lidar, was Diss.

"without lidar, Tesla would never be able to drive completely on autopilot!"

The person who said this was the youngest billionaire, Austin Russell (Austin Russell), who started lidar company Luminar Technologies in 2012.

Source LuminarTech for Musk, lidar is like a useless appendix. "those who use lidar are fools."

Tesla has always adhered to the strategy of "rejecting lidar" and adhering to 100% pure vision. Today's Tesla sensor scheme has only eight cameras, whether it's auxiliary driving or FSD.

Musk only stressed that the era of autopilot would come soon, but Russell poured cold water on Musk:

Tesla FSD is still a long way from autopilot, saying that autopilot is not accurate at all. "

Unlike Musk, who claims to be the chief self-driving car sceptic, self-driving will not be achieved until 2001 and 2035.

"one of the big reverse bets I made early on was that autopilot was unlikely to happen within any reasonable time frame."

Russell said in an interview with foreign media that Robotaxi-type urban self-driving vehicles have no drivers at all, and it is very complicated to achieve this goal, and people greatly underestimate the importance of this challenge.

Tesla as a leader in the field of self-driving, Russell does not think that Tesla is doing autopilot, he also attacked Tesla's FSD system and marketing methods.

Source: Tesla "Tesla was unable to drive on autopilot before using lidar." Russell said that from the perspective of autonomous driving, if you want to achieve a true degree of autonomy, that is when radar works.

Musk has publicly opposed lidar technology, instructing the team to use only cameras in the FSD autopilot system because it is "closer to the human eye." In this year's AI day, Tesla demonstrated that the autopilot obstacle avoidance scheme is to occupy the network through 3D pure visual output.

Source: Tesla "there is nothing wrong with the fundamentals they are going to do." "the main contradiction is the authenticity of advertising and the manipulation of consumers, which is very questionable," Russell said. "

Russell believes that Tesla's excessive marketing of his FSD system is "autopilot", which is somewhat exaggerated, and the FSD system is only a good "auxiliary driving system".

The misleading name of its autopilot has also attracted the attention of regulators in recent months. In fact, the beta version of FSD is like an add-on that can help change lanes and stop at traffic lights, but still requires a driver.

Source: Tesla "people have been thinking about this in a different way and trying to skip some steps." To achieve autopilot, Russell believes that it will take at least more than a decade to build sufficiently safe driving aids.

When will Robotaxi and perfect autopilot be realized?

"if I had to pick a time, I would guess 2035." Russell said.

02, Luminar and its talented founder might not have caused an uproar if they were just ordinary people questioning Musk and Tesla's FSD autopilot, but Russell is the founder of lidar giant Luminar. Taking Luminar public at the age of 25, known as Musk 2.0, is a different story.

Ten years ago, Russell, 17, dropped out of Stanford University after only one semester and founded Luminar on a $100000 scholarship to develop car sensors and begin his lidar autopilot.

If the 17-year-old Russell is a blockbuster, then when he was a child, he showed extraordinary talent.

Source: Luminar, for example, when he was two years old, Russell could recite the periodic table of Mendeleev's chemical elements, and when he was older, he taught himself to use Nintendo consoles to turn it into an Internet-enabled mobile phone. The water circulation system designed at the age of 13 won the first prize at the National Science Fair and applied for a patent.

When he was in high school, Russell studied online courses at universities such as Stanford University and was admitted to Stanford University's applied physics major at the age of 17. Unfortunately, Stanford did not keep him, otherwise there would not be today's Luminar.

After five years of entrepreneurship, the lidar industry has ushered in the spring with the intelligent development of new energy vehicles. In April 2017, Luminar announced the completion of a $36 million seed round of financing, and the company began to grow to 400 people, becoming a unicorn valued at $1 billion.

Source: after Luminar received $36 million in financing, Luminar released a new product the following year: a lidar with a 120-degree perspective and reduced the cost of key components to $3. At that time, the development of the self-driving industry was suffering from endless shortages and being more expensive than cars.

At a time when Luminar and the lidar industry as a whole were complacent, opposition emerged. Tesla CEO Musk is the first to bear the brunt of lidar technology. Musk said in an interview with the media in 2019: "this (lidar) is incredibly stupid, expensive and unnecessary."

Source: Luminar, but Russell believes that "cameras and other systems are very suitable for assisted driving, but if it is autopilot, you need a high-performance lidar."

Russell led Luminar to go public on Nasdaq in 2020 and became a billionaire overnight, when he was 25 years old.

Source: Theverge officially launched the Feifan R7 equipped with Luminar 1550mm lidar on September 27 this year, which also represents that Luminar 1550mm lidar has officially entered the era of mass production. It is reported that the lidar can achieve a detection distance of more than 500m, even if the reflectivity is less than 10%, it can reach a detection distance of 250 meters.

Dr. Chen Yu, head of Luminar China, said that Luminar has established contacts with more than 50 auto companies and business partners around the world, including Star Motor, Toyota, Daimler trucks, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, Mobileye and so on.

Volvo reached a partnership agreement with Luminar as early as 2018 and invested in Luminar through venture capital funds. In addition, Volvo's upcoming flagship electric SUV model, the EX90, will use the lidar provided by Luminar.

The battle between Musk and lidar

The popularity of the lidar market is obvious to all. As the new darling of self-driving cars, more and more car companies have begun to let lidar on board, and some new forces in China have even begun to "compare" whose lidar has more. I'm a little embarrassed to take it with one.

Source: Xiaopeng car 2022 can be said to be the first year of concentrated mass production and loading of lidar. According to incomplete statistics, there are 16 mass production models with lidar at present. New cars such as the Xiaopeng G9, the Xilai ES7 and the ideal L9 are all fans of lidar. Among them, there are nine models with more than one lidar, and the Great Wall salon machine Jialong carries four Huawei lidars directly.

Different from the domestic enthusiasm for lidar, some foreign car companies are not interested in lidar, and the development of some lidar companies is not entirely satisfactory. For example, Ibeo, a global automotive lidar "veteran" player, has recently declared bankruptcy.

Source: Ibeo other industry leaders' attitude towards lidar is also mixed. Musk, the boss of Tesla, the top car circle, is not optimistic about lidar from the very beginning. Musk not only is not optimistic about lidar, but also belittles lidar to be useless.

Lidar and Tesla's autopilot FSD are actually two factions, one is the general vision system, and the other is the lidar detection system. Tesla's FSD plus lidar should have been strengthened, but Musk did not think so, and even specifically abolished the previous lidar technology.

Source: Tesla Tesla said that their deep learning system is a hundred times stronger than radar, and lidar technology is not the ultimate choice for autopilot technology.

So Tesla chose to install a camera under the premise of radar, and the whole vehicle shot the surrounding environment at 360 degrees without dead angle, which is compared to the 3D graphics that can be depicted by lidar technology, but Tesla's configuration seems a little thin.

In short, Musk scoffed at lidar technology, whether it was powerful or cost-effective.

Source: Tesla two weeks ago, Tesla began to push the latest FSD test software-FSD Beta 10.69 to car owners. The biggest update of this version is the improvement of unprotected left turn.

Musk said that FSD Beta 10.69.1 may be pushed in the near future, and FSD Beta 10.69.2 will release a push message in a few weeks.

Not long ago, it was reported that Tesla's advanced driving assistance software would not be approved by regulators before 2022, which means that Tesla will not be able to get a fully autopilot license this year.

Source: before Tesla pushed the latest version of FSD to car owners, Musk said on a conference call: "he expects to launch an updated version of FSD software by the end of this year. Although Tesla's car is not fully driverless yet, drivers basically do not have to operate the steering wheel." It also said that the update of Tesla FSD in 2023 will prove to regulators that the FSD is safer than ordinary human drivers.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Superelectricity Lab (ID:SuperEV-Lab), author: Liu Yu and Cao Zichang

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