Li Automobile’s CEO said that if you drive in China at night, you are likely to see large trucks with broken taillights, creating challenges for cameras to recognize them.
The debate over whether smart electric vehicles (EVs) should have LiDAR continues, with Li Auto’s CEO defending the use of LiDAR components in his models.
“If Mr. Musk had ever driven late at night on various highways in China, he would have chosen to have LiDAR on the front as well,” said Lee Auto founder, chairman and CEO. )’s Li Shang said at the press conference. Yesterday was an AI talk event.
Lee mentioned this in response to a question about why Li Auto is using LiDAR while Elon Musk’s Tesla is not.
Tesla places a similar emphasis on safety, but Mr. Li said Mr. Musk needs to understand China’s driving environment.
Li Auto has reservations about using LiDAR not because the technology is bad, but because of safety, Li said.
“China is different than the United States. If you drive in China regularly at night, you’ll see large trucks with broken taillights, and large trucks with broken taillights parked on the highway. “There may be some,” Lee Auto’s CEO said.
Currently, cameras can only detect objects a little more than 100 meters away at most in low-light conditions late at night, but LiDAR has a detection range of 200 meters, he said.
Li Auto is able to implement the AEB (Automatic Emergency Braking) function at speeds of 130 kilometers per hour thanks to LiDAR’s support of this function, Li said.
“I think this is very important because our cars are family-oriented and everyone’s life safety is very important,” he said.
“That’s the fundamental reason why we continue to maintain LiDAR and will continue to do so in future models,” Lee added.
Tesla is the leader in pure vision smart driving solutions, and its executives have expressed their distaste for LiDAR multiple times over the past few years.
On December 10, Grace Tao, Tesla’s vice president of external affairs, reiterated Musk’s judgment on the self-driving path in a Weibo post, saying that only pure vision will enable safer, smarter, and fully autonomous driving. said.
Roads and traffic regulations are designed with the human eye, optic nerve, and brain in mind. On such roads, only cameras, visual neural networks, and self-driving hardware can mimic human observation, perception, and decision-making habits, achieving driving results that match or exceed those of humans. Tao said.
If the information from the radar and camera contradicts each other, the vehicle’s brain will have a hard time making decisions, Tao said at the time, adding that adding LiDAR would also increase the cost of the vehicle.
LiDAR is currently used in basically all mainstream high-end EVs in China.
Interestingly, Xpeng (NYSE: It is.
Earlier this month, Xpeng filed a regulatory filing for the facelifted G6 and G9, with specs suggesting the removal of the LiDAR option for both SUV (sport utility vehicle) models.
Xpeng files for facelifted G6 and G9 (both without LiDAR option)
