Self-driving technology, domestic manufacturers recognize the correctness of Tesla
As we all know, in the first two years, there were two different development paths for autonomous driving technology.
One is Tesla's insistence on the pure vision algorithm school, in which Tesla only uses a camera, identifies objects through the camera, and then performs calculations.
The other is used by car companies in many countries, where they use lidar, and then through the combination of lidar and camera, they are fused and processed.
Regarding these two routes, Musk said"Only a fool would use lidar", because lidar is too expensive and too costly. For example, Tesla HW3The cost of the whole set of hardware for 0 is about 10,000 yuan, while with lidar, most of the hardware costs 40,000-70,000 yuan.
Proponents of lidar argue that the distance at which the camera cannot identify an object is two-dimensional, far inferior to the three-dimensional effect of lidar, and at the same time, the recognition effect of the camera in low light is weak, far inferior to lidar.
As early as two years ago, car companies in many countries favored lidar, and some even installed two or three lidars in their cars to show off their driving skills, more than Tesla's.
However, some time ago, it seems that car companies in various countries finally had to admit that Tesla was right.
On the one hand, car companies have begun to abandon the high-precision maps that were originally equipped with lidar as standard, and are slowly being eliminated.
In addition, many new cars that were listed some time ago no longer engage in lidar tactics, and many cars that originally had 3 lidars, after the new listing, actually only low-key 1 lidar on the car.
Why is that? On the one hand, we see that the cost of using LiDAR is very high, although it has come down now, but compared with the camera, it is still very expensive, and LiDAR is still very expensive on a single type of hardware in the vehicle, so the competitiveness is not enough, and the war cannot be stopped.
Second, with the advancement of technology, the current ISP is getting better and better, it can be used in low-light conditions, and the algorithm is getting better and better, coupled with artificial intelligence, LiDAR technology is not necessarily much more advanced than camera technology.
If there are low-cost solutions, why use expensive lidar, and car companies are not stupid.
In addition, autonomous driving is now basically L2 level, with LiDAR, or with cameras, the difference is not obvious, consumers will not do it because of the use of LiDAR, and invoicing, let alone because of the use of cameras do not buy, LiDAR is not the key factor in the purchase.
As a result, car companies slowly stopped dwelling on LiDAR and opted for the cheapest and best camera solution, and began to admit that Tesla was right. After all, there is no essential difference between 10,000 yuan and 50,000 yuan to build a function, who will use 50,000 yuan to do it?