Why does the CEO of Volkswagen think his Tesla counterpart is wrong about lidar technology?

Volkswagen is betting heavily on LiDAR technology to achieve the third level of autonomy.

Volkswagen CEO Herbert Dies believes Tesla CEO Elon Musk is wrong about LiDAR technology. He believes lidar technology is essential to achieving the Level 3 autonomous driving system, which many automakers are aiming for. He said this during a Reddit chat about electricity, autonomy, new car technology, etc.

(Also read: Tesla faces closer scrutiny by German regulators over its autopilot feature)

While talking about Lidar technology, Deiss noted that Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a personal friend of the Volkswagen boss, has a different opinion of Lidar. Elon Musk believes that lidar technology is not necessary for cars to achieve their third level of autonomy. Musk previously said that humans don’t come equipped with lidar, so cars don’t need that either. He has repeatedly said that lidar is expensive, ugly, and unnecessary. He also noted that lidar cannot recognize road signs. instead of lidar, Tesla More dependent on cameras.

Coming to Dess, he said that lidar technology may still be expensive, but that it is currently the only way to provide repeat visualization for 360-degree camera systems. He also said that safety is really critical in self-driving and for Level 3 autonomous driving, over-perception is essential. The German automaker has already partnered with Intel subsidiary MobileEye for its Lidar technology.

The global auto industry has been working on self-driving technology for a long time. In the past few years, the pace of development has increased significantly. Many automakers have researched, developed, and tested their autonomous drive systems around the world. However, none of them have yet offered a fully driverless drive system in their mass market models. Instead, automakers are now introducing ADAS driver assistance technologies into their cars that still require human intervention. Technologies such as lidar and a wide range of sensors, radars, cameras, etc. are usually used for these ADAS systems.

First Publication Date: Feb 21 2022 08:19 AM IST