On the flip side, Tesla $TSLA and General Motors $GM have been grabbing most of the recent headlines when it comes to self-driving cars in the hands of the public, and for all the wrong reasons—mass recalls, suspended licenses, spending cuts, and huge losses.
But in China, a number of companies are steadily—and far more successfully—moving toward a similar destination, but via a different route.
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Tesla’s Elon Musk has been vehement in his dismissal of the need for lidar and has now even removed radars from US market models. However, recently he has admitted that Tesla is testing a custom-designed radar, but then insisted that there are no plans to integrate it. In China, the US-listed trio is taking an approach that embraces a variety of sensors, most notably including lidar.
The full piece has individual reviews of three competing Chinese-developed systems for automotive autonomy (NIO $NIO’s NOP+, Li Auto’s NOA, and XPeng’s XNGP) and all three are well worth the read. Even with lidar, these offerings are inferior to the perception and reactivity of a human driver, but they’re closer than we’ve yet gotten over here.
