The reason why Huawei’s lidar confuses the West is mainly because Huawei has once again done what they couldn’t do. Western high-tech products have always been extremely expensive and not very easy to use. 5G is a typical example. 5G in the West was completely defeated by Huawei in the market. As a last resort, the government had to personally intervene to hinder Huawei's offensive.
Although Huawei's 5G expansion in the West has been hindered, Huawei has now come up with a highly competitive high-tech product? Lidar. This is another weapon that can conquer cities and territories in the Western market, and the West basically does not have much capital to deal with it. Even people as awesome as Musk, who works on the Rockets, are helpless. 1.0 ?What is lidar? What is it used for?
If you want to understand why Huawei's lidar has confused the West, you must explain to everyone what lidar is. Lidar is a high-tech product that combines laser technology and radar technology. It has a very wide range of applications in obstacle avoidance, three-dimensional mapping, missile guidance, ocean detection, etc. However, today we will not discuss the above-mentioned high-tech fields, but only the autonomous driving fields that we ordinary people have the opportunity to use.
In the autonomous driving industry, there is a common sense: lidar is the product with the strongest comprehensive advantages in the field of vehicle sensors. Compared with other sensing technologies, such as cameras, lidar can overcome the influence of adverse conditions such as cloudy days, dense fog, and rain, and can better detect surrounding objects. It has excellent performance in terms of accuracy, breadth, sensitivity, etc.
However, although lidar is very powerful, it has two major shortcomings. One is high technical difficulty, and the other is high production cost. It is reported that there is currently only one company in the world that can produce automotive lidar, and the lowest price is several thousand dollars. At present, only luxury car brands use lidar. Relevant data shows that real lidar is not available in cars priced below 800,000 yuan.
Based on the high efficiency of lidar, Western society has invested heavily in the hope of monopolizing this field. Because the future will definitely be dominated by autonomous driving, and the market space is extremely huge, definitely no smaller than the market space for mobile phones and 5G. But even those who are as powerful as Tesla cannot do it. In the field of autonomous driving, Tesla claims to be second, but no one dares to say that it is first. But none of them could handle lidar. As a result, they had no choice but to abandon lidar and switch to camera AI algorithm solutions.
2.0 Why does Huawei’s lidar confuse the West?
Huawei’s lidar can currently achieve the goal of having what others don’t have, and what others have. My level of cheap. Faced with this situation, Western society has to be confused. Because they found that, just like the competition in 5G, they once again had no way to deal with Huawei. They were in a passive situation and were in a passive position. They didn’t even have the strength to defend themselves. If not, they might have to punish the government again and use some despicable means. Suppress.
Huawei’s lidar has effectively solved the two major problems of technical difficulty and high cost mentioned above. As long as the technical performance is no worse than that of Western products, Huawei has reduced the cost of several thousand dollars for Western companies to about 200 U.S. dollars. In the future, the cost is likely to further drop to 100 yuan. Such ultra-low cost will inevitably attract many car companies to adopt Huawei's lidar and abandon the products of Western companies.
After the release of Huawei's lidar, Musk, who didn't pay much attention to Huawei, had to pay attention to Huawei. Huawei's lidar put him under great pressure, and he even complained about Huawei. The thing that Musk is most proud of in Tesla is the autonomous driving system. In the early years, due to technical and cost reasons, Musk gave up lidar and adopted a camera AI algorithm solution.
Among all camera AI algorithm solutions, Tesla’s solution is undoubtedly the most successful. If no new technology is born, Tesla's solution can be far ahead and stand out from the crowd. But Huawei's lidar can destroy the advantages Tesla has accumulated over the years.
Huawei's lidar, to a certain extent, puts many car companies in the same position in the field of autonomous driving, at least not as far behind as it is now.
Previously, when car companies such as Xiaopeng and Weilai announced that they would develop lidar models, Westerners (including Musk) thought it was impossible and disagreed. After Huawei's lidar came out, they had to attach great importance to it. However, no matter how much they attach importance to it, it cannot change the fact that lidar is booming in China. As the saying goes, "Every loss leads to wisdom." When Huawei and other domestic companies conduct research and development, they try their best to avoid Western patent barriers. For example, Huawei's 96-line semi-solid lidar this time has avoided Western patent barriers.