On May 7, local time, Luminar, a US lidar developer, disclosed that Tesla contributed US $21 million in total revenue to Luminar in the first quarter of 2023, accounting for more than 10% of the total revenue, and is expected to exceed US $2 million.
As a result, Tesla has become the largest customer of Luminar.
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, why did Tesla give up the pure vision scheme? According to Ji Wein.
com analysis, Tesla is one of the few automakers in the world to adhere to the route of pure visual intelligent driving technology.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, believes that lidar is unnecessary for fully self-driving cars, even called “crutches”.
Tesla did not choose the lidar technology route, mainly because the lidar cost was too high before.
It is understood that the cost of an early lidar was as high as 600000 yuan.
With the rapid iteration of the technology of local lidar enterprises such as Wesai Technology, Suiteng Juchuang, Huawei and other local lidar enterprises, and the products have achieved large-scale mass production, the price of car-gauge-level lidar has dropped significantly, making it possible to get on board in batches.
Wesai Technology, Suiteng Juchuang and Huawei have become the leading companies in global sales of automotive lidar.
On the contrary, due to the slow intelligent progress of traditional international car companies and the abandonment of support by new forces such as Tesla, international lidar manufacturers have not developed satisfactorily in recent years, with general survival difficulties such as closure and restructuring.
Luminar recently announced that it will lay off 20% of its staff, which is part of the company’s restructuring plan this year.
In order to reverse the plight of survival, many international lidar manufacturers have even shifted their business focus to China, and even moved their headquarters to China.
In fact, although Tesla does not currently use lidar in his vehicle, previous news shows that Tesla’s new generation of fully autonomous driving scheme has reserved the lidar access interface.
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