On May 10th, American LiDAR manufacturer Luminar Technologies mentioned in a letter to its shareholders that Tesla was its largest LiDAR product customer in the first quarter of 2024.
During the quarter, Tesla contributed over 10% of Luminar's revenue. Based on the company's estimated revenue of $21 million for this quarter, which is approximately 152 million RMB, this means that Tesla has purchased at least $2.1 million worth of LiDAR technology.
After the news broke, some media speculated that Tesla might be shifting towards using LiDAR in the field of autonomous driving, which goes against Musk's longstanding insistence on a pure vision-based approach, leaving many puzzled.
Those who have been following Tesla closely pointed out that acquiring LiDAR does not necessarily mean Tesla is changing its course in autonomous driving. In fact, Tesla has been using LiDAR devices to validate the visual data of its test vehicles.
For example, if the visual perception detects an obstacle at 90 meters, but the LiDAR measures it at 95 meters, there is a certain margin of error. In such cases, referencing the LiDAR data for calibration is necessary, so Tesla's purchase of LiDAR is not surprising.
In 2021, a Tesla Model Y was spotted in Florida with a rooftop LiDAR sensor manufactured by Luminar, further confirming this notion.
Regarding the news that Tesla has become the largest customer, Musk responded by stating that Tesla no longer needs LiDAR devices to collect "ground truth data" for autonomous driving (which refers to real-world data that is known to be correct or reliable, obtained through manual annotation).
"We don't even need them for that anymore," Musk declared.
