Written by Cláudio Afonso | Info@claudio-afonso.com | LinkedIn | X
In late April, Lin Bin, co-founder of Xiaomi, tested Tesla’s full self-driving (FSD) software V12 in the United States. In post on Chinese social media Weibo, he expressed being very impressed, stating that the driving felt “like a human driver”.
This week, Lin Bin shared a picture of a white Model Y saying “Got my hands on a Model Y, going to give FSD a good try”.
On April 26, Xiaomi‘s executive Lin Bin had described his demo drive as a human like experience.
“Started from the parking lot, went onto the highway, merged into traffic, got off the highway, went to the city, and finally returned back to the parking lot. It took more than 10 minutes to travel 10 kilometers. Although there are not many vehicles, there is no need for high-precision maps and no LIDAR, it is completely based on pure visual modeling,” he wrote.
The version 12 of the software is “ready for supervised FSD in LHD countries,” with RHD countries (such as he UK or Japan) expected to follow suit later, according to the Tesla CEO.
“I’m very impressed. FSD feels like a human driver. Look forward to going for a test drive in a more crowded place,” Lin Bin added.
Lin Bin co-founded Xiaomi with the CEO Lei Jun in 2010 serving as President of the Group until 2019 before becoming Vice Chairman of the the Group. In late March, the tech giant launched its first EV model and has locked in over 100,000 orders according to the latest update.
Last month, chief executive of Xpeng, He Xiaopeng, reacted on Weibo to the recent developments of Tesla’s advanced assisted driving software in China. Xiaopeng predicts that the new decade will be focused on smart cars adding that Tesla has “very good autonomous driving technology”.
Tesla has recently introduced its Enhanced Autopilot (EAP) subscription service in China, priced at 699 yuan per month ($98.5). Elon Musk hinted recently at the possibility of offering full self-driving capabilities in China soon, stating “It may be possible very soon” in a recent post on X.
On Wednesday, Tesla chief executive hinted that the assisted driving software for the Cybertruck is only “a few months away”.
Written by Cláudio Afonso | Info@claudio-afonso.com | LinkedIn | X
In an interview at the Financial Times Car Summit on Wednesday, Lucid CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson said the company will not focus on developing an affordable model but on energy density technology instead.
Tesla's Head of Product Rich Otto announced on Wednesday that he has resigned in the first days of May after nearly 7 years at the company.
In an interview at the Financial Times Car Summit, in London, Lucid CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson said electric vehicle manufacturers from China are "many years behind Tesla" despite admitting "they're a lot better than they've been".
Tesla plans to expand Giga Berlin’s premises by 170 hectares, doubling the facility's production capacity to 1 million units a year. Despite this ambition, residents of the German town of Grünheide voted against the expansion in a survey earlier this year.
On Tuesday, weekly car insurance data for China was released, indicating that Tesla sold 11,000 vehicles in the country from April 29 to May 5. This includes 600 units of the revamped Model 3, with the remaining 10,400 units being Model Y.
Tesla started a new round of layoffs warning some of its teams that May 5 marked their last day at the company. From Friday until Sunday, the company sent out an email informing the teams about their final employment day although the scale of the reduction is yet unknown.
According to data released by the German Federal Motor Transport Association, April saw the registration of 243,102 passenger cars, with 29,668 being fully electric.
Tom Zhu, Tesla's Senior Vice President of Automotive, is set to return to China as Vice President for the market, as reported by automotive bloggers on Chinese social media platform Weibo on Monday.
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