Nio Supplier Partners With Auto Glass Company To Tackle Ugly Lidar Placement Woes In Certain EVs

A supplier of Nio Inc NIO has partnered with auto glass company Fuyao Group to make Lidars that can be installed behind the windshield of a vehicle, eliminating any unsightly issues associated with roof-mounted Lidars.

What Happened: Innovusion and Fuyao are basing their initial collaboration on the former's Robin-E, which carries dimensions of 117 mm x 100 mm x 44 mm (4.6" x 4.3" x 1.7")  and weighs nearly 450 grams (~1 lb). The Lidar consumes less than 9W of power and has less than 20DB (A) of noise, reported CNEVPost.

The two companies have reportedly begun joint research and development and have managed to integrate Lidar with the camera behind the windshield with detection performance attenuation of less than 10 percent.

Why It Matters: There are two main mounting options for Lidars — Nio models put the device on the top, while rival XPeng Inc XPEV puts it next to the headlights, noted CNEVPost.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk, who heads Nio's rival Tesla Inc TSLA, has spoken time and against Lidar. He described the technology as a "seductive local maximum."

He has reasoned that the road system was designed to work with biological neural nets and eyes whose alternatives are "silicon neural nets & cameras."

Here’s an example of a Tesla Self-Driving Test Vehicle With Lidar mounted on the roof:

Even so, In February, Tesla Semi and Cybetruck prototypes were spotted with Lidar sensors and the company was reportedly using the technology for its Autopilot and self-driving efforts, reported Electrek.

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