BYD's 'God's Eye' And Huawei's Autonomous Driving Progress Spark Concerns For Tesla: Ross Gerber Points Out, 'All Use LIDAR'

Prominent Tesla Inc. TSLA investors are weighing in on the increasingly competitive autonomous driving landscape as Chinese rivals BYD Co. Ltd. BYDDY and Huawei advance their driver assistance systems, challenging Tesla’s vision-only approach.

What Happened: Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management, highlighted a key technical distinction in the autonomous driving race, noting on X that all major competitors “use LIDAR” technology, contrasting with Tesla’s camera-only system.

His observation comes amid recent concerns about Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system’s limitations, including its vulnerability to dust, ash, and sun glare.

Gary Black, managing partner of The Future Fund LLC, suggests that autonomous driving is becoming “commoditized” rather than a winner-take-all market. “We own TSLA as the global EV leader as EV adoption soars, and we get upside from unsupervised autonomy and Optimus. But we don’t own TSLA because of any misplaced view it will take 100% share of ride sharing,” Black stated on X.

All use LIDAR
— Ross Gerber (@GerberKawasaki) February 10, 2025

Why It Matters: The debate intensifies as BYD introduces its “God’s Eye” advanced driver assistance system across its entire lineup, including its budget Seagull hatchback priced at approximately $9,600.

Meanwhile, Huawei’s Qiankun ADS 3.2 system, demonstrated in recent reviews, has shown promising performance in complex urban environments, featuring HD map-free smart driving and omnidirectional collision avoidance capabilities.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk continues to defend the company’s vision-only approach, recently stating, “Obviously, humans drive without shooting lasers out of their eyes.” However, this stance faces scrutiny as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigates 2.6 million Tesla vehicles equipped with FSD technology.

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