Nissan Motor Co Ltd said on Thursday it would, for now, stick to self-driving technology which uses radar sensors and cameras, avoiding lidar or light-based sensors because of their high cost and limited capabilities. The Japanese automaker unveiled updated self-driving technology a month after Tesla Inc's Chief Executive Elon Musk called lidar "a fool's errand", berating the technology for being expensive and unnecessary. Nissan, which wants to have its self-driving cars on city streets by 2020, has long shunned lidar, a relatively new technology for automobiles which has recently been the subject of an influx in investment by many of its rivals. "At the moment, lidar lacks the capabilities to exceed the capabilities of the latest technology in radar and cameras," Tetsuya Iijima, general manager of advanced technology development for automated driving, told reporters at Nissan's headquarters. "It would be fantastic if lidar technology was at the level that we could use it in our systems, but it's not. There's an imbalance between its cost and its capabilities." Iijima unveiled Nissan's own latest self-driving technology, which enables hands-free driving in single lanes on highways on predefined routes. The technology, to be released in Japan later this year, uses radar and sonar sensors along with cameras to compile the three-dimensional mapping data required for cars to "see" their surroundings. Apart from sonar, side radar and around-view monitoring cameras, Nissan said it has developed a "tri-cam" that focuses on three points to the front and sides of the vehicle to capture a wide area of view. Tesla also relies on cameras and radars for its self-driving technology. Nissan wants to add its self-driving technology to more of its affordable models to boost sales and recover from a profit slump. When reporting earnings earlier this week, the automaker said it had hit "rock bottom" in the aftermath of a financial scandal involving its ousted Chairman Carlos Ghosn. Lidar is currently used by companies including General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co and Alphabet Inc's Waymo as automakers and tech firms race to develop self-driving cars. Lidar technology uses light-based sensors that fire roughly 1 million laser pulses a second as it collects measurements that are analyzed and processed into 3D models and maps. More than $1 billion in corporate and private investment has been pumped into some 50 lidar startups over the past three years, according to a Reuters analysis in March of publicly available investment data. Still, it is a technology in flux. Initially using bulky spinning devices placed on the roof of cars, lidar developers have transitioned to more compact solid-state devices that can be mounted on other parts of a car. These now sell for less than $10,000 in limited quantities, and are widely expected to eventually sell for as little as $200 in mass production. Tesla to update battery software following car fires Tesla Inc, meanwhile, will update its battery software after two recent fires involving its Model S electric vehicles (EV) in Shanghai and Hong Kong, the US automaker said on Thursday, adding that investigations into the incidents are ongoing. "As we continue our investigation of the root cause, out of an abundance of caution, we are revising charge and thermal management settings on Model S and Model X vehicles via an over-the-air software update that will begin rolling out today, to help further protect the battery and improve battery longevity." Tesla said in a statement on Wednesday. On Tuesday, Hong Kong's Apple Daily newspaper reported that a Tesla car caught fire in a shopping mall parking lot 30 minutes after being parked. Tesla said its investigation with authorities into that incident so far found only a few of the car's battery modules affected and that the majority of the battery pack was undamaged. The Hong Kong incident came three weeks after Tesla said it had sent a team to investigate a video on Chinese social media that showed a parked Tesla Model S car exploding in the commercial hub of Shanghai. There have been at least 14 instances of Tesla cars catching fire since 2013, most of them following a crash. — Reuters
