Xiaomi tests FSD 12 and praises what Tesla has done with pure vision and AI

The co-founder of Xiaomi Lin Bin took the latest Full Self-driving (Supervised) v12 for a short ride and came away impressed. Xiaomi plans to have more than 1,500 people on its autonomous driving team by year's end and wants to be a leader in the field, just like it has big plans for its electric car business that debuted with the SU7 sedan.

He simply went to a Tesla store in the US and asked for a test drive, starting from the parking lot. The Tesla then "went onto the highway, merged into traffic, got off the highway, went to the city, and finally returned back to the parking lot" covering 10 km in 10 minutes.

What Xiaomi's Lin Bin was particularly impressed with was the fact that FSD 12 feels like a human driver, yet Tesla used no LiDAR or sensors other than a Vision-only camera kit paired with its AI prowess to read and react.

Tesla recently covered all autonomous driving system tests needed for an FSD launch in China, and will reportedly partner with the local search giant Baidu for mapping and navigation purposes.

The news made the CEO of XPeng, which has led the autonomous driving push in China, say he welcomes Tesla FSD and thinks that the data it crunches will only improve the experience for everyone.

The most popular Chinese self-driving systems, however, like XPeng's XNGP, NIO's NOA+, or Li Auto's NOA, use a panoply of high-res cameras, mmWave and USS parking sensors, as well as LiDARs in order to achieve what Tesla tries to do with its Vision-only approach.

Still, Tesla will have much stiffer competition for FSD in China than anywhere else. The local self-driving systems are quite advanced and offer city driving as well, while Tesla's main global competitor BYD just passed the same autonomous driving system tests that Tesla went through in China.

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