Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Media: Huawei Allocates 10,000 Employees to LiDAR Development

cnTechPost, EqualOcean, NaijaTechNews, Observer Network, GizmoChina, Baidu: Huawei optoelectronics R&D center in Wihan employing 10,000 people develops automotive LiDAR, according to Wang Jun, president of the recently established Intelligent Automotive Solutions BU. The goal is to create a 100-line LIDAR in the short term.The future plans include cost reduction to $200 or even $100.

Xu Zhijun, Huawei's rotating chairman, says that Huawei will build LIDAR, millimeter-wave radar and other smart car core sensors to create a new sensor ecology.

With that massive investment, Huawei competes against about 130+ smaller LiDAR companies. When combined, these companies probably have the same 10,000 people employed, give or take. So, there is a competition of 10K-people-strong well organized army of Huawei designers against 130+ smaller teams scattered across the globe and exploring different ideas. It would be interesting to see who wins in the end.

8 comments:

  1. We need Mr Trump to stop them!

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    1. Huawei has design centers all over the world and a lot of automotive R&D is driven by Europe and Asia - I don't think it'll be easy to stop them. This is a crazy investment! 10,000 engineers - that's maybe 1 billion USD/year just in salaries... wow!

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    2. Honestly, I do not think the number is reasonable and I would guess this is a misunderstaning. If you read the sources again "Huawei has an optoelectronics-focused R&D center in Wuhan with more than 10,000 people. Now, it is developing a lidar system in-house".

      It never says all the engineers are working on Lidar. I would assume the main focus of this R&D center is other projects (5G and network related optoelectronics, mobile phone cameras, ...)

      That doesn't change the fact that having a 10.000 people R&D for optoelectronics is still very impressive, even if it is not all for Lidars and they sure should have a vast competence pool to draw from.

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    3. True, their wording is a bit ambiguous. Om the other hand, Huawei is looking for a good use of its vast design resources since they can't be used for TSMC-manufactured chips anymore. LiDAR seems to be a good market opportunity, if they are able to do it right. So, they might put all their free design teams to develop LiDAR chips, system, and optics.

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  2. it is in Wuhan, where COVID break out

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  3. It only takes one or a few creative minds to invent things. But 10,000 workers can copy things fast!

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    1. I don't think there is somebody to copy from. All solutions now are either too expensive or under-performing, or, sometimes, both.

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