I finally lost you - Resolve Mobileye and Tesla to stop cooperation

Lei Feng Network (search "Lei Feng Net" public concern) : Author clip, senior automotive industry practitioners, WeChat public number Roboticists. This article attempts to analyze the whole story of cooperation between Mobileye and Tesla, and who actually broke up.

Via: bidnessetc.com

"I finally lost you in crowded crowds"

This year is the year of the Mobileye. Since its inception in 1999, this Israeli company has never been so attractive to the world as it is today. From a large environment, people pay more attention to autopilot technology than ever before:

Source: Google Trends

From a business point of view, according to the financial report data for the second quarter of 2016, Mobileye has raised its full-year 2016 revenue forecast to US$350 million, which is expected to increase by 44%. It is estimated that Mobileye will cooperate with about 30 automakers by 2016 [Note 1].

However, after the report that TC launched Mobileye’s termination of cooperation with Tesla yesterday, [2], Mobileye's share price dropped to a low of -14.37% and closed at -8.05%.

July 26, 2016 MBLY Share Price

The market reaction is very strong. Why is it that the termination of cooperation between the two companies will affect the direction of the capital market behind the financial report? This article attempts to analyze the whole story of cooperation between Mobileye and Tesla, and who actually broke up.

| The longest winter

Let's go back to 2008, when Tesla spent almost every penny on the account in order to develop the Roadster. The amount of money on the account was so small that it only supported the company for another two months. Founder Musk's first wife proposed a divorce to him in the middle of the year, and Musk founded another company, SpaceX, which was also difficult. The third rocket launch failed again... On the other hand, Mobileye's situation is too good: in 2007. In the past year, Goldman Sachs invested 100 million U.S. dollars and successfully developed the Mobileye EyeQ2 chip. And EyeQ2 won the favor of the BMW 7 Series at the time of its release. Everything went according to plan.

Rear-mounted products based on Mobileye EyeQ2

Today we understand that Mobileye is a company largely because it provides a visual identification module for Tesla's Autopilot system, but in fact Mobileye's initial customers were mainly Cadillac, BMW and Volvo. Tesla was struggling at the time, and Musk was even skeptical that the car couldn't continue. Fortunately, Tesla finally survived through financial processing (that is, a trick between Musk’s companies borrowing money from each other to obtain low-cost financing) and several investment returns that Musk received in a timely manner. .

| Technology Crystallization Model S

In March 2009, the Model S was formally announced. Tesla raised the concept of investment including Daimler, the US Department of Energy, and Toyota. And in the middle of the year, it successfully listed and raised 220 million U.S. dollars in funds. It is true that high-performance electric cars, the central control 17-inch screen has become a symbol of Tesla. But who knows that Tesla's most attractive features have been hidden in the snow. When the Tesla Model S was delivered, no one knew exactly what their optional Autopilot Convenience Features were.

Look again at Mobileye, which is still developing in a smooth manner : The development of a millimeter-wave radar and visual fusion system was completed . The products were installed in several Volvo, GM, and Hyundai Kia models, and several aftermarket products were introduced. , And released the EyeQ3 chip. We do not know what mood Musk first saw when it looked at the performance of EyeQ3, but it seemed to us that EyeQ3 was a qualitative leap for EyeQ2: at the same time it could identify more than 4 lane lines, including lane line types, colors, and The vehicle recognition rate reaches 99%, and so on.

Among them, there has been a qualitative leap in the recognition rate of vehicle identification and lane line recognition, making L2 automatic driving possible . However, when the Model S was developed, it was considered that it was possible to implement L2 autopilot. Therefore, in the second half of 2014, the optional Mobileye EyeQ3 vision module and Bosch's forward millimeter-wave radar were sold together with the Tesla Model S. Consumers, but the program has not finished yet.

Until January 9, 2016, Tesla updated its software on the car to the 7.1 version through OTA, enabling the use of Autopilot system . It can be said that the Tesla's automatic driving experience surpasses all the previous luxury cars, although some people think that Tesla is so bold. But have to admit that Tesla's Autopilot autopilot technology has been very practical. Mobileye has thus entered the people’s perspective:

Although Mobileye was still a Tier2 (secondary supplier) at the time, in cooperation with Tesla, the two companies worked together to bring the most sophisticated image recognition technology to consumers through Model S.

(Lei Feng Net Note: For OTA technology, you can see the article “How Does OTA Technology Become the New Favorite of Smart Car?”

It can be said that this is the most brilliant moment for the cooperation between the two companies. But from that moment onwards, the two companies went further and further, and they stopped cooperation until today. We can not help but ask, what actually caused the two companies to part ways?

| Mobileye's Automated Driving Path

The arrival of Tesla Autopilot enabled the world to be attracted by autopilot, and Mobileye jumped from being a Tier2 (secondary supplier), which is not widely known, to becoming a partner of all Tier1 and OEMs. Here we try to analyze Mobileye’s automated driving technology route:

Increase the number of visual sensors

As noted in the previous article analyzing the fatal car accident of Tesla, [3], the scheme using only monocular + millimeter-wave radar lacks redundancy. We see that the next-generation Mobileye system will be a multi-camera solution with a current number of 3 (Trifocal systems) + 5 heads. A total of 8 cameras cover all the angles around the vehicle. And there are three times the redundancy in the forward direction. As far as I know, Mobileye is developing the L3 level autopilot technology based on this “Full Vision” system, which mainly includes automatic up/down speed and active lane change at high speed.

REM Map System

Mobileye has already collaborated with several major OEMs to build crowdsourced maps that include sparse 3D information and detailed 1D information, enabling the Mobileye system to gain more information and positioning accuracy in global positioning. Compared with high-precision maps, the REM map has a small amount of data, which facilitates dynamic data upload/download.

Cooperation with Intel and BMW

On July 1, 2016, Mobileye, Intel and BMW announced that they hope to establish a standard platform for the next generation of autonomous driving. This scene makes people feel familiar and can not help but remind people of the cooperation of IBM, Intel, and Microsoft in the microcomputer era. It is reported that Mobileye will integrate the algorithm into Intel's latest automatic driving computing platform, and will no longer cooperate with STMicroelectronics to produce its own chips.

We can clearly see the way Mobileye is ready to go: provide standard sensor installation methods + map data cloud service + software system platform construction.

It seems that everything is so perfect, but the question is: How did the good partner Tesla disappear?

| Tesla's autopilot road

It can be said that Tesla is the fastest in all depots. Through every test of Tesla owners, the miles accumulated by Autopilot have already left other companies, including the most technologically advanced Google. Through actual road practice (or called testing), Tesla can get the status of each section of Tesla's roads through its 3G module, including the clarity of the lanes, the amount of traffic, the presence of lane misdetection, etc. Have to update their database. Tesla's owners were surprised to find that at some point they usually had to take over. After a certain period of time, Tesla could no longer need to take over the correction and pass through the intersection smoothly. This is an optimization of the autopilot experience through a crowd-sourced model that collects data online.

It can be clearly seen that this method and Mobileye's REM system have similarities. However, due to Tesla's black box, which is separated by a Mobileye's EyeQ3 chip, the experience can only be improved, and it is impossible to fundamentally obtain a map suitable for autonomous driving. If Tesla needs to create its own map, it needs to join Mobileye's REM project. The resulting data will be shared by all project members... As Tesla, which has accumulated the most mileage and data, is certainly not willing to share data with other depots, especially those traditional car manufacturers. .

Since the problem was on the black box of EyeQ3, Tesla started developing his own image algorithm and image processing chip .

As early as May 2015, someone shot a Model S full of cameras at the Tesla headquarters:

Tesla also invited David Nist ́er, the god of CV, to join as vice president of automatic driving. David Nist ́er is the inventor of the widely used five-point method in the CV and because of his research on the Vocabulary Tree he won the Longuet-Higgins Prize of CVPR this year.

In addition to visual algorithms, Tesla also hired Jim Keller, a key designer who once led the development of AMD Athlon chips and Apple A4/A5 chips, as vice president of hardware engineering for autonomous driving. You can see Tesla’s determination to develop a visual identity chip .

| A car accident, the two companies further and further away

Although I don’t know the specific time when Tesla and Mobileye decided to terminate the cooperation, I believe that the Tesla’s automatic driving death accident on July 1 this year has become the end of the cooperation between the two companies . When Tesla was chased by the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration), Mobileye is announcing cooperation with Intel and BMW Development. From a time point of view, Tesla's plan to develop its own visual chip should have a long history. If you want to ask the two companies who have broken up, I think Tesla is more likely to mention it.

Interestingly, at the end of March of this year, Musk traveled to Israel’s Mobileye headquarters. He waited for him to be a research and development autopilot Audi sedan. The model S that was developed in cooperation was left in the parking garage of Mobileye. gray.

Note 1: press-release-details/2016/Mobileye-Announces-Second-Quarter-2016-Financial-Results/default.aspx

Note 2: mobileye-wont-supply-tesla-self-driving-tech-beyond-current-eyeq3-processor

Note 3: Self-cultivation of self-driving old drivers - Detailed Tesla's first fatal car accident

Note 4: Elon Musk visits Mobileye in Israel

Lei Feng Net Note: Reprinted, please contact the authorization, and retain the author and source, not to delete the content.

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