QA with Xinzhou Wu, head of automotive at Nvidia, on Nvidia's chips and AI models for autonomous driving, lidar's usefulness for Level 4 autonomy, and more

DETAILED EXPLANATION

In a Verge Decoder interview, Nvidia automotive chief Xinzhou Wu said Level 4 autonomy could reach consumer cars in under five years, backed by the company's roadmap of a 2025 Mercedes Benz production project, a 2027 Level 4 pilot with Google, and driverless service plans with Uber for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Wu argued that cameras, radar, ultrasonic sensors, and lidar together provide the redundancy needed to handle safety critical edge cases, calling lidar indispensable for Level 3 and Level 4 systems.

Asked about Tesla's camera only approach, Wu acknowledged Tesla is ahead on basic driver assistance but stopped short of saying vision alone can reach full Level 4 autonomy.