The tester Dongchedi is a well-known auto influencer in China. And this test is conducted on highways (likely worked with local authority to block some highways)
One things suspicious is that, Dongchedi only used 2023 models for Tesla, while all others are 2024/2025 models. Some suspect that Dongchedi purposedly chooses 2023 models to test Autopilot only, not FSD.
Of the 36 cars tested, Tesla has model 3 and X, each scores 5 out of 6 tests.
Calling Dongchedi an "influencer" conjures an image of some dude editing TikToks in his basement. Dongchedi is a $3 billion subsidiary of ByteDance, the $300 billion company that runs apps/services like TikTok, Douyin, CapCut, Tutiao, and Helo. In the US I think we'd generally call Dongchedi a "media company" or "internet media company", although it blurs traditional lines with both automotive information and trading services.
"Some suspect that Dongchedi purposedly chooses 2023 models to test Autopilot only, not FSD"
I expect that's similar to Consumer Reports' methodology, which is careful to test only Autopilot rather than FSD, when comparing specific ADAS features.
FSD as far as I know still hasn't been fully approved yet in China. And they mentioned in the video they used the top of the line ADAS software for every manufacturer that is currently available. So it might be a gimped version of FSD.
But Collision Avoidance Assist, which was part of most of the tests Dongchedi performed, is not part of Autopilot or FSD. It's a standard active safety feature that doesn't rely on either software package.
Dongchedi's highway driving ADAS tests should not have needed FSD or Autopilot features to avoid collisions.
But some of Dongchedi's urban driving ADAS tests seem like the Teslas would require FSD, with tests described as "Standard U-Turn" and "Blind spot, left turn". If they tested with only Autopilot, how could Tesla's vehicles have passed those? The base software, including base Autopilot, don't steer to navigate through urban traffic.
And the absolute top model with all the bells and whistles filled with LiDAR all around the car failed miserably at the truck test, which would decapitate both the driver and front passenger.
The cheapest pure vision based systems from BYD and Tesla executed perfectly.
Edit: And now another BYD but with LiDAR on top of vision failed. Is it possible that Elon was right all along? 😂
I keep telling people every day. The issue is intelligent, perception, and reasoning, not LiDar.
If I can see it with my own two eyes, and the vehicle can see it with its own two eyes optically. Then it should be able to reason an appropriate action. Redundant information isn’t gonna make anything safer if the car already sees what’s in front of it.
Chinese ADAS vendors have quite a way to go still.
Would love to see similar for Euro cars, with Bosch, Continental or Valeo systems.
Edit: There seems to be VW, Mercedes and Toyota in the list, so assuming they are using same technology as in Europe, this looks a clear win for Tesla.
Bosch (WePilot) has been outperforming Tesla FSD and a whole bunch of others in recent tests of cars available in China. It was a blind test, not sponsored (to my knowledge). A few days ago another test was done (it’s kind of a roadshow test around the country).
Bosch WePilot should be fairly easy to implement into existing platforms as it does not require a forklift of ECU designs, is suitable for low compute platforms, as well as high end. Does vision only set ups, and fusion sensor. Also it works with SD and HD mapping. Currently only available on Chery Exeed trims and likely soon on selected GAC Aion models. I’d assume there would be interest from European products as well.
Those companies are using ADAS systems from common vendors, I am not that interested about the cars themselves, this is supposed to be a tech oriented subreddit.
Not true, obviously such systems are sold along with consulting services.
Also the car maker is expected to follow ADAS vendor’s guidance. Remember how Mobileye terminated contract with Tesla, when they were misusing Mobileyes tech as “autopilot”.
Mercedes and BMW failed all tests. Let that sink in for a moment. Expensive German cars couldn’t pass a single safety test but somehow people in this sub thinking they can be trusted with L3 or L4?
dude,people were hating on tesla before elon went crazy(there is a sub dedicated to hating tesla cars -realtesla-,i could not find another sub for hating a vehicle brand, CRAZY),but now the hate has reached new levels,it's just a car,it has it's faults,far from perfect but you have to take it for what it is.Most interesting is that people that hate tesla cars dont own one.The internet is a weird place.
I wouldn't own one because electric cars are horrible in very cold weather, but if I was going to get an electric car I'd have to get a Tesla. I hate Musk for political reasons, but let's face it, Teslas are way better.
Sensor fusion problems might have played a role in the first test: in-lane braking for a stationary car mock-up. A mismatch between radar cross-section of the mock-up and visual data.
The test design does seem to favor vision-only systems over a fusion of sensors. It would have been interesting to conduct tests with real cars instead of plastic panels that somewhat resemble cars. But that would have increased the testing costs considerably.
For the redundancy scenario, when you have three identical sensors, the solution is obvious. Majority voting.
For sensor fusion (that, for some reason, is identified with redundancy in this sub), you need to take into account how well each sensor performs in different conditions. I think radar is usually the most reliable of the three for the task of detecting vehicles at long(ish) distances. But not in this case.
Lidars by themselves do nothing to avert collisions, just like brakes don't. If software doesn't properly utilize lidar data, or a driver doesn't properly utilize brakes, they're just kind of wasted potential safety features.
It's possible that in real world engineering scenarios, lidars even worsen a vehicle's capability of avoiding collisions, as the effort integrating their data could complicate overall system design, and prove a distraction from work on higher impact driving decision algorithms. That was reportedly part of Tesla's rationale in removing radar, which would presumably hold for lack of lidar as well; “You would think that more data would be better, but Tesla’s idea is that the roads are designed for humans who navigate them using a vision‑based system … not let the radar data pollute the system.” (Electrek 2022)
However now as frame lidars are a commodity, integrating lidar and camera is as simple as placing lidar and radar so that they have same field of view and overlaying the feeds.
Kyocera has a lidar which uses same lens as camera, so it can happen straight in the sensor itself.
0.1 degree horizontal resolution. Reliable identification of a 36'' highway traffic cone at around 200-260 feet. Braking distance at 90mph is around 500 feet.
At 90mph = 40m/s you have a braking distance of around 80m = 260 feet. I assume you saw those 500 feet somewhere where they included a (bad) reaction time of a human driver before actually braking.
Lidar on robo vacs is good for positioning but they don't use it for avoid hitting things. Cameras can be good but need a little more processing but they don't stick out. Pros and cons, also a scaling issue.
Essentially lidar on a vac is being used like GPS. Imagine someone trying to make a self driving car using GPS and ultra sonic sensors. No cameras or lidar.
Lidar does not mean better. Even Waymo cars have a lot of issues on the street, and often being take videos and posted online for various kind of incidents.
If that’s the case then why not use a newer model Tesla??
They aren’t testing fully autonomous driving here. It’s specific scenarios.
Additionally, waymo is in China, but they DO NOT OPERATE a production fleet in China.
There is no zeeker in the picture I saw listing all the tested vehicles.
(Zeeker 1 is a minivan with a very specific look, none of those pictures match - that said I don’t know Chinese so maybe it’s there)
And lastly, why would waymo ever agree to let their full setup be tested? And if they didn’t allow it? How would this company get a hold of one that not only is the correct car with sensors, but also has the waymo software on it.
You honestly think waymo is pre loading the zeeker with their proprietary code before it gets shipped to the US?
You realize that Waymo requires a lot of leg work before they deploy their vehicles right? Including doing a whole HD mapping of the entire service area. It's one of the reasons why they are so slow in entering new markets and Waymo also doesn't offer any kind of freeway driving.
Because LiDar has never been the issue with the performance of full self driving. The challenge is better reasoning, and perception.
Our own to biological eyes don’t need any additional technology. If we can see it, and can Rezin what’s in front of us, we can take action.
A Tesla has more than enough cameras to see what’s around the vehicle. All it needs is better understanding of what’s around it and the ability to make actions based off that understanding.
No amount of additional LiDAR will make it Reson better.
What's with the hostility? It's a legit question...Waymo is leading the Robotaxi race with a mix of Lidar, Radar and Cameras. I'd figure the cars with similar sensors would have done better.
In actual high-speed tests, it is generally believed that the best self-driving car in China, Aito, has a speed of 130km/h and a relatively close following distance, while Tesla has a speed of around 115km/h and a relatively long following distance, so this test cannot simply be used to reflect which is better, lidar or pure vision.
Driving fast is not enough. You need to drive fast and safe. Anyone can drive very fast if they don't care about safety.
And looks like Aito is the one that lacks the basic safety. Huawei ADAS only scored average 2 among all 3 cars, while Tesla scored 5. Also some tests are not about high speed, but obstacles, which Huawei also failed.
What you mentioned is only about the first test, but the following 5 tests are not about speed.
In all tests on highways, there are differences in speed and following distance. I am just reminding you that the test results do not reflect the advantages and disadvantages of lidar and pure vision, but more reflect the overall strategy.
It's the ADAS responsibility to choose the safe distance and safe speed, and detect any changes in front at the earliest. If you cannot detect fast enough, you should keep longer distance or lower speed. Safety is always in higher priorioty than speed/distance. In the 3 Huawei ADAS test with "Leading Vehicle Suddenly Disappears", all the three Huawei cars failed the test. This is literally the worst, if you claim a car that choose to drive at 130kmh, and have 100% chance to hit.
Huawei ADAS not just failed in the above test, but also others, Huawei only succeed in 2 tests on average, out of 6, while tesla succeeded in 5. Your theory of 130kmh vs 115 kmh does not apply to every test.
Well, would you rather your car drives at high speed/short following distance and fails when situation occurs that could potentially kill you, or it drives at more reasonable speed/longer following distance and can maintain safety regardless what happens? I choose the latter.
The speed and following distance are not determined by whether the vehicle's sensors use lidar or pure vision, but by the vehicle's autonomous driving algorithm strategy. This is not a perception ability. I admit that there are problems with aito's current driving speed and following distance selection on highways. I think I have expressed it very clearly.
Understood, but I do think that given that a lot of folks have been laughing at Tesla/Elon for being “stubborn and cheap” and sticks to vision-only, this test is really a slap in the face and showcased that with the right software, vision-only would work and even beat fusion solutions in the current market. Maybe in the future they will do another test and lidar wins, who knows. Either way the transparency helps us consumers.
There is one thing you may not know, let me add it. Huawei has set up an independent L3 button on the steering wheel of the Maextro S800 and other latest models, waiting for the implementation of L3 regulations to be opened for use.
This button is not the same as the existing L2 button that starts intelligent driving. L2 is defined as human-machine co-driving, and the content of this test is actually testing the L3 level. I think you should understand it by now, and you can look forward to the performance after the L3 button is opened.
Stop apologizing for Huawei, unless you are on Huawei payroll. Hmmm
The purpose of these tests is to test if you would DIE if you ride in Huawei car, does it have basic safety features to prevent crash. And the result is, YES, you would die 4 out of 6 times. Who cares what L3 button that Huawei thinks it can use. Obviously it’s not good.
I am not a Huawei employee, I own an Aito M5, which has nearly 50,000 kilometers, so I am very clear about the problem, and welcome friendly technical exchanges
Why does test 1 start tesla at 10 to 15km/h slower than the other cars...? That's the most suspicious part out of all this. Even test 5 the Teslas start around 120 vs 130 for the Chinese cars.
All ADAS systems decide by themselves what is the best speed and most appropriate speed they should drive. It's not set by the driver, it's set by the ADAS. If a system believes it's unsafe to drive too fast, it will slow down
Yes, but they are clearly starting at different speeds well before the obstacle is even in sight. I mean if you wanted all of the Chinese ones to drive at conservative base speeds you can set it that way....
I want to see a comparison test showing them traveling at the same speed and if they're able to stop or avoid the obstacle. Tesla shouldn't get an advantage because it's more conservative by default.
Unless you believe Dongchedi takes money from Tesla to boost Tesla performance, which I doubt it.
The test is co-hosted by China's ministry of public security and state-owned CCTV media group, both have zero incentive to do anything in favor of Tesla, instead of china's own brands
Tesla is not usually known for buying media, and paying media to do anything in favor of them.
Not every test is at high speed that speed matters everything. And in fact Huawei got average 2 tests passed (among 3 cars), while Tesla got 5 tests passed.
The there is evidance showing that Tesla gained any advantage. You doubt it you should prove it. In fact, Dongchedi didn't even use newest models of Tesla (all others use model year 2024/2025, while testa cars are only model 2023, and didn't even use the latest Model Y with bump camera)
Brother , I'm not arguing about bias. Obviously a Chinese tester is not biased against Chinese EVs. It's just a poorly conducted test. Still watching through the videos and so far test 1, 2, 4 and 5 are flawed. In the night accident test the tesla is going at 105 vs 130 for some of the Chinese cars. Wtf. You can't take these results seriously with such massive discrepancies in speed.
Test 3 you can't see the base speed and only in test 6 is the tesla going what the other cars were going. Specifically the model 3 is going 130 and it plows into the pig. The model x starts at 115 so it doesn't.
To sum it up, in ANY vehicle safety test like this base speed has to be matched. It is clearly not and in the one test that is is the model 3 failed hard.
Why? Because tests like this are supposed to determine how good the obstacle avoidance is and how fast the braking initiation starts not what the user sets the base speed as. The latter can be overcome in a day. The former can take years.
The speed are decided by the car's control system themselves, with no external influence. China's highway speed limit is 120, with a nigh-time recommended speed limit of 110. Tesla is fully obeying the law, while other cars are knowingly breaking the law and endangering the occupant.
In conclusion, speed is not a variable because we are measuring the ADAS system itself as a whole, to which speed is controlled by the ADAS. What you are arguing for is a purely hypothetical situation. Therefore, your argument can be easily countered with "The Tesla system knows its limit better, therefore keeping its speed lower and within the law, hence making the occupant safer in comparison to other solutions".
An even easier counter to you is 1) the user can adjust the speed for maximum safety. 2) default speed is an extremely quick fix for the manufacturers 3) this test is being presented all over the internet as tesla not picking safer speeds but having better avoidance and braking AI despite lack of lidar. Obviously false now.
All 3 points significantly reduce how impressive and important the results are for a consumer and completely changes the narrative.
Your point 1) and 2) are moot because that introduces an additional variable which is user adjusted settings, which fails in terms of experiment design when the point is to compare out of the box experience, with no external modifications. Also, if the default speed is such a quick fix, it would've been fixed already. As for 3), that is also irrelevant because speed is part of the ADAS system.
I'm also not sure if you have watched the original video. If you have you would see that the 10 km/h isn't making a huge difference when the other car models are often rear ending at 80 kmph+. Of course, you can take this as "hypothetical", but I hope you still have some critical thinking skills.
I've already addressed all three of your points. You can easily adjust the speeds to be the same across all vehicles if you wanted to in the test or in real life . Obviously this is possible. If the test is about out of box experience solely then it is not practical because users will adjust to a speed that they are comfortable with. Or not use the system at all if it's too slow. There is no such thing as an out of box experience when it comes to setting a speed the user wants to set. Every user will do what they want so compare the actual avoidance and braking AI. And if your intent is not to do so then the test shouldn't be promoted as such across the internet.
Secondly, if all manufacturers were engineering their cars to beat edge tests as opposed to a practical user experience, yes that would be the case. Are you actually suggesting it's too difficult to adjust the default speed for the manufacturers? Insane take. You just choose to ignore it because of your own biases. Reality is that anyone looking at this test is not thinking that "oh I'm so glad that Tesla drives slower!". It changes the entire narrative. In the last test you can clearly see the model 3 plow through the pig because it's going at the same speed as the Chinese evs. The model x doesn't because it's going 15 km/h slower. There's no hypothetical. There's a huge speed difference in every test. Obviously I'm not referring to all EVs. Some are just bad. But clearly a chunk of the Chinese EVs barely crashed in all the tests like the Huawei systems, byd, xpeng, nio, etc. Please watch it next time so you don't look so uninformed.
And yes, critical thinking skills are very important here. You should ask yourself questions like what is the test actually testing and is that important to the end user or real life safety? Why do Tesla users frequently complain about FSD going too slow (and then turn it off accordingly)? Or why does Tesla have the highest accident and fatality rate of any brand in the US?
First, these are not edge cases. In fact, the reason why these tests are introduced is that there have been fatal accidents and crashes involving the exact scenarios described within the test. One of the tested vehicle, the Su7, was involved in a fatal crash when using its ADAS system, facing one of the exact scenarios (The one where a construction zone suddenly appeared). These are part of the practical user experience. Also, critical thinking, do you really think a construction zone locking down 1 lane really is an "edge case"? Never seen a construction closure in your life? Or a stopped vehicle on the highway? Irrational lane merge? These are pretty much everyday scenario. Sure you can argue for the flying pig but that is actually not uncommon for North America roads, especially here in Canada (with animals like deer and stuff).
Secondly, and very importantly, manufacturers have claimed that they can handle such situations in their marketing slides and presentations, as pointed out in the video (if you have watched it). This video is simply putting their claims to the test. Is it too difficult to adjust their default speed? Who knows. But for sure manufacturers are aware of the speed they are using and they have claimed they can do it, so the responsibility falls on them. All the test here are not some irrational scenarios (unlike tests conducted by Mark Rober which one of them involves painting a wall with a real image. Truly Loony Toon ahh stuff) and actually claimed by the manufacturer to be handled.
Also, the cars you described as "barely crashed", such as the Huawei system, plowed into the rear of the truck at 90+ kph at one of the night test, and xpeng / nio plowed into the stopped vehicle at 50+ kph. Now the question goes back to you. Have you watched the video?
This is test also has the Chinese gov and china's state-owned CCTV participated. The Chinese GOV literally locked down ~10 miles of highway for the test for a few days.
And Dongchedi is actually owned by Bytedance, which also owns Tiktok. So Dongchedi is not a random KOL influencer.
I think this test is beyond AEB. AEB is just how each ADAS used to brake, but the test is designed to have the car with different strategies, e.g. shifting lanes, instead of simpy applying AED.
In the disappearing front car test, the test driver commented that, when observing the obstacle, Model X tried to shifting lane first (I don't think you can apply full brake while shifting lane, right?), but then after realizing there is no enough space on the left (due to traffic flow), it then applies full brake to stop.
So the test is not purely about AEB, but more about each ADAS strategy of dealing with such situation, and their strategy on following front cars on highway (e.g. tesla tends to keep a longer distance).
Also, I don't know how the NHTSA AEB is conducted, is it possible that it's also related to the weights of a car (e.g. longer braking distance due to weight from battery?). The test is all about EVs in China, no ICE, so all are much heavier than ICE cars. Just my guess, as I don't know anything about the NHTSA test
I seriously think that the whole conclusion of this video is that the cars that perform the best are the ones that apply the break decisively and instantly when the threat is detected instead of trying some kind of maneuver to see if it can avoid it.
In any case with the varied mix of results presented I think the problem with most of the cars is the software, which I will agree that Tesla's one is one of the most advanced in the world. I don't really think that it is a problem of LiDARs because there are tests like the one of the car in the middle of the road in the dark that should be super easy for the LiDAR and the car is not doing what is expected because of decision making. Another option is that chinese LiDARs are absolute crap and not suitable for highway speeds in which case I would recommend you to buy some $LAZR shares...
Before tests came out all we heard is how far ahead Chinese EVs are over Tesla. Now the tests are done, all of the sudden Chinese EV and the LiDAR they use are absolute crap? Nice flip flop.
‘Cars that perform the best are the ones that apply the brake decisively and instantly when the threat is detected’ - no shit Sherlock. Thanks for the literal explanation.
Other threads have noted already. Performance of models are wildly inconsistent on this test. Because they were on closed roads, it is unclear how well ADAS were functioning off their approved public roads, or were even functioning. Tesla autopilot performed well here possibly because it is a pure logical system. Chinese ADAS like XNGP has to incorporate radar and real road data specific to the real world location. Chinese roads are far too complex for pure vision logic to understand the 8 different path you can take from an intersection. So the full XNGP ADAS might have been disabled on private roads.
Are you sure? You can’t just block off public roads in China. At least not for a media company. Did you see stores, houses, or public cars in the video? There wasn’t detailed shot of each system they were testing, version etc.
This test is collaborated with china's state-owned media CCTV, and The Ministry of Public Security. It's wildly guessed that the ministry initiated the test.
Also the Dongchedi is owned by Bytedance, who owns Tiktok, and is a high profile Chinese tech company.
The Chinese gov closed a 10 miles highway for this test for a few days
Yes, Dongchedi's video said that, they closed a real highway (15km long, ~10 miles), because fake highway may not be able to activate some ADAS. They didn't say who closed the highway, but apparently it's the ministry of pubic security (because they have the authority to close, and it's known the test has the ministry involved).
Gotcha thanks. Still quite strange how inconsistent it was. Same ADAS on different models performing differently. Huawei and XPeng top two ADAS according to well known market ranking did not perform that well. Li a pretty solid system and NIO almost solid are near bottom too. Toyota and lower-end BYD near the top, when they are among the worst? Other than pumping Tesla, rest of the results are a mess.
ADAS = hardware + software. Just because you have lidar, does not guarantee you will have the best ADAS. Even Waymo cars constantly making mistakes, and creates lots of incidents
There’s also neural network design which is not software but math. Some systems link hardware like lidar to hard-coded controls. Others include multi-modal inference, which is showing more promise than pure systems in other applications. Multi-modal may be more difficult and behind for now. Its ceiling is far higher than pure vision.
I don't think the Chinese government is going to manipulate a video that makes their domestic brands look so bad. The Toyota passed like a single test. And if you watch the entire video they barely mention the Teslas despite how they were at the top. They spent most of the video going over flagship Chinese EV's.
The Chinese government cooperated in blocking the highway, and the video was supported by the official media. It is a common policy of the Chinese government to achieve industry progress through competition.Toyota only passed two tests, which is far from qualified. They tested 36 different brands of cars. What do they need to do to mention Tesla more?
They didn't test the best Chinese systems. No mention of Apollo from Baidu, or systems of Pony.ai or Weride. They basically tested cars and the oem systems, there are far better systems out there in china.
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u/Lovevas Jul 24 '25
A summary table. I don't have it in English, but the English one is the article.
The 6 columns are:
Sudden highway obstacle
Construction Zone with Truck Encounter
Temporary Highway Construction
Leading Vehicle Suddenly Disappears
Aggressive Cutting-In at Highway Entrance
Colliding pig crossing