Li Auto is making waves with some blunt talk. Zhan Kun, a senior executive at the company, declared publicly that apart from Tesla FSD, China has no first-tier autonomous driving system — and he put his money where his mouth is by flying to Silicon Valley this May to spend two weeks deep-diving into Tesla's latest FSD V14.3.
His verdict after the road test: Tesla's autonomous driving tech stack runs deep, and the gap feels very real when you experience it firsthand. But here is what matters more — upon returning, Li Auto immediately convened its core algorithm team for a full retrospective, committing to fully dissect and close that gap as a prerequisite for eventually surpassing it. The hardware foundation is already there: the L9 Livis now ships with Mahe VLA 2.1, powered by dual in-house Mahe M100 chips (5nm automotive-grade process, 2,560 TOPS combined).
Editor's Note: With all due respect, this statement lacks rigor. Having served AITO for years, I can attest that Huawei ADS is genuinely excellent — and demonstrably stronger than Li Auto's current offering. Over 90% of AITO owners would likely agree. Declaring "no tier-1 AD exists in China besides Tesla" sounds more like marketing theater than technical assessment.
Source: https://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/digi/2026-06-17/doc-inictnut2736953.shtml
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