His own public statement about the product and the laser pointer technology also hints at its technical imperfections. In December 2014, Quanergy first introduced its mechanical lidar M8 in a press release, claiming that its detection range was as high as 300 meters. In January 2017, the company stated that the device's detection range was 200 meters. In July 2017, Quanergy revised this parameter again, claiming that its maximum detection distance is more than 150 meters. And in November 2017, according to a press release issued by Quanergy, when referring to the detection range of this laser pointer radar, it is only called "distance".
In 2016, researchers at PSL Research University in France tested an M8 and found that the error rate that Quanergy claimed at 50 meters was actually starting at 11 meters. They also found that the M8's performance outdoors is worse than indoors, which is a dangerous sign for car manufacturers. When asked about the study, former Quanergy employees said that this was a common perception within the company that the performance of each device shipped by the company varied widely. They said that this was an inevitable result of a lack of stable production standards.
According to two former Quanergy employees, the customer returned to the M8 device at an alarming rate. “Quanergy didn’t fix bugs, but shipped products that weren’t perfect,” one of the former employees said. A Quanergy spokesperson denied this, she said: "Quanergy has never deliberately launched a defective product." She later added that no customer returned the current version of the M8 released in February.
Eldada said that the specifications of the products in the press release will vary depending on the version of the laser pointer product. Eldada said that there is no objection to the study of the University of Arts and Sciences in Paris, but it is already a past tense. "I'm sure they tested it at the time," Eldada said. "We actually went back to customers who tried our products three years ago and told them, 'Forgot the previous version, it's now a completely different product.' Eldada said that Quanergy has created three different versions of the M8 this year, 94% of which now have a detection range of 200 meters. In any case, in Eldada's view, the company's future has always been the solid-state lidar S3.