For cars to be self-driving, they need to achieve autonomous self-driving that can be achieved even without 5G networks, Huawei said Monday.

On April 12, Huawei held a global analyst conference, and Xu Zhijun, vice chairman and rotating chairman of the tech giant, said that true autonomous driving has to be like normal people who can control themselves without relying on the outside world.

"If the car has to rely on 5G and 5.5G to drive itself, what happens when the network goes down?" Xu asked, adding that this is also very demanding and unrealistic for operators.

"Of course with 5G and 5.5G it's better for autonomous driving, but it's more of an aid," he said.

The evolution of 4G to 5G, he says, is not much different than the evolution of 3G to 4G. 5G will certainly be better than 4G, but not as powerful as people think now, he said.

5G has been politicized and its capabilities have been exaggerated, he said.

"I once attended a 5G conference, and for someone who had studied 5G for 10 years, I couldn't understand what they were saying about 5G. It turned out that they were talking about the 5G era, not 5G."

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