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And as it turns out, even top of the line ADAS and collision avoidance tech is seriously lacking right now. The question became not one of raw capability or even just cost, but what would consumers, and by extension OEMs, pay for? Safety. And by the way, economies of scale are fundamentally required to be able to build a product, the cost is a significant factor at the end of the day.” The huge roof racks that you see that are $100,000 and a supercomputer in the trunk… it needs to be more like $1,000.

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It was in 2017, he recalled that the company made the decision to pursue other applications for high-performance lidar tech: “It became very clear that the level of requirements for an R&D test platform, versus a true series production vehicle, is a completely different game altogether. There was just a massive disconnect between the core engineers behind the actual tech, and leadership at the time, in terms of what was possible.” “If something is at peak hype cycle, it’s something you should be skeptical about. “The reality is, I think that the sheer complexity of solving an end to end autonomous driving problem in urban environments was underestimated in terms of the difficulty by at least a couple orders of magnitude,” he said.

(Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.) In an interview with TechCrunch transportation editor Kirsten Korosec, Russell noted that he, like pretty much everyone else, was convinced early on that self-driving cars were just around the corner. There’s been too many promises made out there that were broken.” “It’s no longer about some theoretical promise - you actually have to show real results, real deliveries, real technology and product. We’ll also be sure to ask Russell for his advice to founders pursuing a similar path to the public markets.At TC Sessions: Mobility, Luminar founder and CEO Austin Russell admitted that his now successful company was founded in hubris, but that a skeptical eye during peak lidar hype helped them focus on real markets. We’ll dig for more details about Luminar’s current and potential production partnerships and examine the company’s reach across all three industry verticals - consumer vehicles, trucking and robo-taxis.Īnd you can bet we’ll discuss Luminar’s transition from private to publicly traded company and the whole SPAC experience. We’ll get Russell’s take on where the industry’s headed and what he sees as the next big push - or two or three - required to drive across the finish line.

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You can expect a wide-ranging interview with a focus on the challenges of scaling lidar hardware production, integrating lidar with a wide variety of automakers’ ADAS technologies, how commonplace the sensors will become and whether it’s on track to earn must-have status in all consumer cars at some future point.Īt times it seems we’re no closer to achieving full autonomy than we were five years ago.

We want to know more, and we’re excited to announce that Luminar founder and CEO Austin Russell will join us for a 1:1 interview at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 in San Mateo on May 18-19. And just this past January, Luminar signed a deal with Mercedes-Benz to integrate its technology on next-gen production passenger vehicles. with a post-deal market valuation of $3.4 billion.ĭuring the same year, Volvo announced it will integrate Luminar’s Iris lidar sensors into its production vehicles beginning in 2022. In December 2020, Luminar began trading publicly after a SPAC IPO through Gores Metropoulos Inc.

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Over the last two years, Luminar Technologies, a leader in automotive lidar hardware and software technology, has been making big strides, and striking even bigger deals, with its Iris lidar sensors.

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Moreover, automakers have also begun to view lidar as key to increasing the capabilities and safety of their advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) in new cars, trucks and SUVs for consumers. Lidar, in particular, is widely considered critical to the commercial deployment of autonomous vehicles. Three complementary sensor technologies have emerged in the race to build vehicles that don’t require human intervention: camera, radar and lidar (light detection and ranging radar).

Achieving the vision of a world where fully autonomous vehicles are both safe and ubiquitous continues to be a long and winding road.