When it comes to grabbing attention, lidar developer Luminar doesn’t hold back. In 2021, it pledged to deliver the “uncrashable car”. And its website proudly asserts: “First seatbelts. Then airbags. Now Luminar.”
Lofty claims, and it seems manufacturers are being persuaded of the company’s potential.
A multi-billion-dollar deal with Mercedes has been secured and there are also significant agreements in place to supply Volvo, Polestar and Chinese giant SAIC.
But can a start-up that only really began to operate seriously in 2017 revolutionise automotive safety to such a dramatic extent? Autocar spoke to Luminar to find out more about its technology and its long-term vision.
Based in Orlando, Florida, Luminar has emerged as one of the main players in the hugely competitive arena of lidar, the remote sensing tech that uses laser pulses to build a three-dimensional environment of what's in front of a vehicle, allowing it to detect objects on the road ahead up to 300m (as well as facilitating driver assistance features or full autonomous functionality).
“We can create a very confident safety envelope around a vehicle regardless of who is driving,” says Matthew Weed, senior director of product strategy at Luminar. Ultimately, this means fewer collisions.
According to Luminar’s estimates, there were more than 65 companies with active lidar programmes in 2018. By January 2023, it was able to verify 25. And of these, there are four others it considers the main players in the automotive market: Innoviz of Israel, China’s RoboSense and Hesai, and Valeo of France.
What Luminar says differentiates its product from rivals’ offerings is performance. “There are 100 specifications and requirements within a lidar system, but what it gets distilled to is how far away you can detect things, and you can very directly tie that up to how fast it is safe to drive,” says Weed.
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