Mobileye recently announced the termination of its internal lidar development program. [H/T Think Autonomous]. It cited:
- Improvements in its compute vision system
- Improvements in its internal radar sensor
- Decreases in the cost of simpler off-the-shelf lidar units
This is an interesting counterpoint to Aurora’s recent feature article in Fast Company, touting their reliance on their internally developed FMCW long-range radar.
Since relatively few lidar units are actually in production autonomous vehicle systems, it’s hard to know whether demand is moving upmarket, to higher-performance and higher-cost lidar units, or downmarket. It seems like Aurora is moving upmarket whereas Mobileye is moving downmarket.
This divergence may simply stem from the use case: Mobileye is selling L2 autonomous systems into automotive manufacturers, whose end-customers are quite price sensitive, whereas Aurora is creating its own L4 vehicles and then selling its driver service to shippers. Aurora’s combination of use case and customers may both require and support higher-price, higher-performance lidar units.
David Silver 