Publishing specific prices for immediate delivery, like Ouster, helps build credibility. We believe Velodyne will make every effort to match Ouster's $ 12,000 price tag at some point in the future. But doing this in the future is not the same as being able to do it today, isn't it?
On the issue of LiDAR costs, Austin Russell, CEO of LiDAR startup Luminar, also said: "For consumer cars, the price of such LiDAR systems does need to be as low as a few thousand dollars or less", and promised that It's not a problem. Listening to Austin Russell's meaning, Luminar's laser pointer sensor does not seem to have reached the "several thousand dollars" price target, which may actually be higher than that target number.
Overall, by communicating with Ouscal CEO Pacala, I am cautiously optimistic that the cost of laser pointers will soon be significantly reduced. However, prices are indeed falling, as Velodyne announced this year that its 16-line products will be cut by 50%. If you are willing to accept LiDAR solutions with slightly smaller detection ranges and lower resolutions, you can find LiDAR units that cost thousands or even hundreds of dollars.
However, the best LiDAR units on the market (and probably the only LiDAR units that can truly support fully autonomous vehicles) still cost tens of thousands of dollars.
It is worth noting that Waymo, another major LiDAR technology competitor. This Alphabet subsidiary has been working on self-driving cars for nearly a decade, and they have switched from using the LiDAR system from Velodyne to using their own LiDAR technology.
And, the company is still using the same traditional rotary mechanical laser pointer solution, but Waymo has reportedly worked out how to reduce the cost of LiDAR units by a factor of 10. Because Waymo's original cost data is not publicly available in the market, it is impossible to determine the specific price of its products, but it is certain that Waymo's LiDAR unit cost will not exceed $ 8,500, and may be less than this number.
If you're not a company like Waymo, solving this problem yourself can be difficult. No matter how complicated a product is, as long as the output goes up, the price will naturally fall. At present, the market demand for LiDAR sensors is only a small part of the next five to ten years. By then, driverless taxi companies will begin to expand their fleets. With the expansion of laser pointer production scale, continuous improvement of manufacturing technology and the impact of economies of scale, LiDAR sensors are bound to become cheaper.