

But an early recognition of the future of the industry made all the difference. It’s funny to think, however, that a company born out of a plan to obsolete traditional vehicles has become the biggest proponent of its use in those vehicles.
Austin russell luminar series#
There will of course be Luminar-powered cars out there sooner than that: “Within the next 12 months there’s going to be series production cars that are Luminar equipped that are out there advancing this industry forward,” Russell confirmed.
Austin russell luminar full#
Which I think is probably faster than any major tech adoption cycle, not for initial adoption, but full standardization across the lineup.” “This is something that has the opportunity to truly go mainstream, in the mass market… Nissan, they were actually showing off crash avoidance scenarios made possible by Luminar lidar in their case they actually said they want to be able to standardize this type of tech on every vehicle they build by the end of the decade.

“The transformation is that this is no longer about being an option on a high end, niche vehicle,” he explained. The combination of robo-taxis being far further out than expected and of ADAS systems as being both desirable and incapable seems to have spurred mainstream automakers to invest heavily in something better. The company has set up numerous examples of these failures - one of which showing a small fake pedestrian being plowed down by an ADAS-equipped car went viral. “But the reality is it’s a lot more complicated, a lot more difficult than that - to even confidently understand what’s going on around you and come to a safe stop is not a solved problem.” “It’s surprising to see how ineffective the current assisted driving systems are just at being able to do basic things like… not letting you smash into the thing right in front of you in your car, right? It sounds like a simple problem, like you wouldn’t even need lidar for that,” he said. 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. 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. Insider trading is most common in December, with the busiest year in 2022.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. In the last year, insiders at Luminar Technologies, Inc/de have sold an estimated value of $249.05MĪnd bought an estimated value of $27.71M worth of shares. Luminar Technologies, Inc/de's most recent insider trade came on SeptembyĪustin Russell who bought 25,000 units worth Source: What are Luminar Technologies, Inc/de's Past Insider Trades?
