Laser radar is expected to be mass-produced and the price may drop to $50

At present, almost all major autonomous driving and unmanned driving R&D companies in the world choose to use lidar as the core detection equipment of vehicles, but the high price of existing products makes autonomous driving cars still a little far from mass production. In this regard, Velodyne hopes to use its latest super factory to change this situation.

Velodyne, as the world's first company to engage in mass production of automotive LiDAR, hopes to continue to seize this development opportunity, and the idea of ​​building a super factory was born. They plan to build this super factory in San Jose, California, and it is expected to reach an annual output of 1 million by next year.

At the Detroit Auto Show held not long ago, Waymo, which was spun off from the former Google driverless division, announced that it had reduced the cost of LiDAR by more than 90%. However, since the original price was very high, even a 90% reduction would be difficult to meet the demand for LiDAR commercialization.

Velodyne has made a breakthrough in technology. In Ford's newly launched second-generation autonomous driving model, Velodyne's latest laser radar is obviously more compact and has a detection accuracy that is 3 times higher.

Velodyne officials once said: "The main reason for the high price of lidar in the past was the cumbersome manual assembly and adjustment stage of lidar, and the labor cost was very high. Currently, Velodyne's production line has introduced robotic arms, which has increased production efficiency by dozens of times. At the same time, labor costs have been greatly reduced. Coupled with technological breakthroughs, the cost of lidar has been greatly reduced."

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.