What’s Happening: Luminar has revealed a new Iris+ sensor to enhance vehicle safety and autonomous capabilities by enabling greater performance and collision avoidance of small objects at high speeds. The company is also announcing the largest ranging and validation facility on the planet at over 300 meters long, a new manufacturing facility in Asia, and a partnership with Scale.ai to supercharge its Luminar AI Engine.
Why It Matters: Luminar is advancing its lidar roadmap to support the vast global scale of upcoming vehicle launches. The new Iris+ sensor demonstrates the company’s engineering velocity, while the new manufacturing facilities and partnership with Scale.ai aim to increase automation and expand capacity to meet automakers’ standards and requirements.
Key Points:
- Luminar’s new Iris+ sensor furthers the mission for enhanced vehicle safety and autonomous capabilities by enabling greater performance and collision avoidance of small objects at up to autobahn-level speeds.
- The company is showcasing its machine-learning based Luminar AI Engine enabling greater accuracy and precision of detecting objects, vehicles, pedestrians, and beyond.
- It plans to bring online an additional manufacturing facility in Asia with a local partner and expanding to a dedicated, highly automated facility with its contract manufacturing partner Fabrinet in Thailand for the optical sub-assembly.
- The company is partnering with Scale.ai to supercharge the Luminar AI Engine, with Scale’s technology now available exclusively to Luminar and no longer accessible to other providers of lidar.
- Luminar has announced a new commercial agreement with Pony.ai for its next-generation commercial trucking and robotaxi platforms.
Bottom Line: Luminar’s new product releases and partnerships demonstrate its commitment to advancing the lidar technology roadmap to meet the demands of automakers and enhance vehicle safety and autonomous capabilities.
