Luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz will partner with self-driving sensor maker Luminar Technologies Inc to enable fully automated driving on highways for its next generation of vehicles.
Luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz will partner with self-driving sensor maker Luminar Technologies Inc. to enable fully automated driving on highways for its next generation of vehicles, Luminar’s founder said.
Luminar shares rose 18% to $15.89 on Thursday. Luminar said Mercedes-Benz will hold 1.5 million shares in Luminar, which will vest over time if certain milestones are met.
Vehicle autonomy is “really going mainstream with Mercedes,” Luminor CEO Austin Russell told Reuters on Wednesday, without disclosing the deadline for putting the technology into Mercedes’ vehicles.
He said both will develop “true” autonomy capabilities to keep drivers out of the loop while improving safety capabilities such as automatic braking.
Automakers from Tesla to General Motors Co. and Volvo have set their eyes on introducing autonomous vehicles to consumers, though regulatory and technical challenges remain.
Luminar said Mercedes-Benz will hold 1.5 million shares in Luminar, which will vest over time if certain milestones are met.
Tech firms such as Alphabet’s Waymo and Cruise are also developing self-driving taxis or trucks for commercial use such as ride-hailing and delivery services.
General Motors is working with its majority-owned Cruise self-driving unit to introduce a personal autonomous vehicle by the middle of a decade, chief executive Mary Barra said this month.
“If you want to be able to have truly autonomous capabilities in a consumer vehicle, and you have to industrialize the hardware, the software, all these systems that come into play. Well, that’s completely different from the robo work – Taxi companies are working,” Russell said.
He said it is a challenge to produce lidars on a large scale and ensure that they are strong enough to meet the stringent requirements of automakers.
“It’s a completely different kind of business going from a science and technology business to an automotive corporation.”
Tech firms such as Alphabet’s Waymo and Cruise are also developing self-driving taxis or trucks for commercial use such as ride-hailing and delivery services.
Lidars, which use a laser light pulse to measure the distance between the sensor and the target object, are widely considered essential to achieving full autonomous driving. But Tesla dismissed the sensor, saying it was expensive and unnecessary.
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Volvo Cars and Luminor said earlier this month that they would introduce a hands-free driving system to an upcoming electric sport utility vehicle.
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