| ▲ | jmux 5 hours ago | |
Waymo does their LiDAR in-house, so unfortunately we don’t know the specs or the cost | ||
| ▲ | nerdsniper 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |
Otto and Uber and the CEO of https://pronto.ai do though (tongue-in-cheek) > Then, in December 2016, Waymo received evidence suggesting that Otto and Uber were actually using Waymo’s trade secrets and patented LiDAR designs. On December 13, Waymo received an email from one of its LiDAR-component vendors. The email, which a Waymo employee was copied on, was titled OTTO FILES and its recipients included an email alias indicating that the thread was a discussion among members of the vendor’s “Uber” team. Attached to the email was a machine drawing of what purported to be an Otto circuit board (the “Replicated Board”) that bore a striking resemblance to – and shared several unique characteristics with – Waymo’s highly confidential current-generation LiDAR circuit board, the design of which had been downloaded by Mr. Levandowski before his resignation. The presiding judge, Alsup, said, "this is the biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen. This was not small. This was massive in scale." (Pronto connection: Levandowski got pardoned by Trump and is CEO of Pronto autonomous vehicles.) https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/waymo-googles-se... | ||
| ▲ | ra7 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |
We know Waymo reduced their LiDAR price from $75,000 to ~$7500 back in 2017 when they started designing them in-house: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo-invests-i... That was 2 generations of hardware ago (4th gen Chrysler Pacificas). They are about to introduce 6th gen hardware. It's a safe bet that it's much cheaper now, given how mass produced LiDARs cost ~$200. | ||