The Detroit based automotive giant made a key strategic acquisition today in an attempt to accelerate its efforts in manufacturing and testing electric cars with self-driving capabilities.
Cruise, GM’s self-driving car startup, will now source its LIDAR laser sensors from Strobe, a Pasadena-based startup that the Detroit automaker just acquired. Essentially, LIDAR enables a self-driving car to view the world with a few special functions:
- Continuous 360 degrees of visibility – see in all directions all of the time
- Accurate depth information – know the precise distance (to an accuracy of ±2cm) of objects in relation to you
LIDAR technology is why autonomous driving advocates claim that self-driving cars are much, much safer than the capabilities of human drivers.
Cruise’s chief executive, Kyle Vogt, said the deal for Strobe would help G.M.’s autonomous vehicles visualize roads and driving conditions, and bolster the company’s overall efforts to advance self-driving technology.
“LIDAR has been one of the bottlenecks for producing automated vehicles at scale,” Mr. Vogt said on a conference call after the announcement. “The LIDAR on the market now are too costly for a commercial product.”
He said the Strobe technology made it possible for a LIDAR sensor to be reduced to a single chip, and allowed for measurement of an object’s range, distance and velocity. Strobe’s solution will reduce the cost of making these sensors by 99 percent, Vogt says. “The idea that LIDAR is too costly or exotic to use in a commercial product is now a thing of the past.”
Bringing LIDAR production in-house has become especially important as self-driving players scramble to meet impending deadlines to publicly deploy autonomous vehicles.
- Owning the major parts of the supply chain frees GM from relying too heavily on the production cycles of suppliers.
- It allows the company to develop the technology to its own custom specs.
- And it gives GM full control over the revenue that each of those parts bring in — say, for example, if GM decides to license its LIDAR technology to other companies instead of keeping it proprietary. (For now, GM’s acquisition takes this LIDAR tech off the market for its rivals.)
If Strobe’s LIDARs can deliver precision as advertised—and really bring costs down to a commercially viable level, GM is well poised in the autonomous driving race relative to the other key players.