![]() If all goes well, Ouster's solid-state lasers and sensors will continue to get cheaper and more powerful in much the same way that computer chips have over the last 50 years. In discussions with Ars, Ouster CEO Angus Pacala has argued that Ouster will benefit from progress in the broader semiconductor industry. It may prove much easier for Ouster to gradually improve its sensors than for Velodyne to slash its prices enough to compete with cheaper rivals. ![]() History has shown that it's difficult for a company with a high-performance, high-cost product to deal effectively with a challenge from a cheaper, disruptive rival. The company with the most to lose is Velodyne, which has dominated the market for a decade but now faces growing competition from low-cost rivals-especially Ouster. ![]() And Q3 2020 isn't over yet.Ī big question for the next few years will be whether falling prices and improving performance will bring these companies into more direct competition. Ouster says its third-quarter sales are already more than three times as high as they were in the third quarter of 2019. This "broad middle" market is growing fast. There are probably a lot more research labs with uses for a lidar sensor than there are self-driving projects. Researchers need high performance, but they don't have unlimited budgets. Ouster also offers a compelling value proposition to university researchers. But in many cases, their industrial customers are willing to spend a few thousands dollars for products that better understand the world around them. So that may explain Ouster's 800 customers: Companies shipping robots to real customers can't afford to blow tens of thousands of dollars on a lidar sensor. While Ouster's lidars were "not quite as good as Velodyne" in his opinion, he argued that the company was "the up-and-comer in terms of disrupting the market." "The fact that you can get a 64-channel spinning lidar for $12,000 was unheard of," Williams told me. That's way too expensive for mass-market automotive use, but it's much less than Velodyne charged for comparable sensors before Ouster came along. Ouster's latest generation of 32-laser sensors start at $6,000. The resulting combination of strong performance and relatively low cost has opened new markets for lidar sensors. Ouster's sensors are much simpler than Velodyne's classic design, which involved packaging together 16 to 128 individual lasers and 16 to 128 individual sensors. But inside, Ouster uses solid-state chip technology to pack all of its lasers-16 to 128 of them, depending on the product-on a single chip. Ouster makes spinning lidar that looks a lot like Velodyne's high-end sensors. Luminar hopes it will be an inspiration for other automakers. It's the first deal to put high-performance lidar into consumer vehicles. Back in May, Luminar announced a deal with Volvo to incorporate its lidars into vehicles beginning in 2022. ![]() Luminar's lidar is much more powerful than the sensor in those early Audis, and the company believes it can get the cost below $1,000 at scale. This is the market Luminar is gunning for. But it was the best lidar Audi could afford given the financial constraints of the consumer car business. The sensor was primitive, with only four vertical "lines" of resolution. ![]() The pioneer here was a little-known company called Ibeo, which partnered with auto supplier Valeo to provide lidar sensors for the 2018 Audi A8. ![]()
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