Velodyne, a US-based company that makes LIDAR sensors, is receiving a $150 million joint investment from Ford and Baidu, a Chinese search engine. That investment will be used to make the LIDAR sensor production process cheaper, which could ultimately make autonomous vehicles cheaper to create.
Since LIDAR is a key part of self-driving systems and autonomous vehicles will grow in importance in the coming years, Velodyne believes there will be an “exponential increase” in demand for its technology.
This investment will accelerate the cost reduction and scaling of Velodyne’s industry-leading LIDAR sensors, making them widely accessible and enabling mass deployment of fully autonomous vehicles, – David Hall, CEO, Velodyne
Both Ford and Baidu have publicly revealed their autonomous vehicle plans. Baidu, much like Google, is getting involved in the field despite not being an automaker.
