Lidar Sensor Shipments for Autonomous Cars to Reach 69 Million in 2020, Says Report

More than 69 million light detection and ranging (lidar) sensors will ship in 2026, led by autonomous driving functions including obstacle detection and simultaneous localization and mapping, ABI Research reported Wednesday. Declining hardware costs and carmakers' need to ship vehicles with multiple sensors for 360-degree vehicle coverage will drive growth, said ABI. At CES, Innoviz Technologies and LeddarTech were among the lidar developers demonstrating low-cost solid state solutions for mainstream deployment, said analyst James Hodgson, with the latter announcing a partnership with tier one automotive manufacturer Valeo last year. Market leader Velodyne received a $150 million infusion from Ford and Baidu in 2016 and will develop a sub-$50 solid state system for widespread implementation, he said. Last year saw the “necessary formation of new investments, startups, and ecosystem partnerships for lidar to hit the ground running in the 2019 to 2020 timeframe,” said Hodgson. “The universal focus on low-cost solutions to enable autonomous functions on high-volume models will accelerate lidar shipments throughout the next decade.”