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There's nothing fundamental about lidar that means it can't reduce in price. The 20th century is littered with examples of highly complex devices that we made i
by leoedin 4y ago
There's nothing fundamental about lidar that means it can't reduce in price. The 20th century is littered with examples of highly complex devices that we made in such high volume that they became cheap. Integrated circuits, optical disk drives, hard drives, all the different display technologies - building ten of these would cost millions, but building 100 million drove the unit cost to almost nothing.
- blagie 4y agoI agree it's possible to make a lidar unit for $25 down-the-line; there's nothing fundamentally expensive. However, it's not just a question of volume. It took decades of Moore's Law before computers became cheap. Optical disk drives took a decade or two as well for reading, and more for writing. Display technologies were a little bit faster, but not fast. I'm pretty convinced if we wanted to make 100 million lidar units in 2023 or 2024, the cost would be approximately* the same as it is today. * From a computer science big-O perspective. Simple volume economics might drive the cost in half, or even a quarter, but not down by an order-of-magnitude.