By CRM staff
Toronto, Ontario – April 19, 2019 – In this week’s Autonomous Report, Apple has reportedly been looking into new lidar system for its self-driving cars and a recent study uncovered that autonomous vehicle production costs are too high to put in every vehicle.
Apple’s Move on Self-Driving Cars
Apple isn’t out of the autonomous vehicle game yet. While the company has brought on two key hires, from Tesla, and Google’s Alphabet, the company is also on it’s way to forming a new lidar system. Reuters reported that Apple is looking into creating a new lidar system for its self-driving vehicles.
It was reported that Apple is currently been talking to at least four suppliers to make this sensor
Apple wants to equip its vehicles with a lidar system that will be able to scan hundreds of metres ahead and also not cost as much as the bulky sensors that are in autonomous vehicles right now.
The current lidar systems, including the units from Velodyne, mounted on Apple’s fleet of self-driving test vehicles uses laser light pulses to give images of the environment surrounding the vehicle. This system costs around $100,000.
AV Production Costs Are Too High
A study looking at the development of autonomous vehicles revealed that by the time Level 5 is obtained it will be too expensive to put in every vehicle.
The study was conducted by analyst Forrester for chipmaker Arm, and they found that most of the organizations that are developing this type of technology are having a hard time making it safe, and yet affordable.
One of the machine learning and perception engineers Forrester interviewed shared that production ready vehicles will be more than a decade out and they will only be in premium cars for a long time after that.
In a survey conducted online by Forrester, 22 percent of the 54 autonomous vehicle practitioners believe the component costs are too high.
