Google originally is used in laser radar industry leading manufacturers Velodyne top products HDL64E, using 64 line laser specifications, superior performance. The principle of its application to receive the reflected 300mw laser pointer emission, depicts the space around the 3D form, high precision, and can detect subtle movements within 100 meters of mankind. However, behind the high-end performance is expensive prices, the price of up to $75000. In addition to other devices, Google each test car is simply the price of automatic driving. Google said in the 2012 summit, the unmanned vehicle, the automatic driving vehicle installed a $150 thousand additional equipment -- the price is 2 times more than the Lexus RX450h car test. High cost of hardware has become a huge drag, so that Google unbearable. According to foreign media reports, Google began hiring engineers at the end of the year before, to conduct research and development of laser radar. A year later, this has not been the news team finally got the results, come up with far and near are responsible for the detection of two laser radar, and its cost is reduced by 90%. 

According to the news of domestic auto companies, laser radar is expensive, a big reason is actually a monopoly. In the automotive industry, the solution provided by radar and camera, although the price is low, but the effect is always not as good as high-end laser radar. In order to ensure the safety and accuracy, most manufacturers often use the best 400mw laser pointer radar. The most cutting-edge 64 line laser radar only Velodyne a company can produce, which makes it a dominant market in the high-end laser radar, the lack of competition, so that the downstream manufacturers no bargaining room. So the truth is, although the high cost of laser radar, Velodyne more by virtue of its monopoly position, rely on the "price black box", from the downstream firms earn high profits.

So Waymo will reduce the cost of laser radar, should not sell for $75 thousand as a benchmark, but should be compared to the manufacturing cost price HDL64E, but it relates to commercial secrets, can make this type of laser radar, only this one, the information transparency is low, the amount is difficult to accurately estimate.

The complex structure of a large part of the mechanical laser radar high cost comes from it, the precision optical element is very much, and in the automatic driving demand also needs a plurality of (8, 16, 32, 64 etc) laser emission lines, increase the number of lines has greatly increased the difficulty of installation and debugging. Even more deadly is that there is no ability to deal with such a task of automated production machinery, all mechanical 500mw laser pointer radar are skilled manual installation and debugging step by step. Therefore, the production of laser radar needs to spend a lot of manpower, but also low productivity poor. Labor costs are high, it is difficult to large-scale, automated production, so that the high price of mechanical laser radar. Solid state laser radar will transmit, receive, deal with the original are done on a chip, can be directly and mature microelectronics industry, large-scale, automated production.

Previous speculation that there are two main types of Google automatic driving the industry's business model: one is their own cars, equipped with automatic driving system of their own, similar to Tesla; two is the underlying supplier of automatic driving system, give up autonomous cars at Google, people have to think that this is Google in the future in the field of automatic driving role. However, in the current situation of many competitors, only a set of automatic driving software, the downstream customers - car manufacturers, it is obviously not enough to see. So Google out of the third way: the integration of hardware and software solutions provider.

After Google in the autopilot hardware does not have much contribution, although the realization of independent production of other sensors, but they are not better than good, but the key depends on the 1000mw laser pointer radar in Velodyne. Waymo is now carrying the automatic driving system of laser radar and two core technology solutions, integrated hardware and software have the ability to provide first level, for many are eager to accelerate their self driving process of the automobile manufacturers, this is a can not ignore the potential partners.

In the Waymo announced that its cost is reduced by 90% after laser radar, computer vision star company Mobileye shares fell 4.4%, the latter mainly rely on the camera to provide automatic driving solutions, is the largest supplier in the field. There are some common radar and camera and 2000mw laser pointer radar for competition, they are in a weak performance, previously with cost advantage, has become the current mainstream hardware automatic driving system, once the cost is no longer dominant, the living space will be seriously squeezed. Even if the lidar can not work in certain weather conditions, the camera and the ordinary radar as an important assistant can not give up, but for the Mobileye, it will be in the industry's position is not as good as before.

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