Alphabet’s Waymo will stop selling autonomous car lidar sensors

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 26 (Reuters) – Alphabet Inc.’s (GOOGL.O) autonomous driving unit, Waymo, said Thursday it has completed a two-year effort to sell light and distance sensing sensors ( deal) to other companies.

It is an investment in its previous strategy to sell lidars to non-automotive customers to reduce the costs of a key and expensive component of cars with automatic driving.

“We are ending our commercial deal business while maintaining our focus on developing and deploying our Waymo controller through our Waymo One (ride-hailing) and Waymo Via (delivery) units,” a Waymo spokesman said in a statement.

The spokesman, however, said he will continue to build his leaders at home.

According to someone familiar with the matter, Waymo is considering both internal technology and external vendors for its next-generation leaders. Read more

The move to stop selling lidars comes after the departure of CEO John Krafcik and other executives, who had fueled questions about whether Waymo would rethink its strategy after failing to generate significant revenue for more than a decade.

In 2019, Waymo said it would sell one of its three internal leaders to customers of robotics, agriculture and others, not to autonomous car companies.

“We can scale our standalone technology faster, making each sensor more affordable through economies of scale,” said Simon Verghese, head of the Lidar team at the time.

It was unclear whether Waymo was able to generate enough revenue to offset the development and operating costs of its lidar sales business.

The lidars use laser pulses to measure distances and represent accurate images of the environment around the car. Most stand-alone companies, including Waymo, claim that leaders are key to achieving full autonomy. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said companies that rely on expensive sensors are “doomed.”

Waymo launched in 2018 the first commercial taxis with automatic driving, equipping the Chrysler minivan with its own automatic driving hardware. But it has yet to expand and expand the technology beyond limited areas on the outskirts of Phoenix, and has recently launched public tests around the density of San Francisco with a Jaguar electric car and a new set of sensors. Read more

In 2011, Waymo began developing its own set of sensors from scratch, including three types of lidars, including short-range lidars called Laser Bear Honeycomb.

But Tim Willis, general manager of the company’s Laser Bear lidars, left the company in February and joined the lidar company Aeva, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Australian robot Droid + has tested prototype robots with Waymo Honeycomb lidars in Australian mines.

“Everyone knew the risks associated with this venture,” Mat Allan, perception manager and artificial intelligence at Australian Droid + Robot, told Reuters. “It’s a good product. We haven’t found anything that matches the price and performance … It’s a shame, even though we can’t continue the journey,” he said.

Reports from Hyunjoo Jin, Paresh Dave, Stephen Nellis to San Francisco; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Gerry Doyle

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