Luminar Technologies CEO Austin Russell critiques Tesla's camera-only assisted driving system while discussing Elon Musk's dismissal of LiDAR.
Opinion
Elon Musk falsely brands assisted driving systems as fully autonomous
“I think a lot of the friction of why it's been so controversial in terms of what he's saying is because he's calling an assisted driving system and autonomous driving system.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Russell: Luminar can be a trillion-dollar company integrated into every car
“It's this kind of thing where, you know, you have this outcome of where it's, like, very, very clear in your head, like, how we're gonna execute on these programs, how, you know, we'll see Luminar in every car, how, you know, it can be a trillion dollar compan…”
Opinion
Russell: LiDAR is fundamentally required to prevent accidents and enable autonomy
“If you want to be able to prevent accidents and do autonomous, right, this is not an optional system. This is something that's fundamentally required to be able to prevent accidents.”
Assertion Contradicted
Camera-only driver assistance systems fail basic crash dummy stopping tests
“Reality is it is great to see some improvements for some basic level of assisted driving capabilities, but it doesn't solve some of the fundamentals of what you need to do to prevent accidents. Like literally, if you put a crash dummy right in front of the car…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Russell: Fully driverless cars are still decades away, not years
“Oh, oh, it will. It will. It's just like decades, you know, it's not like, you know, next year, you know, it's just there's a different kind of timescale for these things.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Russell: Luminar targets up to $60B in booked business by 2030
“Our target is to be as much as a sixty billion by the end of the decade.”