The insurer ran tests against leading vehicles in the market with level 2 driver assistance (systems that can provide steering, braking and acceleration assistance). Over the past year, Swiss Re has done testing of a number of vehicles in a variety of scenarios to try to quantify the benefits of adding lidar. The insurance program will be in partnership with reinsurer Swiss Re.

Last year the company announced its intention to offer auto insurance to owners of lidar equipped vehicles as a way of standing behind those benefits. The Halo sensor is targeted at 2026 production.Īs part of its efforts to stand behind the benefits of adding lidar to improve active safety systems, Luminar has been demonstrating the improved capability of vehicles equipped with an Iris sensor for automatic emergency braking and collision avoidance against vehicles equipped with cameras only and camera/radar combinations. Getting the cost to $500 and below should go a long way to achieving that goal. Luminar’s long-standing goal has been to democratize lidar and use it to improve safety on as many vehicles as possible. That would make it competitive with the similarly priced Innoviz2 sensor that VW Group has selected for its next-generation vehicles as well as the highest performance sensors from Hesai and Robosense. While prices for most lidars aren’t publicly quoted, it’s estimated that Iris costs about $1,000 (itself a huge reduction from the $80,000 price of early Velodyne lidar) which should put the Halo sensor at about $500. This should enable both rooftop installations like the Iris as well as behind the windshield installations for an even cleaner look and less risk of damage. The new sensor aims to be less than 1-inch tall and consume only 10 watts of power. The Halo sensor is based on several new developments from Luminar Semiconductor (also announced last year) that are claimed to deliver 4x better performance, 3x reduction in size, double the thermal efficiency and half the cost and power consumption. Luminar gave the first indications of this new sensor at its 2023 investor day and now has more details. To combat this, Luminar has also announced its next-generation sensor, called Halo.

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