$LAZR recently hit public markets and had been off to a solid start up over 200% since their debut.

Led by a 25 year old inventor who is now a paper billionaire, wow.

Thanks to self driving initiatives from $GM $GOOG $TSLA the public knows what’s coming for autonomous vehicles.

When level 5 autonomy is realized, basically cars that won’t require steering wheels, we’ll see some incredibly exciting changes to the transportation landscape.

Elon Musk famously predicted Tesla would have 1 million self-driving robo taxis on the road already... so like many of his bold predictions he’s a little bit late. However time usually proves Elon correct so let’s give him another year on this one.

I’m currently a Tesla Model 3 owner who paid the $8,000 (now $10k) premium for the Full Self Driving package. The current level 3 capabilities of this car are truly exceptional. It’s like the first time you held a iPod or iPhone. I’ve logged thousands of miles with the car in control and am convinced that Tesla is headed to a successful outcome with full self driving.

Here’s the rub... $TSLA does not use #Lidar is their vehicles. Elon famously describes lidar as a crutch and Tesla vehicles simply use an array of camera and radar sensors combined w a powerful neural network running on their custom built chips.

I believe this is the harder way to achieve level 5 autonomy but ultimately the correct approach. Eventually when lidar costs come down you’ll see Tesla add this tech but their investment in the neural network and hardware chip is where their time is best spent right now.

If Tesla rolls out more full self driving progress in 2021 we’ll likely see a big reaction in the market sending these Lidar stocks lower as people will deem Tesla’s approach as superior.

Lidar is awesome, $AAPL is already using it in the new products like iPad. Just be aware of the risk to these lidar stocks if/when Tesla reveals level 4 or 5 autonomy in 2021.

Lidar a “crutch”

Liminar

Autonomous driving levels defined