- Hello and welcome.

My name is Ed Niedermeyer.

I am the co-host of "The Autonocast."

and the communications director

for Partners for Automated Vehicle Education.

I'm thrilled to be here today

with two fascinating companies,

the leaders of two fascinating companies.

First up in Orlando, Florida, Austin Russell,

CEO and founder of Luminar.

Austin, how's it going?

- Hey, great to see you.

Thanks for having us too.

Yeah, I mean, here today

in our advanced manufacturing facility in Orlando,

the new building we just moved into here.

Exciting to have, you know,

the first Iris units roll off the pilot line here.

- Great, and we're also joined

by Ödgärd Andersson, CEO of Zenseact.

Ödgärd, welcome.

- Thank you, I'm down in our lab here in Gothenburg.

Apart from a little bit of a throat problem,

I'm doing quite well.

- Awesome, can we just start with you,

and just talk about just what is this announcement?

What are you announcing today?

- Yeah, so after, you know, eight, nine years

in Luminar's history, I think we've largely been known

for producing really, the highest performing, you know,

cost-effective Lidar for series production applications,

and progressing on that to a stage

of where we can see this commercialized.

But in parallel, you know, we've been working

through a number of different software developments as well.

And, you know, what we're here today,

as part of this announcement is in partnership

with Zenseact, we're launching this full stack solution

to be able to now enable, starting with a Volvo,

a holistic autonomous vehicle stack that

for the first time can actually make its way

into series production, into production vehicles.

And excited to be here and to get a chance

to converse with yourself and, you know, Ödgärd,

and the whole team at Zenseact,

they're certainly really strong leaders

within the broader industry.

To be able to have an opportunity to work with them

is fantastic, and really uniquely positioned,

but we, you know, can talk more about that.

Yep, Ödgärd, anything else there?

- Yeah, I mean, we're super excited about this partnership,

and we've known each other now for a few years.

And basically, we set out to find somebody

who could make the best Lidar that

we can put in all our cars.

We really believe this is like the next step of safety.

And bringing the partnership now to this new level,

I think we're really excited to have the full offering.

I think it's going to be greatly received

when we first deploy it in the Volvo,

but also of course, after that point,

expanding above and beyond just the Volvo cars.

- Yeah, Ödgärd, could you explain sort of what,

what is this product, right?

We hear a lot about sort of level four robo-taxis

that are operating in fleets.

We hear about driver assistance in privately owned vehicles.

Having actual autonomous drive capabilities

in a production vehicle that people can go out

and buy is incredible, but sort of, where will this be used?

What's sort of the domain,

and the sort of use case for this product?

- Yeah, I mean, what we develop is like the software,

one pilot, it covers everything from, I mean,

computer vision all the way through decision and control.

And basically, it's one solution that you can either use

as the driver's support in conditions

when the driver needs to be in charge,

but also developing towards a highway pilots,

which basically, unsupervised, can drive for you

when you're under certain conditions,

and in highway scenarios.

And of course, we won't be able to go

exactly everywhere from day one,

but we will start and then expand from that point.

Both in terms of geography,

but also in terms of conditions.

- So Austin, at OEM Partners,

it sounds like we'll be able to sort of

have a range of options of what to do

with this technology stack, right?

And Volvo's the first, but sort of,

can you talk a little more about sort of the range

of things that, you know, using a Lidar-based system

for these kinds of privately owned vehicle functions,

automation functions?

What all does that enable in terms of that user experience?

- In terms of the capabilities, at the end of the day,

as Ödgärd mentioned, it's all about safety,

it's all about autonomy, saving lives, saving time.

And it really just makes a huge difference

when you can have this hardware,

and software solution deeply integrated.

There's so many times where you see these

different components developed in a vacuum,

but if you can have something that's a holistic solution,

it really makes all the difference.

And there's no question this is what a lot of folks

in the larger industry have been trying to do.

I think the key distinction here is actually though,

starting with the hardware, you have a foundation,

you have something that works, that delivers,

that isn't just, you know, one day theoretically trying

to make the physics work to have a product

that meets a spec, but having a real product, you know,

in an auto grade system that already meets this spec,

that's being deployed into production vehicles,

and then powering that, and supercharging it

with this software, that makes the vehicles

be able to have substantially greater safety capabilities,

as well in parallel, enabling autonomy,

starting on highways.

And that constrained highway autonomy problem,

as Ödgärd mentioned, highway pilot, is key to being able

to have a solvable solution in the relative near term.

You know, it's gonna take a long time by the time,

as you mentioned, robo-taxis are gonna be deployed

everywhere throughout the broader industry.

That's a decade-plus type problem.

This is something that's being solved for the next,

just to the next couple of years.

I mean, this is a deployed, this is gonna be available

on vehicles that you can buy, starting with Volvo,

and expanding outward.

So that's the distinction.

- Yeah, and just to clarify, so, at the high end,

this is, we're looking at like SAE level three,

conditional autonomy, is that right or?

- I think, you know, we've,

and Ödgärd and I are generally aligned on this, you know?

We largely try and avoid using the SAE, you know,

terminology just because, you know, there's,

it's kinda funny, you can see almost like,

level inflation going on, you know?

In the industry at this point right now,

and confusion about what does level three really mean?

What does that?

At the end of the day, there's really two modes of driving.

One is driver in the loop,

the other is driver out of the loop.

And the whole point here from an autonomous perspective

is to develop driver out of the loop capability.

So this would be the first time that someone

has a real, truly autonomous car,

much less something that you can buy.

But at the same time, while everyone is gunning for,

you know, those types of applications,

the safety side and the assisted driving side

should not be overlooked,

and that's where we're building these, you know,

what we're calling proactive safety features,

you know, into the broader system

to be able to actually start preventing accidents,

preventing collisions, preventing deaths,

even when the human driver is in the loop.

So, that's the story.

- Absolutely, and as someone who works

in an automated vehicle education,

I really appreciate your simplifying it, you know,

I think the SAE levels are great for what they are,

but sometimes for consumers,

it's just important to break it down,

and make it a little more simple.

- Totally, and by the way, on that note,

technically speaking, the kinds of capabilities

from a safety standpoint that we're talking about

are like level zero, you know?

Like, it's kinda interesting, like that,

which gets no attention, you know?

Normally in the industry.

But like, even just advancing these basic

safety capabilities that, you know,

people still get into accidents all the time,

even with these advanced driver assistance systems.

They help incrementally,

but they don't prevent accidents altogether.

And that's what makes all the difference.

And then, you know, obviously it goes all the way

up to level four, but again, yeah,

glad we can simplify it and clarify it for everyone.

- Yeah, and Ödgärd, can you talk a little bit

about why, sort of, what Lidar changes

in terms of what you're able to do on your end,

and maybe even sort of what co-development

sort of work, you know, doing this work together

in this kind of tight partnership.

What does that enable in terms of the final product?

- Yeah, I mean, if I starts with the Lidar,

we're basically trying to solve a quite difficult problem,

and you want to have the absolute best eyes

and ears on the car in order to do that.

And since we're aiming for the highway scenario,

we need to drive quite fast,

and then you need to see quite far.

And Lidar really fundamentally,

and especially working with Luminar,

and the performance of the Luminar Lidar,

we're able to see 250 meters,

which is really what you need in order to make this happen.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- So that's really the basic idea

behind starting to work with Austin,

and the team in the first place.

- And does doing the development work together,

once you have that, that partnership, you know,

what does that allow in terms of, you know,

really being tightly integrated in the development process?

- I mean, for us, it's a lot,

of course, learning between the teams,

but it's also about getting speed in the development loop.

So basically, now we're deploying with Volvo

as the first customer, we have a really

speedy development loop, collecting data,

getting kind of improvements in,

redeveloping, recollecting data.

And that just is unbeatable

when you can get that machine to work quickly.

- Yeah, and that speed is especially important when,

you know, there's a big difference

I think a lot of people don't always understand,

between sort of, you know, being out in development,

which a lot of autonomous drive technology is,

and having sort of test vehicles,

versus having something that is really,

and Austin, you mentioned the term automotive grade, right?

And I think sometimes people don't fully,

a lot of people don't fully appreciate

sort of how dramatic the difference is

between something that is automotive grade qualified,

and can be sold to private consumers,

versus something that's out on the streets, you know,

with trained engineers behind the wheel, you know,

ready to take over if anything goes wrong.

Can you just talk a little bit

about that distinction and sort of, you know,