{"id":40755,"date":"2025-12-14T06:01:47","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T06:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/rivians-autonomy-chief-says-lidar-is-very-affordable-and-a-no-brainer-decision\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T06:01:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T06:01:47","slug":"rivians-autonomy-chief-says-lidar-is-very-affordable-and-a-no-brainer-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/rivians-autonomy-chief-says-lidar-is-very-affordable-and-a-no-brainer-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"Rivian&#8217;s autonomy chief says lidar is &#8216;very affordable&#8217; and a &#8216;no-brainer&#8217; decision"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/693e3925832e0ef1ead63171?format=jpeg\" alt=\"James Philbin\"\/><figcaption>James Philbin, Rivian&#039;s VP of autonomy and AI, said the cost of lidar has decreased significantly in the past decade.<\/p>\n<p>Kimberly White\/Getty Images for Rivian<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Rivian unveiled a version of its coming R2 model that comes installed with lidar.<\/li>\n<li>The company said the sensor will support its future plans to roll out fully autonomous driving.<\/li>\n<li>Rivian&#039;s autonomy chief, James Philbin, told Business Insider that using the sensor is a &quot;no-brainer.&quot;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For Rivian&#039;s chief of autonomy, the decision to put in lidar for the EV company&#039;s coming R2 SUV was obvious.<\/p>\n<p>James Philbin, Rivian&#039;s VP of autonomy and AI, told Business Insider that the price of lidar has decreased significantly enough in recent years to be able to put the sensor inside a personally-owned, mass-production vehicle.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#039;s been on this incredible cost curve, where 10 years ago, it would be just unimaginable that you could put a lidar on a consumer vehicle. And now it&#039;s getting into that price point, kind of in the range of a radar,&quot; Philbin said. Radar, a sensor that uses radio waves, is commonly seen in modern cars that have an advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) or blind spot detection.<\/p>\n<p>Lidar is a sensor that uses laser light to measure depth. While it&#039;s historically been used for topography, the sensor has gained more visibility in the automotive world with the advent of self-driving cars.<\/p>\n<p>Most notably, Waymo&#039;s robotaxis have multiple lidar sensors, including the spinning lidar on the roof of the vehicle. Waymo has said that lidar provides additional safety to the vehicle&#039;s AI driver.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, Rivian announced a road map to fully autonomous driving, which includes building an in-house chip and installing a lidar sensor in the company&#039;s coming SUV, the R2.<\/p>\n<p>Philbin, who previously worked at Zoox and Waymo, told Business Insider that lidar makes an autonomous system &quot;more robust&quot; and can help the company get to its self-driving goal &quot;faster.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#039;s very affordable,&quot; he said. &quot;The performance it gives you for that cost is really amazing. And so to me, it&#039;s kind of a no-brainer that you would want more sensors and more modalities for something that&#039;s so safety critical.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Using lidar diverges from the strategy of Rivian&#039;s main EV competitor, Tesla, which has taken a strong stance on pursuing self-driving with cameras only.<\/p>\n<p>Tesla CEO Elon Musk once called lidar an expensive &quot;crutch.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>In the late 2000s, during the days of the Google Self-Driving Car Project, a single lidar unit could come with a five-figure price tag. Today, industry leaders say a similar unit could cost a few hundred dollars.<\/p>\n<p>Rivian employees, including Philbin, did not disclose the cost of the lidar unit in the R2 when asked by Business Insider.<\/p>\n<p>R2 will first be launched without the sensor in early 2026. It&#039;s slated to be Rivian&#039;s cheapest car to date, with a starting price of $45,000. The company aims to launch an R2 with lidar in late 2026.<\/p>\n<p>When asked what the cost difference was to put a lidar in the R2, Philbin declined to comment but said that it was &quot;not a significant consideration.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Philbin, Rivian&#039;s VP of autonomy and AI, said the cost of lidar has decreased significantly in the past decade. Kimberly White\/Getty Images for Rivian Rivian unveiled a version of its coming R2 model that comes installed with lidar. The company said the sensor will support its future plans to roll out fully autonomous driving. 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