Luminar Technologies, Inc. (LAZRQ) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage Co-Founder and CEO of Luminar, Austin Russell.

Everyone, well, thanks, and welcome to the Studio in New York City live for our inaugural Luminar Studio Day. Awesome to see some familiar faces as well. So thanks for getting settled in. So with that, I think too often, we see technology designed for technology's sake. And that was some of the inspiration for this, to really be able to take into account a holistic design and use case. And that's what we've been starting to change when it comes to autonomy. That would be great to take an opportunity to highlight that. So today, we're going to showcase 3 things. So one, what's behind me, the first fully integrated consumer vehicle with Iris, Luminar's autonomous sensing solution or series production. Two, what we've accomplished with Iris culminating with some live drives to the public throughout New York City today here. And three, a glimpse into the future with Luminar robo-taxi and trucking concept design, we're calling Blade, looking to inspire automakers for the next generation of vehicles when you design a vehicle from the ground up with Luminar. So today, we'll also be kicking off a global customer roadshow to demonstrate the power and potential Iris beyond just the OEM launch partners that we've been working with. So I'm going to start by zooming out just a bit here and kind of go back to our core mission. Why are we doing this? Well, it starts with safety. It's about making autonomous -- making autonomy safe and ubiquitous. So substantially enhanced vehicle safety, enables superhuman like capabilities, while at the same time, moving towards the goal to ultimately achieve the holy grail of becoming standardized on vehicles and enabling autonomy as well. So the recent data released a recap of 2020 doesn't paint a bright picture in the world of safety. So it would likely well over 1 million vehicle desk globally and actually nearly 40,000 in the U.S. alone, according to NHTSA data gathered so far. So that's a 7.2% increase from last year, even despite -- the prior year in 2019. Despite the pandemic and all the challenges they had, it's only gone up. It actually leads to even a shocking 24% increase in fatalities per mile when taking into account for a period of time reduced mileage traveled by vehicles during the pandemic. So this is even getting into all the serious injuries and tens of millions of those that happen in vehicle damage that's taken into account at a rate orders of magnitude higher. So these facts, alongside real-world testing scenarios, show that existing active safety systems are woefully inadequate and the opportunity is clear. So we see a vision for a new safety standard for transportation and that's been the iteration from what we've been doing all along. So approach to a self-driving problem and ultimately building a safe autonomous vehicle is [ divert ] among autonomous vehicle companies. So almost all these companies have chosen to focus their efforts on the software side and generally for urban environments, while using off-the-shelf hardware or primitive developments, which are not anywhere close to truly meeting the performance, scalability, auto-grade economic requirements that are needed for a production vehicle, unless someone -- someone would want to buy for that matter. So it said we really chose focus on arguably the most difficult part of the autonomous challenge, which starts with the LiDAR. It's the key enabling sensing technology to allow autonomy to be possible and make these proactive safety systems, take safety up to the next level in terms of what we've been developing. And our bet turned out to be spot on. So we progressed over nearly the past decade doing over a number of different iterations of product, maturing the design and getting to a stage of where you could go into series production. And it takes a lot of work and say hundreds of specialized engineers, hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and just a lot of sheer willpower, blood sweat and tears to make it happen. And that's what we amounted to with Iris here. So Iris is really the first autonomous sensing solution, 4 series production. If you noticed over the different product iterations, we actually even got it to a little bit of a slimmer form factor, if you go back just a couple of slides there, back 1 more. So what you can see is that it's actually something that's meant to be integrated into the roof line as opposed to just a box that you're mounting on a rack of a vehicle. So -- and that's what you're going see, if you can go back and then 1 more again. So Iris is the foundation to enabling autonomy across series production across consumer vehicles, trucking and robo-taxis, these 3 main verticals that we've been targeting. And having that laser-like focus has allowed us to solve one of the most complex and challenging hardware problems early on and positioned us to lead the autonomous industry today, securing partnerships with some of the biggest names in transportation, working with -- and working holistically with over 50 partners stack. So how do we do this? What are the steps that led us up to this point with Iris? Well, it starts back a number of years ago, kind of going back to the fundamental core component innovation of building the core technology, laser receivers, scanning mechanism, processing electronics. We build our own chips. We build all this stuff from the ground up. Going to the component sourcing side. In that phase, we had to actually secure the supply chains. A lot of the stuff doesn't exist. It can't happen overnight. You have to really plan well in advance. Go through the LiDAR development process. We've gone through a number of major iterations of product, all the way to spec validation. Okay, after you develop a LIDAR, does it actually meet the spec requirements that are needed to solve the holistic problem? Then you have to go through the industrialization phases for that product, which maybe you guys have heard some terms like B-C-D samples that we've used or used in the automotive industry. And we've gone through most of that phase, but -- and finalizing that work. While at the same time, what we've done to move towards a series production phase? You may have seen the recent announcement that we had with Celestica and Fabrinet as our series production contract manufacturing partners, where we've actually been able to produce the first unit rolling off the line down in Monterrey, Mexico, the series production facility location. That's what we had to go through. So when it comes to autonomy and safety, the whole point is that we don't have to wait 10 or 20 years in terms of what to head. This is something that can be done really just around the corner with Iris, having a start of production just before the -- actually, before the end of 2022. And that's where we get to scale up with our partners like the Volvo's and SAIC's of this world to make this happen. So what does all this mean at the end of the day from a design standpoint and integration standpoint? And if you take a look at the autonomous vehicles of today, this is what you think of. This is what you see. This is what it looks like. And this is where we've completely transformed and revolutionized what it means to have an autonomous vehicle, and that's what you're here to see today. So go to the next slide. Yes, Volvo, SAIC, what we just announced with Pony, something that's cleanly integrated into the vehicle and something that can make its way into production, something that we're changing the world with. So with that, I would love to welcome on to the stage, Jason, our SVP of Product Development, who really helped spearhead a lot of this progress with the team. So thank you.

All right. Thanks, Austin. Good morning. I'm really happy to have you here today. Really proud of the progress that the team has made with Iris to date. The continued evolution of the specs and the development of the sensor really speaks to our continued innovation in this space. But the specs aren't the only thing that's important for developing this sensor. Car designers don't necessarily want to just consider the trade-off between integrating these sensors and actually the holistic design and styling of the car. So we took that into account upfront with Iris. So we first wanted to look at what's the most important thing for our sensor. It's the range and resolution that we provide and our ability to see at a very long distance to see the small object in the road and take advantage of that. That's what's going to give end consumers a different driving experience. It's what auto manufacturers want to provide. So in designing Iris, the first thing we looked at was where is it going to be integrated into the vehicle? And in order to get a proper view and proper point of view, you really need to be at the top of the vehicle. In order to be at the top of the vehicle, you really need to integrate into the roof line. So if you're going to be at the roof line, the design of the sensor has to be different than any other type of LiDAR sensor that's been designed to date. And hence, we made our sensor thin, so it could be integrated into the roof line. That's super important because not only does it allow the designers to style the sensor into the car, but it also keeps the sensor below the overall height of the apex of the roof, so it doesn't affect the actual aerodynamics or the drag on the car. So as Austin mentioned up to this point, autonomous sensors have all kind of just been bolted on to cars and this kind of Frankenstein like manner. Our goal is to change that and change that quickly. There's a parallel to another component that's kind of been integrated into vehicles, and that's the headlight. So in the past, initially, the headlight was this separate component that was bolted on and it was independent of kind of the form of the vehicle. Over time, as we moved on to the middle of the century, the headlight was integrated into the form of the vehicle, but it wasn't really a design element. And now today, the headlight has kind of become a real design element, integrated perfectly into the form, and we see that that's the direction that we're going to head with our sensors today, as it's going to become a design element, not just necessarily bolted onto the vehicle. So over time, we've gone kind of from this robo-taxi, Frankenstein look and we're going to progress it very quickly into seamlessly integrating so that end consumers, designers can take autonomous sensors and integrate them holistically into vehicles. So our partners like SAIC, Volvo, Pony are already starting to show this. It's already starting to come into form. So they're showing that form and function aren't necessarily mutually exclusive for integrating autonomous sensors that consumers can get a beautiful car and they can get the experiences that we're trying to provide. So Austin is going to come back up on stage, and he's going to progress that vision of where we're trying to go with this.

All right. Thank you, Jason. It's a great, great overview and deep dive. And as we mentioned, we're progressing faster on technology than ever before. And I think a lot of folks originally assumed this would be an overnight shift into -- maybe you've seen some of the recent form factors that folks have unveiled of kind of a poster-like vision for robo-taxis. And I think there's a lot of potential for that over the long term. But the question is, is that what can we do over the course of the next decade when you integrate vehicle design with autonomous technology from the ground up? Because Iris isn't ultimately just for consumer vehicles, extending this design thinking to commercial trucks and robo-taxis as well. So today, we're unveiling Blade. Blade is the answer to the question of what's possible when combining autonomous technology and holistic vehicle from the ground up, hand-in-hand. So first ever concept and a powerful design expression of what the future can hold when seamlessly integrated into cars, trucks and robo-taxis? So with that, here it is. It creates a foundation and a design direction for new vehicle architecture that automakers have the ability to incorporate into vehicle development programs from the onset. And what you can see on screen here with Blade is the future for what we could see with robo-taxis as well as trucks. So both designs take into account the unique use case requirements that we have. But let's start out with the robo-taxi Blade. So this is a sleek, roomy inspiring car design for autonomous operations on highways and urban environments. And the concept really features a golden Blade like a halo that runs across the crown of the vehicle. And this is something that can be built for consumers as well as robo-taxi use cases with a 4 sensor configuration around the vehicle for a full 360 view and perspective, and something that gives you a safe operation and line of sight all around the vehicle. So that's the vision of the future when it comes down to that for consumer vehicles and as it borders aligned with robo-taxis. And next up, we have a commercial truck. You can see that same golden halo, that features 3-sensor configuration around the vehicle, giving nearly 360 degrees of build to view. One of the nice things with this is that Iris actually, we have up to a max range of 600 meters seeing out in the distance there, so both forward as well as backwards as part of this design. So you get actually 1.2-kilometer sensing and safety envelope around the vehicle, which is critical for trucks and having that long-range vision. So in both cases, the Blade and that halo is the signature feature around the roof, which houses LiDAR sensing systems and other sensing technologies. So this concept that we have -- or both of these concepts were developed in collaboration with NewDealDesign, an acclaimed technology design firm. And we love to be able to invite Gadi Amit, their President, up to the stage to say a few words. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. So the Blade taxi is a very unique vehicle from inception. We're dealing with a vehicle that is thought through from a digital perspective with very sharp airy lines that has all the sensors incorporated into the roof line, and now the roof is no longer just a structure. It is actually the thinking head of the car. It is incorporating all the sensors, all the compute, all the subsystems. And this is a thought that will go through both Blade concepts. Part of the notion of the taxi is the ability to deliver an experience that is somewhat romantic like taxis used to be. Which used to take you places. You used to be excited about it. And today, obviously, we're all familiar with this experience. It's not what it used to be. But for us, we want to think progressively about the future. We want to take the digital revolution and make it into an experience that the end consumer, the common person will actually be excited about. And part of that are the lines of the Blade taxi. We are incorporating movement. We are incorporating excitement. We are incorporating aerodynamics and we are incorporating the sense of maybe an airline seat that you're excited to take because you're going on a vacation. And this comes through the whole 360-view of the car. And obviously, we have a very prominent feature in the back that suggests speed, efficiency and also suggests that this vehicle is no longer an urban vehicle. This is a vehicle that is just as capable to go on a highway and to speed up to 60 and 70 miles an hour because the sensor technology enables that. It's no longer something that is maybe a souped-up golf cart. It's a lot more than that. It's an aspiring vehicle that you want to have and you want to travel with. Now inside, there is an enormous amount of space. The concept itself is not much larger than this car. It's about 183 inches long. But it has 122-inch wheel base with a giant roomy spacing side. And again, the cues that we took there are coming from airline. It's like your first-class seat that you want to take in order to reach your destination. Now when we're thinking about the next generation of vehicle design, one of the fundamental elements is to incorporate digital thinking through and through. We want to take the autonomous digital technology and embed it into the thinking and the lines behind this design. And in this case, you see crisp lines. You see lines with motion with progression forward. And they are also incorporating a lot of interaction features, illuminations and obviously, what Austin mentioned, this halo band that has all the thinking technology in it. Now moving forward with the same type of thought, we are expressing Blade onto trucks. And in this case, we took a slightly different approach. We are taking a module, a very thin Blade module that is coming as a unit, and we are inserting it into existing truck design and trucks that are now being designed. And basically, the manufacturer could approach Luminar and get a kit, if you wish, ready to go and be inserted into their vehicle design. As mentioned before, this slim Blade technology is very unique to Luminar, and it allows us to do a lot of beautiful things in terms of incorporating ventilation, incorporating lights and also giving us a 360-degree view behind the truck without being too obtrusive or disruptive to the vehicle design itself. The most important thing with Blade, and this is both the taxi and the truck, we are creating an icon, an icon of progressive AI technology. This is a very thin, very deliberate strip that has all the sensors built in and it's no longer a separate part of the vehicle. It's an integral part, not only of the vehicle design, but also of the vehicle architecture right from inception. Austin? So these are the 2 Blade concepts. And I hope you guys enjoyed. And I wonder if Austin has some closing thoughts.

All right. Well, thanks, everyone, for tuning in for this. This has been great, and we're going to actually get started on Q&A in just a moment for everyone. This is something that we're able to show off today that's, frankly, unlike anything we've done before and hopefully was able to help provide some inspiration, thought leadership and continuing to extend that. And it goes to show more than anything. A lot of people historically thought about Luminar in the context of a LiDAR company, in the context of the LiDAR that what we built. And we have, and that's what we've been able to demonstrate leadership with, we've been able to win over the industry, but we've become a lot more than that. And that's where -- okay, well, you might ask why now? Why are you showing off some of this stuff? Well, a couple of things. One is that when it comes to consumer vehicles, we've been able to already demonstrate a solid leadership position. You can see some of the examples of what we have here today with a clean integration. And at the same time, a lot of automakers are looking what's the next-generation vehicle design? These things don't happen overnight. All the vehicles that we're being designed into today, those started development years ago, as many as 5 years ago plus. So for the next generation of vehicles to ultimately come about, that's where that development starts today. And hopefully, this has been a helpful inspiration to the broader landscape for what's to come and what happens when you have Luminar inside. So excited to be able to kick off some of the Q&A as we continue to advance the state-of-the-art and look forward to being able to do some live drives with the team, with our demonstration vehicle and what we can show off from an elegant design perspective because at the end of the day, design does matter. So thank you to everyone. Thank you to the design team for this as well. And thank you to Luminar team for being able to pull this event off here in New York. It's awesome to get back into the game to be able to do some live events, and this will only be the first of many to come. So thank you, and let's do some Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Let's dig in. All right. First question, I think this is for Austin. So are you going to make these?

So no. We're not making a robo-taxi. This was meant for a broader inspiration from a thought leadership perspective. But for the trucking design, we'll see.

Okay. And what about time line? So not Luminar specific, but with OEMs, trucking OEMs and robo-taxi companies, what do you see as kind of the time line? You just mentioned at the end there that design cycles are often 5, 7 years. Are we going to need to wait 5, 7 years to see these implemented?

I think for the robo-taxi design, in terms of the time line for what is ahead there? Yes, I think that's the kind of time line that you can be thinking about when it comes down to it. It's not decades. It's not right around the corner. Again, trucking design is a little bit of a different story, and we'll have more on that front later.

Great. And continuing on the thread of design, this is a question for Gadi. As an industrial designer, do you believe that automotive designers are looking forward to integrating these sensors? Is there tension there?

It's an interesting question. I've been dealing with digital technology for nearly 30 years, and I know that automotive design has been somewhat of an island to itself. I know in the last few years, they've been opening up and understanding that digital is a completely new domain and requires new thinking -- system thinking about the vehicle right from the architecture level. The overall experience of traveling starts maybe with your mobile phone. So these are really fundamental changes. And what I've been noticing is an openness that maybe is about to manifest itself only a few years, but there's definitely openness to new types of thinking and new types of design or design language being incorporated into vehicle design.

Wojack, any thoughts on that? I know you're working a lot with these teams and that tension exists?

Yes. I think that designers -- there is a dynamic tension, no question. And that's why we took that into account upfront. What needed to be done? The location that needed to be referenced into. And really challenging the designers and challenging the engineers on how to do this in the best way, and I think that vision that was put forward today really sets an example of what can be done and how it can be done well, and we're already progressing towards that.

Great. So we saw the Blade. And I think, Gadi you had mentioned that this now, the roof actually kind of becomes the brain of the vehicle. So Austin, a question for you. So when you say sensors are built into that Blade piece there, does that include cameras, radars, high-performance compute? What's all in there?

Yes, all of the above when it comes down to it. I mean the compute considers to be in different locations of the vehicle, but it is -- it can be accommodated in the roof as well. Although when we're talking LiDAR cameras, radar. Of course, the LiDAR is the core foundation of why it's there and the design for that since that's the foundational sensing system that gives you the ground truth, view of everything going on around you. But that said, it is meant to holistically accommodate everything as part of the design.

Great. This is a good question for Wojack. How does Iris compare to the Hydra? So we saw kind of the 3 different sensors, the evolution for Luminar. So moving over to Iris, what is the difference?

So Hydra was our research and development platform. It was designed to really showcase what our tech is capable of and give development fleets, a platform to develop on. Iris actually improves on the capability, but it's also designed to be in series production products. So it meets all the temperature specifications, the shock and vibration, can be fully integrated into a vehicle.

Great. And a follow-up on that. So you mentioned we're now working out of Celestica and getting sensors up and running. So the sensor we're going to see in the vehicle today for those of us in the room, did that come from the Mexico plant? And then as a follow-up, what is the next critical phase for the development of Iris?

Yes. So we've taken the sensors that we've built in our NPI line that we have actually in Orlando. We've transferred that line down to our Celestica facility, and we're developing the sensors there. We're progressing our way into the C-samples, which is fully productionized version of the sensor off of production tools through production processes, and that's the sensor that you'll see today, is that we're meeting those automotive specifications and processes.

Great. All right. Can you give broad costs for the different applications? And will Blade help reduce the cost of autonomy? And how fast do we see those costs coming down? That's a tough one, I give that one to you, Austin.

Yes. So when it comes to economics for this, I mean the most stringent use cases is for consumer vehicles because that cost is directly passed on to the consumer in that side and that's the more driver behind the economics. For robo-taxis and for trucking, it's a little bit less sensitive because you're effectively displacing the cost of the driver or a bunch of other factors that relate to efficiency and continuous operation as well as the improved insurance rates from the safety improvements. So there are a bunch of different things that come into play. So it's a little bit less cost sensitive. But at the same time, it doesn't excuse the fact that you still need to have an auto-grade series production products and something that actually can be designed well into a vehicle. And ultimately, obviously, trucking operators, robo-taxi operators, these guys are going to be economic animals at the end of the day. So it cost does matter to a certain point. But part of the whole value of what we have and what we've been able to bring to the table is we get to leverage the same Iris, the same product that's in this car here today that we're driving around live. The same one that's going into the series production consumer vehicles. It's the same product that goes into trucks, series production, they can go on to robo-taxis for series production that go into all these things, and we get to leverage the economies of scale across the existing multitrillion-dollar consumer vehicle industry to be able to bring products into these other verticals in domains. And that's what makes all the difference, and that's why Luminar and what we've done with our strategy to uniquely position us to do exactly that.

Great. This is about weather, so I'm going to give this to Jason. Are weather conditions taken into consideration? And is there any degradation that takes place with weather conditions? And then a good follow-up on the back of that as well is in designing Blade and having all the sensor suite in that kind of band, does that also help?

Yes. So yes, weather was taken into account. So a lot of the research and development that we did on our original Hydra sensor, we actually made some design changes specifically for weather. So in terms of rain or snow, other aerosols that are kind of in the air, it don't really affect the performance of our sensors. But as you look at things like bugs or other obscurants that could hit the sensor, We actually made a redundancy in terms of the field coverage that we have for our sensor, which allows us to still see the full field of view even if a bug or something does hit the sensor, give us time to clean that bug off and never really lose the full field of view coverage, which is very unique to our sensor. So we've taken those learnings and actually progressed the sensor.

And then once it's all in this Blade design, is cleaning easier? Or how does that help as well?

Yes. So the Blade design will allow you to centralize that cleaning system, right? It won't have to be distributed around the vehicle. So yes, it does help with that.

By the way, a couple of journalists that we took the cars, actually yesterday, I got to see it in rainy weather there, too. So goes to show, it don't know -- you'll see what they write about that. But it achieves an almost surprising level of performance even in tough conditions.

All right. This question is for Gadi. Do you think that the public is ready for autonomous vehicles? Or when they will be ready? Or when do you think the public will be ready? And then what is being done to address safety? Do you think the industry is going far enough?

It's very complicated question. Obviously, we are changing culture, a culture of driving, and it takes time. I do think that the first breakthrough product will change perception very much. I would say that this industry is waiting for its iPhone moment, but suddenly everything comes together and it's clear and nobody goes back anymore. And it's clear that this is a complicated product. Very sophisticated technologies need to be seamlessly integrated. But I do think that the public knows when things are right and at the same time, know when things are not quite right. So we are still in a not quite right moment. And I hope that with these technologies and these levels of design integrations that we've seen today, we are moving towards this iPhone moment. And when it arrives, questions will be considered [indiscernible].

Interesting. All right. Austin, what makes your technology better than other LiDAR companies?

Yes. Well, I think virtual, hopefully, as we only reinforce today, we've become a lot more than just a LiDAR company. So to say, as part of the holistic vision between our hardware, our software, our vision for the future, the work that we do with OEMs and beyond. But at the same time, what's the foundation, or why we exist? Why we're here? Well, it did start with the LiDAR. And that was the approach that we took. And at the most fundamental level, we built out all the individual components from scratch rather than leveraging off-the-shelf parts to assemble a system. So this allowed us to be able to achieve what would otherwise be an unprecedented level of performance, capability, scalability, manufacturability, economics of what's needed in the first sensing system that actually meets all those requirements. And as you can see, we've gone through multiple iterations and generations to be able to get there. Product maturity and design and our work with OEMs is second to none, as really the only one that's been working with OEMs for autonomous series production programs, at least an incredible capacity. And that's where we obviously got a lot of work left to do with our OEM partners, and just as with the hardware. There's still work left to do with the software, what the OEMs are developing. And that's what we see, coming around the corner, where all the puzzle pieces are falling into place for these production programs. And again, getting to leverage those programs for all these other areas and the things that we're doing across trucking and ultimately, robo-taxis and these other things is critical because if you just try to address it in a vacuum, it's not going to work. So we really completely position ourselves onto a completely different level from a technology standpoint. I mean, heck, we actually just got issued our 100th patent, which is -- it's a pretty awesome feat. We have over 200 applications at this point. It's more than pretty much all these other folks in the industry combined when it comes to LiDAR. And that just goes to show our continued technology leadership. And we don't stop of what's here today. And that's where hopefully we're able to show a vision and inspiration for everyone here and also our OEM partners of what can be done. Again, we aren't necessarily going to be -- we're not going to be building a robo-taxi ourselves right now right off the bat. But people are in the works of starting to design these systems, and we really think that this is going to provide some great inspiration to everyone in an open concept.

Great. And let's get lined out a little bit here. Is there a physics limitation to the dimensions of a LiDAR sensor? Or do you expect the sensor, packaging, miniaturization to continue over time? I challenge Wojack with that question.

That's a good question, actually. Is there a physics limitation? No, I think it's -- within our road map, within our R&D pipeline, we actually have technologies in process that are going to dramatically reduce the size of the sensor. Of course, there's a physics limitation. But I think it's more a limitation on your imagination and how to implement those changes. So the sensor will get smaller and smaller over time and become easier and easier to integrate. No question about it. We already have the vision for that internally.

One thing to note as well is that part of the design in terms of what we've been able to do in transition is -- and what enables us to actually have something that is scalable and can even push -- we're always want continuing to push the limits of what's possible, but it's this architecture that we have and where we don't have to have a huge array of lasers and receivers like historical LiDAR designs, the performance of proportionate to how many lasers and receivers you put in your device. For like an equivalent device in the market today for like $100,000 system, it requires 128 lasers, 128 receivers when you're talking the same order of performance as what you're talking about here, actually. This does even better in many cases. So that's where it's taking these $100,000 systems, bring in to a $1,000 system that can be cleanly integrated into a vehicle. And at the same time, from an architectural perspective -- I mean we basically -- let's put it this way. Under the current regime of technology for everything that's known out there and all the existing technologies out there, this is the pretty -- much the most optimized form factor you could possibly have. Like it's already pushing the limits of physics in so many dimensions. We're trying to have debates of how we work around the speed of light and all of these other things here, but those are some other challenges. So with that, we have more downstream that we're not ready to talk about yet here for future iterations of this that breaks that current regime of some of the trade-offs that are had in the LiDAR design. But the reality is today, what matters? Okay, what matters is having something that meets the performance requirements, that needs the safety requirements, that you can actually produce and that it is actually going to go into vehicles. Because right now, everything is kind of a hop, skip and a dream and all the less the multitrillion dollar challenge that, that hop, skip and dream is trying to solve for. But this is where we're trying to take this leadership to the next level, work with the OEMs, make this real. That's what's here and that's what's happening with the next-gen designs. And then already be leapfrogging to what's ahead beyond.

And just to add to that briefly. I mean what we already see happening with the partners that are integrating this is the user experiences they're already starting to enable. So as Gadi kind of mentioned, when are people going to have that moment? As they develop these features and we start to see them come to fruition, people will have that aha moment it's like, wow, I didn't realize my car could actually do this, right? So it's coming.

That's great. I think we've got just 1 minute left and no questions from the room. Everyone's shy today. I think you're waiting for us to wrap it up, so you can ask. [Operator Instructions]

Austin, just curious, I mean when you start thinking about the Blade if you're integrating all different sensors into it and that's kind of the position you're able to take. How do you think about differentiation at that point? Or what does it really -- if you're then trying to differentiate yourself, how do you think about investments? And then you have to become an expert almost in every sensor technology and -- or does the investment cycle or the investment trajectory really change on account of that?

Yes, yes. So when it comes to this, really think from a leadership perspective and design perspective and inspiration perspective, how do we maintain that? This is where we're kicking off this what we think of is a new trend for this. It's designed specifically for Luminar and for Iris in terms of what was accommodated. If you noticed, we didn't have any spinning systems, bolt-on systems, anything there. It's all cleanly integrated as part of this. And the reality is that you do have to work with the respective autonomous provider and company years in advance if you want to actually successfully design these things in. And it's very customized in that respect, particularly when it comes to LiDAR. So that's kind of the quick view there. And then when it comes to the OEM relationships that we have and that we've built and what we pioneer in, I think that's really been second to none and gives us a unique opportunity to be able -- in working with these OEMs to be able to either further solidify and ultimately achieve a holy grail that the industry would see, which is standardization of a technology on a given vehicle. And that's what's going to make all the difference, and we're going to continue to pioneer this and continue to lead.

All right. With that, we are going to do some drives. So thank you for joining us today, everyone, and we'll see you again at the next Studio Day.

And we'll be -- we're live on CNBC in 5 minutes. Tune in.

Cheers.