Luminar, a company known for making LiDAR, named Tesla as its top customer for Q1 2024. Tesla uses the technology for its autonomous driving features on its EVs.
This is despite Tesla CEO Elon Musk previously calling LiDAR a "crutch" for self-driving vehicles, with the company's previous electric cars relying on radar for detection.
In the latest earnings report from Luminar, Tesla made up as much as 10 percent of its revenue for the quarter, with the company having massive orders of the tech for its EVs.
Tesla is Luminar's Top LiDAR Customer for Q1 2024
Luminar shared its latest Q1 2024 results, and in an earnings call, it revealed that Tesla is their top customer for the first quarter, with the company making up 10 percent of its revenue for its LiDAR tech.
This amounts to as much as $2 million worth of purchases from Luminar for the LiDAR sensors it develops for various industries, particularly for the automotive.
The company reported a five percent revenue drop from the fourth quarter, but this was overturned thanks to Tesla's sensor purchases from the company this Q1.
Moreover, the company also reported a 45 percent rise in revenue year-over-year.
Elon Musk Previously Said LiDAR is a 'Crutch'
Previously, Musk was a vocal critic of LiDAR, going so far as to call it a "crutch" and claiming that it would resort to radar and cameras for the autonomous driving technology found on its EVs.
However, it was later revealed that the company was discovered to be using LiDAR for some of its cars, with its partnership with Luminar dating back to 2021.
Whether Musk and Tesla's purchases relate to its robotaxi plans to launch this August remains unknown.
Tesla's Autonomous Tech and LiDAR
During Tesla's early autonomous development of its EVs, it relied on radar to detect the cars, objects, people, and other objects around it for its self-driving capabilities.
For a long time, it is known that Elon Musk has been a vocal critic of LiDAR, and at one point, went as far as to say that the technology would not be installed on its EVs.
However, reports and the company later confirmed that Tesla is moving away from radar to focus on improvements for its autonomous driving technology, now concentrating on Tesla Vision.
Vision employs cameras installed all around the vehicle's body, but in addition to the car's seeing eyes, it also has LiDAR.
Sources claimed that Tesla had already relied on the laser-based sensing technology from Luminar for a long time, years after he claimed that this was merely a crutch for autonomous vehicles.
Still, evidence says otherwise, as Luminar's latest earnings call reveals Tesla is the company's biggest customer of LiDAR, which is believed to be used for its autonomous tech, similar to the company's other customers for their self-driving tech.
