>Why? We literally never see that with top shelf products. This isn't an arduino solder job. This is going to be an integrated software and hardware package that will rival an aircraft autopilot/navigation. Please check you facts on the cost of these things.
Google claims that it dropped the price of lidar by a factor of 10x once it started producing them. That seems like a significant, factual, drop in cost.
The iPhone is how much to produce? Very important point you missed in what I wrote; Hardware and software package. A lidar without software is useless.
The price dropped from something ridiculous (~100K) to something manageable for a luxury car (~10K), and certainly reasonable as a cost offset by multiple consumers (like in a rideshare environment).
No... in addition to being prohibitively expensive, the other model being put forth to make it less expensive, ride-sharing, also has drawbacks which make the idea a non-starter for most Americans.
If ridesharing was awesome, we would see it now with luxury cars. We don't because it is stupid and will not reduce the price of the car dramatically enough to outweigh the negatives.
Google claims that it dropped the price of lidar by a factor of 10x once it started producing them. That seems like a significant, factual, drop in cost.