The News: Luminar and Mercedes-Benz announced an expanded partnership where Mercedes-Benz will leverage Luminar’s Iris sensors to help Mercedes-Benz enable its next-generation vehicles with enhanced automated driving capabilities by mid-decade. See the release from Luminar here.

Luminar Enables Mercedes-Benz Next-Generation of Autonomous Vehicles

Analyst Take: The partnership between Luminar and Mercedes-Benz is a strong indicator of reality that the market momentum for computer-assisted driving is large, exciting, and expected to grow at a fast clip over the next several years as consumers and the business-to-business markets embrace the trend.

Noted for its excellent engineering, premium vehicles, services, and safety standards, it makes sense that Mercedes-Benz wants to stay ahead of the innovation curve by continuing to partner with a key player in the driver assisted technology market that already has an impressive line-up of customers such as Volvo and Audim to name a few. Fundamentally, Mercedes-Benz is committed to offering cutting edge and premium driving experiences and features to its vehicles for its customers to leverage – and Mercedes-Benz customers expect them.

For its part, Luminar will provide its next-generation Iris LIDAR and accompanying software that uses longer waves of laser light that can help identify objects such as animals, people, and others on the road at longer ranges that are less reflective, which is a highly critical piece for autonomous driving; especially in situations with drivers who might have slower reflexes or vision problems, and every precious second counts.

The deal between with Luminar and Mercedes-Benz is multi-billion in nature and Mercedes-Benz expects to roll out the technology in its production vehicles by mid-decade. The technology will enable Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot Level-3 autonomous system that is based on SAE standards where the car does the driving, but the driver needs to be ready to take control of the vehicle at any time.

As indicated earlier, the market for computer assisted driving continues to gain traction with consumer and business-to-business markets. We feel Luminar’s Iris LIDAR will be a key linchpin and moving the market forward in the future based on its excellent traction from notable automotive manufacturers. It also makes sense that drivers will be more comfortable with Level-3 autonomous vehicle functionality in the future since they can traverse between automation and human intervention when needed.

My colleague Daniel Newman and his co-host of The Six Five Webcast, Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights and Strategy, discussed the partnership between Luminar and Mercedes-Benz in a recent episode. Check it out here and be sure to subscribe to The Six Five Webcast so you never miss an episode.

Disclosure: Futurum Research is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.

Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum Research as a whole.