All of us at Driving Vision News (DVN) are proud to announce, with this first newsletter, the launch of a community for companies active in the automotive lidar ecosystem. Community members and invitees include automakers; suppliers; lidar specialists, researchers, and experts; component and testing suppliers, and all other contributors to automotive lidar.
Since 2008, DVN has been a strong and growing vehicle lighting community of currently more than 185 companies. DVN supports the development; commercialisation; thoughtful and appropriate regulation, and market uptake of good vehicle lighting. DVN activities include evaluating and sharing market and technology trends; discerning and assessing emerging technologies and markets; analysing and evaluating relevant developments, and attending and reporting on congresses and shows. Dissemination channels for all this DVN information include the weekly DVNewsletter as well as periodic reports and thoroughgoing studies. Perhaps most centrally of all, DVN produces an active schedule of Workshops to productively bring together the community’s experts. These events have been ongoing since 2008 on a global basis covering the main automotive hubs: Europe; North America; Japan; Korea, and China. DVN events facilitate the formation of new relationships and the promotion of innovations as well as apposite standardisation and regulatory processes.
In 2017, the DVN team recognised that driving automation would clearly need lidar sensors as a core element to enable automated vehicles with L3 and higher automation. Based on this insight and our experience in vehicle lighting, we decided to expand our community-building expertise to the automotive lidar market.
Since 2018, DVN has organised four annual conferences dedicated specifically to lidar and the increasing attendance along these four years confirmed that lidar attracts more and more interest in the industry. The last conference in November 2021 highlighted the need to set up an automotive lidar community. Many participants expressed their wishes to contribute to a platform for exchanges among lidar manufacturers; equipment integrators; sensors and components makers; test companies, and research institutes.
With that in mind, DVN this past February held a “think tank” with select stakeholders to evaluate the opinion about a DVN lidar community and important topics for such a community. The majority of the 25 participants welcomed the initiative and pledged further support.
So, welcome! Let us take the momentum and go on with our next think tank on 30-31 May in Frankfurt!
Alain Servel
DVN LIDAR ADVISOR
FORMERLY WITH PSA GROUP