Tesla CEO Elon Musk has he said that lidar sensors are a “crutch” for autonomous vehicles. But his company has bought so much of Luminar that Tesla is now the lidar-maker’s top customer.
Tesla accounted for “more than 10%” of Luminar’s revenue in the first quarter of 2024, or just over $2 million, the lidar-maker revealed Tuesday in its first-quarter earnings report.
Luminar said its revenue fell 5% from the fourth quarter of 2023, which it attributed mainly to “lower sales of sensors to non-automotive customers.” This decline was “offset by sensor sales to Tesla, which was our largest lidar customer in Q1.” Luminar also saw a 45% increase in revenue year over year.
The company had a net loss of $125.7 million in the first quarter, an improvement from the $146.7 million in losses it reported in the same period last year. Luminar said its net loss included accelerated depreciation for equipment expected to be abandoned due to
in certain outsourcing actions that started in autumn 2023.
Luminar released its results just days after announcing plans to cut its workforce by 20% in a restructuring that will see it outsource much of its lidar sensor production in a bid to scale the business.
Tesla has been spotted using lidar and other sensors on some of its test vehicles and it has been According to reports was in partnership with Luminar as early as 2021. Details of the deal have never been made public. Luminar included Tesla in its earnings report because of its practice of naming customers that account for 10% or more of revenue under historical SEC guidelines, according to the company. The new revelation comes just months before Tesla is expected to unveil a robotaxi on August 8.
Musk has long argued that relying on lidar to help self-driving cars navigate the world is a “fool’s errand.” He said at Tesla’s 2019 Autonomy Day event that “anyone who relies on lidar is doomed!”
“[They are] expensive sensors that are unnecessary,” he said at the time. “It’s like having a bunch of expensive appendages. Like, one worm is bad, now you have a bunch of them, it’s ridiculous, you’ll see.”
Of course, Musk also said at that 2019 event that Tesla will launch a fleet of robotaxi in just a year. This never happened. Instead, Musk is still buying crutches.
