Luminar Debuts Blade, a Design Vision for Our Autonomous Future

Today, at its inaugural Studio Day in New York City, Luminar Technologies, Inc (Nasdaq: LAZR) introduced Blade, its vision for the future of design and integration of autonomous technology across robo-taxis, trucking and consumer cars. Luminar also showcased the first consumer vehicle fully integrated with Luminar’s Iris lidar, which is on-track for series production with Luminar’s OEM partners, starting in late 2022. The company is kicking off a global customer roadshow this week to demonstrate the performance, capabilities, and design integration of Iris.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210615005773/en/

(Graphic: Business Wire)

“Luminar is making the transition from the leader in lidar to the leader in automotive autonomy and safety. Historically autonomous vehicle companies have been exclusively focused on robo-taxis, but our focus has been building the technology foundation for autonomy starting with consumer vehicles and moving across verticals including trucks and robo-taxis,” said Austin Russell, Founder and CEO of Luminar. “Ultimately, it takes more than just great technology to deliver great design, and that’s exactly why we’re proud to show off the Blade concept with Iris that goes beyond the cars of today and visualizes the robo-taxis and trucks of tomorrow.”

Blade: The Autonomous Design Imperative

When it comes to automotive, harmony of form, function and technology is a paramount ideal for consumers and car makers. Blade is a first-ever concept and a powerful design expression of autonomous technology seamlessly integrated into cars, trucks and robo-taxis. It creates a foundation for a new vehicle architecture that automakers can incorporate into vehicle development programs from the onset. The Blade concepts unveiled today for robo-taxi and trucking represent a creative collaboration between Luminar and NewDealDesign, led by acclaimed technology designer Gadi Amit.

“To create the best car design and user experience, autonomous technology must be engineered and designed hand-in-hand from the ground up,” said Jason Wojack, Senior Vice President of Product Development at Luminar who honed his design-meets-engineering sensibility as the chief architect of the Motorola Droid RAZR, which revolutionized the slimness of phones. “Focusing on form and function at not just the lidar-level but the vehicle-level has enabled Luminar to spearhead the design integration of autonomous technology, which is among the fastest design breakthroughs in automotive history.”