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GM buys LIDAR company for self-driving car program to take Tesla head-on
General Motors issued a press release on Monday announcing that it will acquire Strobe, a California-based technology startup that makes affordable chip-scale LIDAR technology for self-driving cars. An 11-person team from Strobe will be joining GM’s Cruise Automation unit as part of the acquisition.
With more affordable and higher accuracy LIDAR sensors coming to market, automakers that are looking to transition to all-electric fleets are assessing the strategic value with investing into self-driving technology. GM’s purchase of Strobe can be seen as just that. Acquiring a small and nimble startup that has a core focus on developing the key sensor used in autonomous vehicles allows the Detroit-based auto giant to speed its path to market with a self-driving car.
Kyle Vogt, GM’s Cruise Automation Founder and CEO, said through a press release, “Strobe’s LIDAR technology will significantly improve the cost and capabilities of our vehicles so that we can more quickly accomplish our mission to deploy driverless vehicles at scale.”
While GM continues to charge forward with implementing LIDAR technology into its self-driving program, the company also complements its technology with radar sensors to create a fault-tolerant sensing suite. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has famously touted LIDAR as ‘unnecessary’ in the context of an autonomous car due to its high cost. Instead, Tesla has opted to use a combination of cameras, radars and ultrasonic sensors to form the foundation for its Autopilot system. But as pricing for LIDAR technology continues to drop, could we see a change of core design in future versions of Autopilot?
Good thing about radar is that, unlike lidar (which is visible wavelength), it can see through rain, snow, fog and dust
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2016
Vogt asserts that radar can operate under more challenging weather conditions, however it lacks the precision needed when making critical maneuvers at speed. “Strobe’s LIDAR sensors provide both accurate distance and velocity information, which can be checked against similar information from a RADAR sensor for redundancy. RADARs typically also provide distance and velocity information and operate under more challenging weather conditions, but they lack the angular resolution needed to make certain critical maneuvers at speed. When used together, cameras, LIDARs, and RADARs can complement each other to create a robust and fault-tolerant sensing suite that operates in a wide range of environmental and lighting conditions.” said Vogt in a blog post on Medium.
LIDAR on the other hand uses laser or concentrated light to map a high resolution 3D view of a the world, which arguably provides a higher precision view of a self-driving car’s surroundings. GM’s Director of autonomous vehicle integration has recently spoken up against Musk’s narrative that Tesla Autopilot will be fully autonomous and capable of piloting a car from California to New York on its own by the end of the year.
“The level of technology and knowing what it takes to do the mission, to say you can be a full level five with just cameras and radars is not physically possible,” said Miller about Tesla’s Autopilot suite. “Could you do it with what’s in a current Tesla Model S? I don’t think so.”
As the race to produce a fully autonomous car continues to heat up between Tesla, GM, Uber, and Google, and hardware prices decline, it’s only a matter of time before a tried and true combination of hardware will become the de-facto self-driving hardware suite. What will it be?
Tesla has expanded its branded ‘For Business’ Supercharger program that it launched last year, as yet another company is using the platform to attract EV owners to its business and utilize a unique advertising opportunity.
Francis Energy of Oklahoma is launching four Superchargers in Norman, where the University of Oklahoma is located. The Superchargers, which are fitted with branding for Francis Energy, will officially open tomorrow.
It will not be the final Supercharger location that Francis Energy plans to open, the company confirmed to EVWire.
Back in early September, Tesla launched the new “Supercharger for Business” program in an effort to give businesses the ability to offer EV charging at custom rates. It would give their businesses visibility and would also cater to employees or customers.
“Purchase and install Superchargers at your business,” Tesla wrote on a page on its website for the new program. “Superchargers are compatible with all electric vehicles, bringing EV drivers to your business by offering convenient, reliable charging.”
The first site opened in Land O’ Lakes, Florida, which is Northeast of Tampa, as a company called Suncoast launched the Superchargers for local EV owners.
Tesla launches its new branded Supercharger for Business with first active station
The program also does a great job at expanding infrastructure for EV owners, which is something that needs to be done to encourage more people to purchase Teslas and other electric cars.
Francis Energy operates at least 14 EV charging locations in Oklahoma, spanning from Durant to Oklahoma City and nearly everywhere in between. Filings from the company, listed by Supercharge.info, show the company’s plans to convert some of them to Tesla Superchargers, potentially utilizing the new Supercharger for Business program to advertise.
Moving forward, more companies will likely utilize Tesla’s Supercharger for Business program as it presents major advantages in a variety of ways, especially with advertising and creating a place for EV drivers to gain range in their cars.
Tesla Cybercab is perhaps the most highly-anticipated project that the company plans to roll out this year, and as it is undergoing its testing phase in pre-production currently, there are some things to work through with it.
Over the weekend, an image of the Cybercab being loaded onto a tow truck started circulating on the internet, and people began to speculate as to what the issue could be.
Hmmmmmm… https://t.co/L5hWcOXQkb pic.twitter.com/OJBDyHNTMj
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) January 11, 2026
The Cybercab can clearly be seen with a Police Officer and perhaps the tow truck driver by its side, being loaded onto, or even potentially unloaded from, the truck.
However, it seems unlikely it was being offloaded, as its operation would get it to this point for testing to begin with.
It appears, at first glance, that it needs assistance getting back to wherever it came from; likely Gigafactory Texas or potentially a Bay Area facility.
The Cybercab was also spotted in Buffalo, New York, last week, potentially undergoing cold-weather testing, but it doesn’t appear that’s where this incident took place.
It is important to remember that the Cybercab is currently undergoing some rigorous testing scenarios, which include range tests and routine public road operation. These things help Tesla assess any potential issue the vehicle could run into after it starts routine production and heads to customers, or for the Robotaxi platform operation.
This is not a one-off issue, either. Tesla had some instances with the Semi where it was seen broken down on the side of a highway three years ago. The all-electric Semi has gone on to be successful in its early pilot program, as companies like Frito-Lay and PepsiCo. have had very positive remarks.
The Cybercab’s future is bright, and it is important to note that no vehicle model has ever gone its full life without a breakdown. It happens, it’s a car.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that there has been no official word on what happened with this particular Cybercab unit, but it is crucial to remember that this is the pre-production testing phase, and these things are more constructive than anything.
Tesla analyst Andrew Percoco of Morgan Stanley teased the company’s dominance in its self-driving initiative, stating that its lead over competitors is “not even close.”
Percoco recently overtook coverage of Tesla stock from Adam Jonas, who had covered the company at Morgan Stanley for years. Percoco is handling Tesla now that Jonas is covering embodied AI stocks and no longer automotive.
His first move after grabbing coverage was to adjust the price target from $410 to $425, as well as the rating from ‘Overweight’ to ‘Equal Weight.’
Percoco’s new note regarding Tesla highlights the company’s extensive lead in self-driving and autonomy projects, something that it has plenty of competition in, but has established its prowess over the past few years.
He writes:
“It’s not even close. Tesla continues to lead in autonomous driving, even as Nvidia rolls out new technology aimed at helping other automakers build driverless systems.”
Percoco’s main point regarding Tesla’s advantage is the company’s ability to collect large amounts of training data through its massive fleet, as millions of cars are driving throughout the world and gathering millions of miles of vehicle behavior on the road.
This is the main point that Percoco makes regarding Tesla’s lead in the entire autonomy sector: data is King, and Tesla has the most of it.
One big story that has hit the news over the past week is that of NVIDIA and its own self-driving suite, called Alpamayo. NVIDIA launched this open-source AI program last week, but it differs from Tesla’s in a significant fashion, especially from a hardware perspective, as it plans to use a combination of LiDAR, Radar, and Vision (Cameras) to operate.
Percoco said that NVIDIA’s announcement does not impact Morgan Stanley’s long-term opinions on Tesla and its strength or prowess in self-driving.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang commends Tesla’s Elon Musk for early belief
And, for what it’s worth, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang even said some remarkable things about Tesla following the launch of Alpamayo:
“I think the Tesla stack is the most advanced autonomous vehicle stack in the world. I’m fairly certain they were already using end-to-end AI. Whether their AI did reasoning or not is somewhat secondary to that first part.”
Percoco reiterated both the $425 price target and the ‘Equal Weight’ rating on Tesla shares.
Tesla expands its branded ‘For Business’ Superchargers
Tesla Cybercab ‘breakdown’ image likely is not what it seems
