Seeing is Believing, But Lasers are Better
This legal precedent shines a very bright, and very expensive, light on the technological choices made by car manufacturers. Tesla famously bet the farm on cameras, arguing that since humans drive with two eyes, a car should be able to do the same with eight cameras. It’s a wonderfully simple and cost-effective idea. The problem is, cameras can be fooled by bad weather, strange light, or simple ambiguity.
This is where the competition, and the investment opportunity, gets interesting. Many other companies have been quietly insisting that true safety requires a 'belt and braces' approach, using not just cameras but also technologies like LiDAR. Think of LiDAR as a car’s own personal bat sonar, sending out laser beams to build a perfect 3D map of its surroundings, day or night, rain or shine. It’s more expensive, certainly, but it provides a layer of redundancy that a camera-only system lacks. After this court ruling, which technology do you think a nervous board of directors will be more willing to invest in?
This is why I believe the smart money isn't necessarily on the car badge itself, but on the firms that are quietly building the essential components for a safer future. It’s why a theme like Investing In The Future Of Driver Safety starts to look rather compelling. The focus may shift to the suppliers of the digital seatbelts and airbags, the companies like Mobileye or Luminar who provide the critical eyes and ears for these increasingly complex machines.
