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MicroVision Expands Lidar Portfolio After 2 Acquisitions
Company Details Strategy for Lower-Cost Sensors and Broader ADAS Applications
Key Takeaways:
- MicroVision acquired Luminar lidar assets and Scantinel Photonics to expand its sensor and perception software portfolio.
- The company plans to reduce lidar hardware costs while applying the technology across passenger, commercial, industrial and military uses.
- Executives described the approach as “lidar 2.0,” emphasizing reusable technology and broader market adoption.
LAS VEGAS — Fresh off a pair of acquisitions, MicroVision is expanding its portfolio of lidar sensors and perception software to support advanced driver-assistance systems and autonomous driving across a range of applications, including commercial vehicles.
The industry supplier acquired assets of Luminar Technologies, including its long-range Halo and Iris lidar sensors, along with certain employees and contracts in February for $33 million through a bankruptcy auction.
The prior month, MicroVision completed its acquisition of Germany-based Scantinel Photonics, the developer of ultra-long-range lidar technology targeted for the commercial vehicle market.
The company recapped those developments and outlined its current business strategy during a May 3 press briefing a day prior to the start of ACT Expo 2026.
Greg Scharenbroch, MicroVision’s vice president of global engineering, said previous generations of lidar sensors proved the effectiveness of the technology but were too expensive for the market and achieved only limited commercial success.
Moving forward, MicroVision intends to broaden lidar adoption by reducing hardware costs and diversifying its customer base, an approach that Scharenbroch described as “lidar 2.0.”
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MicroVision’s Iris lidar hardware integrated above the windshield of a Class 8 tractor. (MicroVision)
“We’re going to design to cost,” he said, adding that the company aims to drive down the price of its lidar sensors to $200 in the coming years.
At the same time, MicroVision is applying its expanded suite of lidar sensors to a broad array of use cases for ADAS and autonomy, ranging from passenger cars and commercial trucks to industrial uses such as autonomous forklifts as well as military applications, including lidar to support aerial drone mapping and navigation.
MicroVision’s hardware and software are adaptable across those diverse industries and use cases, which helps lower costs, Scharenbroch said.
“All of this is reusable for commercial vehicles,” he said. “The foundational and fundamental ways and techniques to detect objects, track objects, classify, and then make an intelligent decision about whether a countermeasure is needed or whether you ignore it is really powerful.”
After the press briefing, MicroVision showcased the performance of its perception technology through ride-along demonstrations in a Volkswagen Tiguan outfitted with its long- and near-range lidar sensors.
In addition to modeling the vehicle’s surroundings and tracking the movement of other vehicles and pedestrians, the lidar technology generated maps of the route and later pinpointed the vehicle’s location on that map without using GPS.
Lidar, one of the key technologies that enable automated driving, uses laser pulses to calculate distances and create 3D, digital models a vehicle’s surroundings.
Scantinel’s lidar sensors are based on frequency-modulated continuous wave technology, or FMCW, which complement MicroVision’s existing time-of-flight based sensors.
“The lidar 2.0 era is here and it’s moving quickly,” Scharenbroch said.
