Published on 7 Jan 2023 on MarketWatch
Why Luminar’s CEO is running over fake kids in a Tesla at CES
LAS VEGAS — Luminar Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Austin Russell climbed into the back seat of a Tesla Thursday morning and told the driver to floor it toward a child.
The child was not real, but the eventual collision was. The Tesla Inc. electric vehicle, equipped with an automatic emergency-braking system, failed to stop in time, striking the child-size dummy exactly as Luminar’s and his engineers had expected. Alongside the Tesla, a vehicle equipped with Luminar’s lidar (light detection and ranging) technology stopped well short of the dummy while traveling at the same rate of speed, roughly 40 miles an hour.