Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, February 27

• Ola raises $330 mn at $3.5-bn valuation: Ola, India’s largest taxi aggregator, has raised $330 million in fresh funding, at a valuation of about $3.5 billion, from Japanese investor SoftBank and two other existing ones. The round saw Ola’s valuation dropping 30 per cent from a peak of $5 billion, as global rival Uber significantly stepped up its challenge to the Indian firm.

• Google and Uber Are Fighting Over Lidar Technology. What Is It? Lidar is a radar-like system that uses lasers instead of radio waves to build a 3-D image of the surrounding landscape. Since satellite navigation systems are only accurate to within 16 feet and can be easily flummoxed by high-rise and glass-fronted buildings, autonomous vehicles require an array of other sensors to position themselves precisely and maintain awareness of nearby pedestrians, vehicles and other objects. Lidar comprises a series of rotating, stacked lasers that shoot out at different angles. Each layer is called a channel, and is made up of two laser beams. The signal from each individual channel creates one contour line, and together, those lines generate a 3-D image of the surrounding environment. That means that, the more lasers in each stack, the higher the resolution. Velodyne, for instance, manufactures products with 16, 32 and 64 laser channels. The main hurdle to lidar becoming a widely adopted technology in mass-produced cars is cost. A 64-channel unit from Velodyne can cost more than $50,000, while the lower end 16-channel product sells for $7,999. Since a car might require several lidar units, it quickly makes the cost prohibitive for anything but the most expensive luxury cars. Velodyne and competitors such as Quanergy Systems Inc. are working to reduce the price. That would be accelerated by major orders for mass market cars.