[hwillis]

I take all solid state lidar with a giant grain of salt. Research at universities is still very primitive (beamwidth[1] of 30-40 degrees) and nobody has demonstrated a solid prototype. Quanergy in particular looks very fuzzy. These companies all kind of imply they are using some kind of patch antenna/diode source, which is much more primitive than the nanostructured antennas in academic research. At the same time academic research is 15-20 years away from forming a reasonably collimated laser.

The allure of solid state lidar is intense though. Not needing avalanche diodes gives me a bubbly sensation around my prostate. There is probably no such thing as cheap lidar without solid state.

[1] no laser forms a perfectly straight line, but 30 degrees is more like a floodlight. It makes it very difficult to take measurements by applying a complex filter over everything. Basically all of the data is massively blurred when you get it and has to be deconvolved, which is never perfect. It's very hard to turn a blurry image into a sharp one.