Velodyne’s VLS-128 offers more resolution, smaller package, lower price
spar3d.com
spar3d.com
Maybe I'm just missing it for this one in particular, but I really dislike it when companies hide the price, and don't offer an immediate way to purchase. I see one of them has a price listed, and the other ones don't.
Also I don't think the new VLS-128 is shipping to most normal people yet - it's not on their website and the article mentions that it's a preview. Maybe the title is a bit misleading.
Sorry for my sarcasm, I do understand that outside of consumer goods and commodities, price determination is basically unsolved. But I stand to my point: any possible solution that undermines the grandeur of sales departments will be met with hostility.
[0] http://velodynelidar.com/docs/news/Velodyne%20LiDAR%20Announ...
They have a relationship with all the vendors, and can help figure out which sensor and vendor to use.
If you really really want a Velodyne unit, you might be able to get a loaner of the cheaper ones by calling them and talking to somebody, not so sure about the VLP-64 or new 128 as those go for north of $50-70k.
The cheapest lidar Velodyne makes goes for close to $10k, so you're still probably not going to be able click to buy.
The hobbyists were also a drain on support time, disproportionate to other customers.
Once the market settled, and the devices were closer to commodity prices, and our knowledge base was in better shape, we opened back up to them.
Then don't have a return policy.
> The hobbyists were also a drain on support time
Make them pay for support at a premium.
You probably haven't encountered chargebacks as a merchant. "All sales final" only works for cash businesses.
"Not as described" covers a lot of ground for hobbyists struggling to deal with a complex electronics product.
Maybe you could buy them through a reseller or integrator. I work for a startup, we've ordered multiple of their devices, their lead time is 6-8 months for the older models. I think these new models are probably only for the big players in the first year or two who have orders in the millions of dollars scale.
This is pretty common for premium HW manufacturers. I've worked for a camera company who would not take orders that were not at least on the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Both logistics and sales network is very expensive.
You don't if you can't buy 2000+ per year.
Withholding pricing and not making yourself available to industrial retailers and wholesalers (RS, CPC, etc), you shut the door to a market that Alibaba is more than happy to service.
Not to mention that there are plenty of engineers outside the automotive industry that would consider integrating these and need samples. Unit prices are essential to know whether or not they're worth even considering.
There have been comments about the price-to-support which is [understandably] higher in the direct sales "prosumer" market. Just put the price up on singles to cover that cost. It's not rocket science.
I'm guessing the steep price was mostly caused by the need to recoup R&D from a small volume of sales, rather than the cost of actually manufacturing the sensors.
I think that definitely depends on the company you talk to. Tesla right now says 0. Other companies have been seen with 1-5.
Nowhere in the official press release [0] did it say it's solid state.
Moreover, a recent Verge article [1] says that Velodyne is shifting attention away from solid state lidar to focus on producing spinning ones.
Note that Velodyne called its spinning lidars "hybrid solid state" which is rather misleading.
[0] http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171107005794/en/Velo...
[1] "Employees told The Verge that resources had been redirected to the production of high-end rotating LIDAR, and that the press release touting the solid state unit had been premature." https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/18/16491052/velodyne-lidar-...