GM Buys Lidar Startup Strobe to Help It Deliver Self-Driving Cars

General Motors just took another step to prepare itself for the future of driving, acquiring a startup that makes what could prove a key technology to unlock self-driving cars for use in fleets. Cruise, GM's self-driving car startup, will now source its lidar laser sensors from Strobe, a Pasadena-based startup that the Detroit automaker just acquired. GM did not disclose the terms of the deal, which it announced Monday morning, but it's a potentially crucial move in its plan to deploy large fleets of robocars, given the importance of the sensor, and the difficulty of making it not just robust and reliable, but cost effective. "Our mission is to remove the driver from the vehicle and ultimately deploy these vehicles at massive scale," says Cruise founder and CEO Kyle Vogt. "Lidar sensors have been one of the bottlenecks."