(soft music)

- When we started the company,

we recognized that manufacturing of the product

was gonna to be as hard

if not harder than the underlying architecture.

Taking a sophisticated optoelectronic product

like a lidar system

and deploying it in a high-volume,

high-quality, scaled, low-cost environment.

Luminar made the decision on the front-end

that we needed to own that challenge.

If you simply throw it over the wall to someone else

that doesn't have the experience that we do,

ultimately, it would become a problem.

So, from the very onset,

we were investing in our advanced manufacturing capabilities

alongside the product engineering capabilities

with the ultimate goal

of creating the most manufacturable lidar in the industry.

And that makes us unique in the industry.

We've not seen any other lidar company

really aggressively tackling

owning the hard problem of manufacturability

like Luminar has.

(bright music)

- Here are at Celestica in Monterrey, Mexico,

where the first Iris units are coming off the assembly line.

Luminar is super excited

to have picked Celestica as our manufacturing partner

based on the infrastructure they have here,

based on their expertise in building complex products,

and also the staff and the team members they have

with the right skill levels for building Iris.

So, here we have our SMT line, this is where we build PCBAs.

We have screen printers, solder-paste inspection,

pick-and-place equipment,

reflow oven, end-of-line inspection.

This line builds PCBAs to automotive quality standards.

And that's just one component

that goes into the Iris sensor,

which gets integrated into our clean room

in a different part of the factory.

(bright music)

- So, here, in the Celestica clean room,

we execute all of the process steps

to put together the final Iris sensor.

Those process steps were developed

in our advanced manufacturing facility in Orlando,

and we copied exactly those same process steps

here at Celestica in Monterey.

As part of the setup here at Celestica in Mexico,

we have equipment, we have infrastructure,

but also very importantly, we have a skilled staff.

Part of the process, is training that staff.

(speaking in Spanish)

- Okay.

(speaking in Spanish)

- We integrate a lot of different components in the sensor.

Some of those key components

we get from other partners that we work with.

One of those partners, is Fabrinet.

Fabrinet expertise is an optical, Opto-electronics,

micro-electronics manufacturing.

So, they manufacturer key parts of our sensor,

and those assemblies are then delivered here in Mexico

for integration into the final product and the final Iris.

(soft music)

The way this clean room is set up,

we actually sequentially follow

the number of different process steps

that we've developed in our pilot line,

and then we go up to calibration and test in our ATP room.

(upbeat music)

- So, as part of this qualification

and calibration and validation room,

we have a number of different stations

that we're setting up.

The one of the interesting ones here, is reflectors.

So, with the reflective station,

we actually calibrate our ability to see,

for the sensor to see different gray-scale values.

So, in this case, we have a sensor looking down the line,

we have a number of different targets set up down the line

that the sensor looks at,

and we calibrate reflectors.

On the other side of this room,

we have our long-distance calibration.

(bright music)

That's where we look at targets at 200 meters,

350 meters, different distances.

And same thing,

we calibrate the sensors ability

to look across those different distances.

After all the processes in this room,

all of the calibrations and validations

that we do with the sensor,

the sensor leaves this room off to the pack-out area,

where the sensors are packed out,

and then ready for shipping to our customers.

(upbeat music)

- As we achieve success

in scaling our manufacturing in Mexico,

this gives us the volume and the capability

to start supplying

to a much larger part of the global automotive industry,

and really positions and solidifies Luminar's position

in making autonomy, both safe and ubiquitous.

(soft music)