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How AI is paving the way for autonomous cars

Behrooz Rezvani, Neural Propulsion Systems, joined Yahoo Finance to discuss how AI is paving the way for Autonomous Vehicles.

Video transcript

- Taking a look at the technology that enables autonomous driving. Today neural propulsion systems has launched NPS 500. It's what they say is the safest and most reliable sensing platform for autonomous vehicles. We want to talk more about this with Behrooz Rezvani. He is NPS's founder and CEO. And Behrooz it's great to have you on the program. Thank you so much for joining us. Congratulations on the rollout of this new product today. Your company says that it will enable the industry to reach zero-accidents vision. How does this differ from what's already available in some of the other products that are out on the market right now?

BEHROOZ REZVANI: Right, like most companies today, they focused on level two autonomy Which, in those paradigm, people expect the driver to pick up-- to jump and take over the driving. In the level four, level five, which you don't expect the driver to participate, we need-- in that scenario we need to be a lot more safer, have more time for the autonomous system to react. And in those kind of models, we extend the range from-- for example, 250 meter sensor range to 500 meters. We were able to increase the adaptivity to see a lot more. And also be able to see around corners, which is not done before.

- So how will this change for those of us who are just regular drivers? If we don't want to go autonomous, without naming the automakers who might start implementing this, it could go in both kinds of systems. And I've got to imagine they're eager to get their hands on this.

BEHROOZ REZVANI: Right, I think, as you pointed out, there is a need for level four, level five. We've seen people are going to roll with taxis first and autonomous trucks. And we'll see shuttles that are going to take over a lot of the transportation. So the next gen would be the OEMs manufacture tier one that they would take over to want to bring the car into the market with full autonomy. Right now there is no full autonomy. What we see is really level two, which the driver is still responsible.

- When we look five years, three to five years down the road, how big of an addressable market do you think you're looking at for this?

BEHROOZ REZVANI: On the sensor fusion-- which includes radar, lidar, cameras-- you're development, for example, predicted $25 billion market in '25. So it's pretty big. We expect that to grow to probably $50 to $60 billion by 2030.

- Are there implications outside of just traditional vehicles? I mean, this kind of technology has got to be greater than just what we're discussing, the uses.

BEHROOZ REZVANI: I think, as you know, it impacts a lot of stuff. For example, insurance paradigm, delivery in 24/7 of goods, especially post-pandemic.

BEHROOZ REZVANI: So I think the impact would be significant. I think we're going to see a change of behavior that we had not anticipated five years ago.

- I need to bring up the fact that Tesla doesn't use this technology. And I think that's very interesting, because I think when a lot of people think of who is on the forefront of this, who's on the forefront of autonomous vehicles, a lot of people associate that with Tesla. Why do you think this is the case?

BEHROOZ REZVANI: Well, they have Elon Musk. I mean, he is a brilliant marketer and engineer. And so I believe he's been really driving and pushing the envelope for this technology to come to fruition. Right now test models level two plus-- still the driver is responsible to take over at any time. And so I think from that perspective he has fired the pace. But they're still not there obviously.

- This gets to my question, though, about other uses. And when you live in a big city: Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, just walking is pretty dangerous. Would there ever be a pocket version of this technology that would alert people not driving about the bicyclist who's barreling down and about to run the light around the corner? That's what I'm getting at.

BEHROOZ REZVANI: That's actually possible. In a different format it would be like a network of cellular technology that could try to-- very accurately using GPS or GNSS-- to indicate where everyone is. So it is possible. And I think it could come into fruition.

- There is Rezvani. Great to have you on the show. Congratulations on this new product that you're rolling out today, NPS's CEO and founder.