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Velodyne is a startup that specializes in Light Detection and Ranging tech, or LIDAR for short— it’s a good position to be in, especially since they’ll be the ones supplying our autonomous vehicle overlords in the future.

V elodyne是一家专门从事创业的初创公司 在李 GHT d etection 钕 [R anging高科技，或LIDAR为短期它是在一个很好的位置，特别是因为他们将鸡舍的未来向我们的自主汽车霸主。

They’re going public via a special-purpose acquisition company — condensable to the oh-so-sexy acronym SPAC — called Graf Industrial Corp. And we can expect many hardware/autonomous vehicles startups going down this path in the future.

他们将通过一家特殊用途的收购公司公开上市，该公司可以缩写为SPAC ，这是一个非常性感的缩写，称为Graf IndustrialCorp。我们可以预期，将来会有许多硬件/自动驾驶汽车初创公司走这条路。

Okay, I just threw an Irish stew of information at your brain. I apologize. I’ll make it up to you by explaining LIDAR, SPACs, and why you should care about them at all.

好的，我只是把爱尔兰的信息炖给了您。 我道歉。 我将通过解释激光雷达，SPAC和为什么要完全关心它们来弥补您的不足。

LIDAR是为自动驾驶汽车提供动力的一项核心技术。 (LIDAR is a core technology that powers self-driving cars.)

It’s also what I’m naming my new cover band where we do 90’s themed remixes of Lionel Richie songs.

这也是我要为新的翻唱乐队命名的地方，我们在那里录制90主题的Lionel Richie歌曲的混音。

LIDAR systems are usually (not always) mounted on top of self-driving cars/other autonomous vehicles (AVs):

LIDAR系统通常(并非总是)安装在自动驾驶汽车/其他自动驾驶汽车(AV)的顶部：

Besides being a very fashionable top hat for you car, LIDAR systems are core to helping an AV “see”.

激光雷达系统不仅是您汽车上的时髦时髦礼帽，而且是帮助影音“看到”的核心。

A LIDAR system is like a group of TIE fighters strapped to your car roof — they’re constantly shooting out lasers. Most used to spin, but modern ones are smaller and will still provide a 360° view.

激光雷达系统就像一群绑在车顶上的TIE战斗机一样-他们不断发射激光。 大多数用于旋转，但现代的旋转较小，并且仍可提供360°的视角。

Thousands of laser pulses are sent out every second. Every SECOND. When they hit an object and bounce back to the LIDAR, the reflection points are recorded to build a 3D point cloud. This can be done because we know how fast light is and how far it travels.

每秒发出数千个激光脉冲。 每一秒。 当它们撞击物体并反弹回激光雷达时，将记录反射点以构建3D点云。 可以这样做是因为我们知道光的速度和传播的距离。

That cloud can then be turned into a 3D representation of the car’s surroundings. Here’s a look at how Uber tackles the problem:

然后可以将该云转换为汽车周围环境的3D表示。 看看Uber如何解决这个问题：

Velodyne is a huge player in the LIDAR market. They’re one of the OGs in the space and they’ve kept up with industry innovations via sexy, smaller lidars.

Velodyne是激光雷达市场的重要参与者。 它们是太空中的OG之一，并且通过性感的小型激光雷达跟上了行业创新。

As you can see, LIDAR is pretty great at telling the car how far away things are, but not really great at telling the car what they are. Because of this, most current AV approaches combine LIDAR data with camera + visual recognition data.

正如您所看到的，LIDAR非常擅长告诉汽车事物有多远，但是并不擅长告诉汽车它们是什么 。 因此，大多数当前的AV方法将LIDAR数据与相机+视觉识别数据结合在一起。

SPAC (SPACs)

Special-purpose acquisition companies. Are these a newfangled contraption Wall Street is using to bamboozle you? Maybe…

专用收购公司。 这些是华尔街用来骗你的新奇事物吗？ 也许…

SPACs are companies without any real commercial operations. Their only purpose is to acquire a private company after raising capital through an initial public offering (IPO).

SPAC是没有任何实际商业运作的公司。 他们的唯一目的是在通过首次公开募股(IPO)筹集资金后收购一家私营公司。

There I go again, throwing that Irish stew into your brainhole — let’s break this down.

我再次去那里，把爱尔兰炖菜扔到您的脑袋里-让我们分解一下。

At the end of the day, a corporation is just a few words on paper. Armed with this info, investors and industry experts will sometimes form a SPAC with the goal of buying a private company in that industry down the road.

归根结底， 一家公司只是纸上谈兵。 有了这些信息，投资者和行业专家有时会组成SPAC，以期在该行业中收购该行业的私人公司 。

It’s like being a really rich kid in school with no real plans for studying, just figuring out who you should pay to do your homework.

这就像是一个真正有钱的孩子，没有真正的学习计划，只是弄清楚应该为谁做家庭作业而付出的代价。

SPACs raise money (aka capital) to help finance these acquisition/mergers. They do this by offering an IPO, or going public. This is when shares in a privately held corporation are now available for purchase by public investors (you and me!)

SPAC筹集资金(又名资本)以帮助资助这些收购/合并。 他们通过发行IPO或公开上市来实现这一目标。 这是当私人投资者现在可以由公共投资者(您和我！)购买股票的时候。

Then the SPAC has about 2 years to buy/merge with the company it wants. When that deal closes, the private firm/startup basically replaces the SPAC on the stock market. It’s like an empty container full of cash, or a “blank-check company”.

然后，SPAC大约需要2年的时间与所需公司进行购买/合并 。 当那笔交易完成时，私人公司/初创公司基本上将替换股票市场上的SPAC。 这就像一个装满现金的空容器或“空白支票公司”。

Graf Industrial Corp. (GRAF: NYSE) is the SPAC that Velodyne is doing its reverse merger with — they raised over $200 million after going public in 2018.

Velodyne正在与其进行反向合并的公司是Graf Industrial Corp. (GRAF：NYSE)-他们在2018年上市后筹集了超过2亿美元。

After this upcoming merger, GRAF will be baptized in the waters of techno-capitalism and emerge renamed as “VLDR”.

在即将进行的合并之后，GRAF将在技术资本主义的水域中受洗，并更名为“ VLDR”。

为什么这么重要？ (Why does this matter?)

For one, researchers are predicting that the advancement of autonomous vehicles will eventually force us to merge consciousness with them, resulting in organometallic and sapient AVs. Early predictions of this future were visualized by hit Pixar movie, Cars (2006).

首先，研究人员预测自动驾驶汽车的发展最终将迫使我们将意识与它们融合，从而产生有机金属和智能型AV。 皮克斯电影《 汽车总动员》( Cars，2006)使人们对这种未来的早期预测形象化。

Okay, maybe that’s not entirely true.

好吧，也许这并不完全正确。

But the self-driving car market is valued at nearly $25 billion, and set to grow at around 18% until 2025. They have massive potential to reduce car accidents and deaths, maybe even help fight climate change.

但自动驾驶汽车市场的价值接近250亿美元 ， 到2025年将增长约18％ 。 它们具有减少交通事故和死亡的巨大潜力，甚至可以帮助应对气候变化。

LIDAR may not be the future, though. Some people (like a guy named, Elon Musk — maybe you’ve heard of him?) call LIDAR a crutch, and that we should develop visual recognition technology that renders it obsolete.

不过，激光雷达可能不是未来。 有些人(例如一个叫Elon Musk的人-也许您听说过他？)称LIDAR为拐杖，我们应该开发使其过时的视觉识别技术 。

To his credit, some research has been pointing in this direction.

值得称赞的是，一些研究已经朝着这个方向发展。

On the business side, startup founders all want to eventually “exit”, which means:

在业务方面，初创公司的创始人都希望最终“退出”，这意味着：

1. Selling your company to a bigger one to liquidate your equity (i.e. turn it into cash)…将您的公司出售给更大的公司以清算您的权益(即将其转化为现金)…
2. …or doing an IPO. That means you can sell your shares and buy a lambo, if you’d like.…或进行首次公开​​募股。 这意味着您可以根据需要出售股票并购买兰博。

SPACs have become an increasingly popular path for startups to do the latter.

对于初创企业而言 ，SPAC已成为越来越受欢迎的途径 。

Doing an IPO with a big investment bank like Goldman Sachs is complex, with more negotiations and stakeholders than a Thanksgiving dinner.

与像高盛这样的大型投资银行进行IPO的过程很复杂，与感恩节晚餐相比，谈判和利益相关者更多。

SPAC negotiations are simpler, and they provide some certainty for capital, which is critical for capital-intensive ops like Velodyne or Nikola, the EV company that also went public with a SPAC.

SPAC谈判较为简单，并且可以为资本提供一定的确定性，这对于像Velodyne或Nikola这类资本密集型运营商也至关重要 ，EV公司也已在SPAC上市。

Expect to see more companies (especially automobile startups) leaning towards this path vs. a traditional IPO. I, for one, am still looking for investment into my Lionel Richie cover band.

期望看到更多的公司(尤其是汽车初创公司)相对于传统的IPO倾向于这种方式。 我一方面仍在寻找对我的Lionel Richie翻唱乐队的投资。

Helping you digest concepts in business + tech news.

(I think I’m supposed to say full disclosure, I have no positions in any of the companies I talked about here).

(我想我应该说是全面披露，我在这里谈论的任何公司中都没有职位)。

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