We actually beat many of them along the way in terms of, what we laid out from the beginning and overall, have set up as a business to put us on a great trajectory there. So like, obviously, overall from a performance standpoint, that’s been fantastic. We all know the frustrations with respect to the capital markets on that and reflecting that execution and success. But when it comes to the actual core business performance there, we have the relevant KPIs, that for each respective leader and OKRs that we have and that cascades down throughout the entire company that rolls up. And like I said, we largely met those along the way. So I think nevertheless, again, I have a saying internally, it’s going to never stop at good enough. And that’s something where we always keep pushing the bar and keep pushing the boundary of what’s possible and what’s achievable in this company.
And we’ll continue to do so with everything that we got into the first quarter.
Aileen Smith: All right. And our next question from one of our investors. There’s been some rumors and some talk about some management turnover within the company, including Taner Ozcelik and Jason Eichenholz. Can you provide some color or comment?
Tom Fennimore: Yes. The Jason Eichenholz, that’s fake news. Jason, he’s been a key part of Luminar as our Co-Founder since the beginning. He has been– is and in my mind always will be a critical part of our team. Jason, I don’t know where that rumor came from. He’s at Luminar. He’s chairing the crowd.
Austin Russell: I think it’s probably because people like this, they wear different hats in the business along the way in terms of the business cycle and journey and all this. So we recently appointed him as the Chairman of the Luminar. So he’s basically overseeing that side of it. When it comes to the operational aspects of the business, you guys may be aware, we recently hired Kevin Hinge, who’s been taking charge of the respective operations and scaling of some of the core aspects of the business. And he’s been already off to the races off of that too for an incredible start. So that’s been fantastic. We actually have as well, I think at the same time that we announced him, we also announced Emily who’s here, who’s came from leading our marketing and was doing so and leading the respective marketing at SpaceX before.
But as it relates to Tanner, yes, he’s no longer with the company. So that’s where we’re thankful to have Kevin to be able to come on and take the reins in some of those responsibilities.
Aileen Smith: Our next question we are going to take from Kevin Cassidy at Rosenblatt.
Kevin Cassidy: Okay, thanks. Maybe if you could remind us or maybe tell us what the strategy is for expanding your footprint in other models that your current customers say at Volvo and Mercedes and Nissan, how do you get into more models and what would be the timeline for that?
Tom Fennimore: Kevin, we’ve already started to do it at Volvo. We did it at Mercedes. We’ve done it at Polestar. We initially had the 3 and then we went to the 5 earlier this year. And so as you get in with that initial win with the customer and continue to execute, it kind of happens naturally. Now, look, they’re always going to make sure that you’re being honest and competitive on pricing. And so they’ll run RFQs to kind of test the market and keep you honest. But as you execute, as you deliver, as you build the relationship, as they kind of design their software and autonomous systems around you, you execute, you have a real good shot at the next business. That business comes as they renew certain vehicle lines or renew the platforms.
And so the timing of that is more driven by kind of their product launch cycle. But I think you’re going to see us, we’ve done it already and I think you’re going to continue to see us expand our business with our existing customers. And I think the timeline on that’s going to vary depending upon the customer and what their internal timelines are for each of their different products.
Austin Russell: Like the perfect example of that is like Mercedes, right? Where we start off with 1 vehicle line and 1 vehicle model, like an S-Class. Okay, this is a high-end thing. It’s real volume but it’s only so much. And you see an expansion by like 20x in terms of the respective volume and across the vehicle models and lineup and everything as they continue to see our successful technology execution and the details around that to be able to make that decision 6 months ago to be able to really expand it across there. And once you’re in, you’re in to be able to make that happen. Now, obviously, these vehicles do ultimately have some kind of respective lifetime, as Tom pointed out but these are like 5 to 10-year cycles on the platforms there. So that’s really why also we have such confidence around the respective order book and contracts that we can scale the company with.
Kevin Cassidy: Okay, great. Yes, that was my next question was around the competition. And even if they change their domain controller, you’re in with all the different domain controllers, so it wouldn’t matter much to you.
Tom Fennimore: Yes. Look, we try to plant as many seeds in the market as we can, whether it’s directly with the automakers or some of the large tech system companies, whether that’s NVIDIA, Mobileye, what have you. And we think that that’s going to maximize the ad vats and ultimately the wins we get in the industry.
Aileen Smith: I think with that, we are through most of our research analyst questions. Before we get to our final question from the investor community, we do want to make a note that we received many great questions through all of our platforms this quarter. So considering we could not get to all of them within the 60 minutes that we had, we will look to provide answers and commentary through other mediums in the future. But with that, our most popular question coming through the same platform, that was pretty repetitive. The stock has been moving in one direction for much of the last 2 years. While it’s not unusual for a startup, there still seems to be little information on what Luminar is doing, development, partnerships or other news. What is management’s strategy to raise confidence in the future?
Austin Russell: No, I think it’s a great question around all of this and the broader capital markets. This, of course, what’s in our control and what we’ve really been focused on is execution to the key milestones and what we laid out from those past couple of years. We’ve largely executed to. We are going to continue to be able to execute along the way with this. When it comes to sharing updates, news, everything, we’re always welcome to feedback in terms of like frequency level and what we can do in terms of further insight into the business. These are also — as we kind of think about some of these things, this is like one of the drivers, for example, why, Swiss Re started to help commission this independent study of the efficacy of the technology in terms of, how you quantify the respective safety benefits associated with this versus, say the like, just how much substantially better is it than the existing assisted driving systems?
How much better is it? How do you sort of force the hands of automakers as well to be able to ensure that their cars aren’t unnecessarily taking lives out there? So I think this is where it’s really important to be able to, obviously, continue to share different aspects of it. Well, again, we’re always open to feedback. When it comes to the overall business and the key thing to be able to have confidence in is that, we have this long firm view and outlook that I think is as strong as ever. In terms of this, nothing, for example, even just — and I think Tom noted this in the shareholder letter, there’s obviously been an insane amount of volatility. I think it was like a 50% difference in the like the market trading of where it was this quarter versus literally what it was 3 months ago.
