Self-driving sensor startup Innoviz's shares rise on public debut

<p style="text-align: center;"><img title="1617779876131548.jpg" alt="6.jpg" src="/ueditor/php/upload/image/20210407/1617779876131548.jpg"/></p><p>The Tel Aviv, Israel-based firm is developing a lidar sensor, which helps&nbsp;self-driving vehicles&nbsp;gain a three-dimensional view of the road. The company has a partnership with BMW to sell the automaker its first generation of sensors, which cost around $1,000.&nbsp;Innoviz&nbsp;is working on a second generation sensor which it hopes to sell for less than $500.<br/><br/>Shares rose 6.7% to $10.40 near the end of the company&#39;s first day trading on the NASDAQ.<br/><br/>Innoviz became public on Tuesday after completing a merger with publicly listed blank-check firm Collective Growth Corporation Corp that raised $371 million. Four other lidar firms - Velodyne Lidar Inc, Luminar Technologies Inc, Aeva Technologies Inc and Ouster Inc - have all become public in recent months. Rival AEye Inc also plans to become public via a merger with CF Acquisition III Corp.<br/><br/>&quot;What we need to now is a lot of engineering to compress everything&quot; in the Innoviz sensor into a smaller package for automakers, Chief Executive Omer Keilaf told Reuters on Tuesday.<br/><br/>Lidar sends out laser beams and detects their reflection off faraway objects to determine how far away they are, similar to how radar systems use radio or microwave frequencies.</p>