Silicon Valley LiDAR Maker Quanergy Angles For A Trump Border Wall Contract

With construction costs that could reach $21 billion, President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border has enticed scores of construction firms and contractors to file proposals to get a piece of that business. Quanergy, a Silicon Valley startup that makes laser LiDAR sensors and a rising star in the world of automated car technology is one of the more curious applicants.

Its interest in the Customs and Border Protection project was reported first by Axios. The Sunnyvale, California-based company registered an “other border wall” proposal, but the long vendors list doesn’t detail Quanergy’s idea. That “other” category is for any wall proposal that doesn’t use concrete and that can be shown to be an effective option, a CBP spokesman explained to Forbes.

Why is a young tech company that raised $90 million last year to mass-produce low-cost, solid-state laser vision devices for 3-D imaging around cars – and which counts Hyundai, Daimler, Renault-Nissan and parts maker Delphi as investors and partners – wading into border security?

A Quanergy spokeswoman didn’t immediately provide a comment on the matter, but a Forbes interview with CEO and founder Louay Eldada in August 2016 provides an answer. He wants the company’s future revenue base to rely as much on security applications as those for the car industry.

“That's just as big as automotive,” Eldada said. “We expect 40 percent of our revenue to be from automotive; 40 percent from security; and 20 percent from everything else.”

LiDAR’s appeal for security systems is simple. Unlike radar, which reflects mainly off metal and very dense objects, lasers reflect off any object, including human bodies. And unlike camera-based security systems that rely on ambient light, Quanergy’s LiDAR sensors work equally well in bright or dark conditions.

Forbes spoke with Eldada while the 2016 presidential campaign was in full swing and Trump was hyping his controversial wall plan. When asked whether Quanergy had discussed its technology with then-candidate Trump, Eldada said: “We’d like to convince him not to pour concrete yet.”

The company’s website points out that its vision tech is ideal for perimeter security and can “classify and track a human body, based on its unique surface profile curvature, to monitor a person’s movement near a virtual fence.”

Along with industrial sites and military bases, “we can do a virtual fence between countries,” Eldada told Forbes.

A Quanergy LiDAR virtual fence along the U.S. border would be “a lot cheaper” than hundreds of miles of concrete and steel and provide imaging that’s vastly superior to video surveillance, he said.

“At 100 meters a human body might fill two image pixels, so very little detail. With LiDAR I can see what you're doing with your fingers at 100 meters.”

Production of automotive LiDAR units starts this year, and Eldada has said his sensors will eventually cost as little as $100 per unit.

Border wall proposals are due March 29. So far, none of Quanergy’s LiDAR rivals, including Velodyne, Ibeo, Continental and Bosch, have joined it in vying for a Trump contract.