Once the price comes down, you can have more sensors to get full circle coverage. A typical configuration is long-range sensors aimed forward, with shorter-range sensors aimed to the sides and rear. Volvo uses an arrangement like that, and the sensors aren't very visible. One approach is to devote the top inch or so of the windshield to sensors, and design the car's headliner accordingly. Mobileye puts their camera between the rear view mirror and windshield.

There are lots of companies working on low-end LIDAR. ASC's technology is known to work well; it just costs too much because it involves custom sensor ICs built with a nonstandard GaInAs process. Quanergy has been issuing a lot of press releases and getting funding, but they seem to have backed off from their < $100 solid-state sensor and are now selling $7500 rotating machinery like Velodyne's spinning top. There are also some companies touting continuous-wave systems, which usually don't work in sunlight or have much range, but are useful for indoor robots.

Fraunhofer is working on a technology for making flash LIDAR sensors using a regular CMOS process.[1] If that works, these things will come down to digital camera prices in volume.

Bloomberg has most acquisition information. I picked this up because I've been following ASC since the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge days, when I went to Santa Barbara to see their technology. It was just on an optical bench then, not ready to deploy, but they had the technology with long-term promise. I dragged a VC down there to talk to them, but he didn't see near-term volume application. He was right; only now is there a market in sight for LIDAR units by the millions. High production volume is probably still 5-10 years away.

[1] https://www.ims.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ims/de/documents/D...