Al Prescott, Tesla’s vice president of legal and acting general counsel, is leaving the company to join lidar startup Luminar as Chief Legal Officer, according to a release.
“Luminar has pioneered safety-critical technology that will power our autonomous future,” Prescott said in a statement to CNBC. “As someone who’s dedicated my career to automotive safety and innovation, I’m looking forward to helping drive Luminar to the next level and fulfill the mission to make transportation safer for everyone.”
Prescott spent nearly four years at Tesla. He has a great deal of experience in the auto industry, having previously worked as an attorney for Uber and Ford.
The jump to a lidar startup is interesting given that Tesla believes that a camera-based system will better for autonomous driving. Chief Executive Elon Musk recently tweeted that “Sensors are a bitstream and cameras have several orders of magnitude more bits/sec than radar (or lidar).”
Luminar is an autonomous vehicle sensor and software company with 50 industry partners, including 7 of the top 10 global automotive OEMs.