While autonomous cars aren’t as expensive as they used to be, they’re not exactly competitive with midrange family sedans. … Dr. Shaoshan Liu says it doesn’t have to be that way. The University of California Irvine graduate … is the founder and CEO of PerceptIn, a robotics startup headquartered in Santa Clara, California that’s been developing an in-house self-driving car platform since 2016. It today unveiled the DragonFly Pod, an autonomous vehicle priced at just $40,000 that’ll go on sale in November.