Volvo has announced an investment in Luminar, a Californian startup that is trying to slash the cost of the LiDAR hardware needed to give connected cars eyes. If Luminar is successful, it would provide automakers with ways to gather huge amounts of data from the world around their cars, in a much cheaper package than LiDAR designs of old – which can easily hit five-figures. But what these LiDAR systems can provide is a near real-time view of the physical world, provided the analysis software is accurate enough. From these vehicles, the automakers could build lucrative data brokering platforms, or third-parties like Here and Terbine could use their deals with the automaker to harvest the data from these cars and…