Daimler Truck North America (DTNA) is providing additional non-recurring funding to support Aeva’s development, as the latter advances to series production of its 4D lidar technology. In response to growing demand, Aeva says it plans to increase its production capacity to up to 200,000 lidar units annually, to support multiple customers, including Daimler Truck, in the production of advanced sensing in autonomous vehicle applications.
This expanded partnership builds on the selection of Aeva as the production lidar supplier for Torc Robotics, an independent subsidiary of Daimler Truck AG, and its SAE Level 4 autonomous Freightliner Cascadia trucks. Marking a major milestone, the first autonomous-ready Cascadia trucks equipped with Aeva’s 4D lidar sensors are now operating on public roads in Texas.
“We are proud to deepen our relationship with Daimler Truck North America and support their leadership in bringing safe autonomous trucks to market,” said Soroush Salehian, co-founder and CEO at Aeva. “This investment enables us to accelerate delivering high-performance sensing capabilities critical for autonomous freight at commercial scale, as we increase the production capacity of our 4D lidar in North America.”
“Our collaboration with Aeva continues to strengthen as we move closer to series production, and we are happy to expand our partnership and continue supporting Aeva as they ramp up toward their start of production,” said Joanna Buttler, general manager of product strategy and market development at Daimler Truck North America. “The performance, reliability and scalability of Aeva’s 4D lidar technology will make it a key component of our strategy to deploy safe, reliable and efficient autonomous trucks.”
While traditional lidar sensors use high-power laser pulses to sense distances to objects, Aeva says its frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) 4D lidar technology uses a low-power continuous laser beam to simultaneously measure range and velocity with high resolution at long ranges up to 500m.
In related news, AEye has announced that its Apollo lidar units have been selected by a major transportation OEM, representing a potential revenue opportunity of US$30m or more over the next 24 to 36 months