Chinese lidar system supplier LiangDao Intelligence and Israel-headquartered lidar developer Innoviz Technologies have signed a strategic partnership. The agreement will, say the companies, focus on investigating the customization of Innoviz’s lidar solutions for OEMs in the Chinese region; the development of perception solutions; and validation and data collection to accelerate the introduction of series production solutions of high-resolution lidar in the Chinese market.
As a full-stack service provider of series-production vehicle lidar systems, LiangDao Intelligence has been deeply engaged in the lidar space for many years. The company’s core technical team participated in the software series production development for the series production launch of Scala, the world’s first lidar in Audi’s A8 models. In 2019, the company took part in the world’s first pure solid-state lidar series production project. Most significantly, the company is well embedded in the Chinese market.
Innoviz meanwhile has supplied OEMs such as BMW with its solid-state lidar sensor, via a deal with Magna International. It unveiled the B-prototype of its new generation lidar, InnovizTwo, earlier this year, which is targeting a 30x performance improvement and a 70% cost reduction compared to the InnovizOne. The company also recently launched its subsidiary in China, Innoviz Shanghai Technologies.
“We are happy to bring the most reliable and highest-resolution lidar to the Chinese market, paired with our new partner LiangDao Intelligence” said Omer Keilaf, CEO and co-founder of Innoviz. “We are impressed by LiangDao’s many years of experience and the distinguished projects their teams have been involved with. We appreciate their unique understanding of the automotive lidar market in China and look forward to jointly accelerating the introduction of mutual series production solutions of our high-resolution lidar for the Chinese market.”
Under the partnership, LiangDao Intelligence will leverage its Tier 1 capability as the system supplier and integrate Innoviz’s technology to deliver a new generation of lidar systems to the Chinese automotive industry customers by meeting the distinct regional requirements of autonomous driving in the Chinese market. The next stage of the cooperation will see the parties work together to deepen to build a complete lidar hardware assembly line and supply chain system in China.