Israel-based Mobileye secured a deal to outfit 8 million cars with driver assistance technology for an undisclosed automaker in Europe.
Eight million European vehicles are going to be “Intel Inside” after Mobileye, Intel Corp.’s Israel-based autonomous driving unit, inked a deal to supply a European automaker with its self-driving technologies.
The terms of the deal and the name of the automaker weren’t revealed, a company official told Reuters.
Mobileye may be best known in America for its relationship with Aptiv, formerly Delphi, and until last year with Tesla. The two companies had a spat and Tesla terminated its deal with Mobileye. However, Mobileye works with several automakers, such as General Motors, Nissan, Audi, BMW, Honda, Fiat Chrysler and China’s Nio, to supply its Level 3 technologies by next year.
“By the end of 2019, we expect over 100,000 Level 3 cars with Mobileye installed,” said Amnon Shashua, Mobileye’s chief executive.
(Magna joins BMW-led autonomous car consortium. Click Here for the story.)
A Mobileye image shows how the EyeQ sees the world in front of a vehicle while driving.
The new deal is massive for Mobileye, and requires delivery of these driver assisted systems starting 2021. That coincides with the expected launch date of Intel’s EyeQ5 chip, which is designed for fully autonomous driving, is launched as an upgrade to the EyeQ4 that will be rolled out in the coming weeks, said Erez Dagan, senior vice president for advanced development and strategy at Mobileye.
The deal will give these vehicles Level 3 capability, which means the vehicle drives itself but the driver has about 10 seconds to resume control of the vehicle is something goes awry.
The system will be available on a variety of the automaker’s car models that will have partial automation — where the car is automatically driven but the driver must stay alert, i.e. Level 3 — as well as models integrating a more advanced system of conditional automation, Reuters reported.
(Click Here for details about this BMW partnership with FCA, Intel and Mobileye.)
Mobileye's camera-on-a-chip, the EyeQ.
Mobileye, bought by Intel last year for $15.3 billion, says there are some 27 million cars on the road from 25 automakers that use some sort of driver assistance system and Mobileye has a market share of more than 70%.
The company is also working with a consortium of companies led by BMW to develop autonomous vehicles. BMW, Magna International, Intel and Mobileye are looking to get ahead in a highly competitive market.
Through this collaboration, the BMW Group, Intel and Mobileye plan to provide an autonomous vehicle platform that can be flexible and adoptable for integration by multiple automakers.
(Aptiv, BlackBerry partner on self-driving car tech. For the story, Click Here.)
BMW, Intel and high-tech camera and software producer Mobileye, which the U.S. chipmaker acquired in a $15 billion deal earlier this year, have been lobbying suppliers and car manufacturers to collaborate on self-driving technology to speed development and share costs.