Jan 5 (Reuters) – Mobileye said on Monday it has secured a major U.S. automaker as a customer for its next-generation chip, lifting production outlook, with its self-driving technology rolled out as standard equipment in millions of vehicles.
The deal will see an unnamed top-10 U.S. automaker incorporating Mobileye’s system across mass-market and premium models.
The company’s shares, which nearly halved in value last year, rose 6.4% in premarket trading.
The rollout of advanced driver-assistance systems is accelerating due to competition among automakers in the United States and Europe, where hands-free highway driving is rapidly advancing.
Mobileye has increasingly emphasized advanced driver-assistance systems as a near-term growth driver amid slower-than-expected commercial rollout of fully autonomous vehicles.
The agreement expands Mobileye’s production outlook, with estimated future deliveries of more than 19 million EyeQ6H-based Surround ADAS systems, including about 9 million tied to the newly announced automaker and existing programs with Volkswagen Group announced in March.
Surround ADAS enables hands-free, eyes-on driving on selected highways and is designed to consolidate multiple driving and safety functions onto a single chip and electronic control unit, lowering costs for automakers seeking to simplify increasingly complex vehicle electronics.
Mobileye said the system combines multiple cameras, radars and crowdsourced road-mapping data to support features such as automated lane changes, traffic-jam assistance and cut-in protection at highway speeds, while also enabling over-the-air software updates.
(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore)
