Mobileye partners with SAIC Motor, Daegu Metropolitan City for autonomous driving

Global chipmaker Intel has announced two agreements: one with North Korean Daegu Metropolitan City and another with Chinese OEM (original equipment manufacturer) provider SAIC Motor for its autonomous driving platform Mobileye at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Thursday.

Mobileye is an Israeli-based automotive sensor provider that was acquired by Intel in 2017 for $15.3 billion.

The announcement on the new partnerships comes a couple of days after Intel’s CEO Bob Swan announced updates to the Mobileye platform at the same event, which included the demonstration of a self-driving robocar.

SAIC will utilise Mobileye’s REM (road experience management)-mapping technology to map China for level-2 ADAS (advanced driver-assistance systems) to pave the way for autonomous driving in the country.

China will be the first country to benefit from four Mobileye product categories. Mobileye’s China footprint will include level-2 ADAS deployment, mapping, MaaS (mobility-as-a-service) and consumer autonomous vehicles, the release said.

Meanwhile, the leaders of Daegu Metropolitan City in South Korea have agreed to establish a long-term cooperation to deploy a Maas solution based on Mobileye’s self-driving system.

“These two new agreements build our global footprint in both MaaS and ADAS, and demonstrate our commitment to true global leadership towards full autonomy,” Amnon Shashua, Mobileye's president and CEO, and Intel's senior vice president, said.

Intel stated that the two deals were a step forward in executing full autonomy of vehicles, including mapping, ADAS, MaaS and consumer autonomous vehicles. The agreements are in line with a host of other recent announcements, including a plan to bring robotaxis to Paris through Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens, a collaboration with Chinese electric car startup NIO to manufacture and sell consumer autonomous vehicles based on Mobileye’s self-driving system and a joint venture with Volkswagen and Champion Motors to operate an autonomous ride-hailing fleet in Israel.

Mobileye said that it has estimated the autonomous MaaS total addressable market to be worth $160 billion by 2030. “Mobileye’s ADAS leadership, uniquely scalable mapping tools and global robotaxi-based mobility ambitions have been designed to address this massive opportunity,” the company said.