Lidar Startup Seals $1 Billion Self-Driving Truck Deal

Silicon Valley start-up Aeva Technologies has won a deal estimated to be worth $1 billion with Germany’s Daimler Truck to supply Lidar for self-driving trucks.

It’s a remarkable achievement by the Mountain View firm, representing its major automotive production design win. Aeva reportedly booked just over $4 million in revenue in 2023.

Under the terms of the arrangement, Aeva will supply its new long-range Atlas 4D lidar to Daimler Truck and work alongside Daimler’s subsidiary, Torc Robotics, to deliver autonomous functionality on its vehicles, starting with the Class 8 Freightliner Cascadia.

Atlas was introduced at CES and is claimed to be the world’s first automotive-grade 4D lidar for mass production in automotive applications.

While traditional lidar sensors use laser pulses to sense distances to objects, Aeva’s unique Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) 4D Lidar uses a low-power continuous laser beam to simultaneously measure range and velocity.

This brings a number of benefits, enhancing safety and automation by instantaneously recognizing static or dynamic points, and knowing the exact velocity of dynamic objects.

“Atlas is the key development that will enable OEMs to equip their vehicles with advanced safety and automated driving features at highway speeds by addressing challenging use cases that could not be solved before,” said Mina Rezk, co-founder and CTO at Aeva. “We believe it will accelerate the industry’s transition to FMCW Lidar technology.”

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As part of the Daimler Truck deal, the lidar will be integrated directly into the vehicle during the production process, ensuring customers can buy autonomous-ready trucks and not have to worry about retrofitting.

Torc, in turn, will sell its virtual driving technology by subscription.

The multi-year collaboration follows years of discussions and collaboration between the companies and will begin in the first quarter of this year, with Aeva starting production by 2026 and Daimler Truck doing so by 2027.

Although Daimler Truck has not commented on the financials, Aeva believes it could be worth around $1 billion over the duration of the contract.

“Torc’s virtual driving software can now rely on significantly higher resolution as well as farther and clearer detection of objects plus instant velocity detection, which are crucial to safely deploy autonomous trucks at scale,” said Peter Vaughan Schmidt, CEO at Torc Robotics.

And Joanna Buttler of Daimler Truck added: “Selecting the right lidar technology is a crucial strategic decision. We are convinced that Aeva, with its cutting-edge and reliable technology, is the right production partner. Together with Torc, we are well on track to offer autonomous trucks to the U.S. market by 2027.”

Torc, based in Blacksburg, Virginia, is focused on commercializing autonomous trucks for long-haul operations in the U.S. and has run several tests and pilots. It has also agreed to a strategic partnership with Uber Freight that will see it make use of the latter’s logistics network.