Luminar Inks Deal with Geely-affiliated Ecarx

On July 22, Ecarx, an auto startup co-founded by Eric Li, founder of China’s private automaker Geely, announced that it had formed an alliance with Luminar, a Florida-based lidar company. The collaboration on automotive-grade technologies aims to enable advanced safety and automated driving capabilities in the production of consumer vehicles and commercial trucks.

Luminar is a global automotive technology company. Over the past ten years, Luminar has established advanced hardware and software platforms, empowering more than 50 industry partners including many global automakers.

Ecarx builds the cornerstone of vehicle-mounted high-performance computing platform with SoC (System on Chip) computing modules, and provides intelligent travel experiences with vehicle-mounted operating systems. Through the integration of Luminar’s long-range lidar with Ecarx’s automotives, automakers in China and around the world will be able to deploy advanced safety technology and driving functions on mass production models much faster than before.

This deal will further strengthen Luminar’s influence in China, the world’s largest automobile market, and accelerate the deployment of Luminar’s long-range lidar in China and the global market through the close connection between Ecarx and Geely. As part of this cooperation, Luminar will make a strategic equity investment in Ecarx.

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Austin Russell, founder and CEO of Luminar, talked about the company’s aspirations: “The demand for vehicles defined by technical functions in the Chinese market is growing rapidly, and this cooperation will help Luminar better expand our technology in this fast-growing market.”