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ADAS and Autonomous Driving Tier 1 Suppliers Report, 2018-2019: Huge Investment, Increasing Orders, and Soaring Labor Cost
From the progress of the world’s main Tier1 suppliers in autonomous driving, it can be seen that the giants like Bosch and Continental are moving forward at their own pace in line with their timetable.
Traditional Tier1 suppliers are sparing no efforts in enlarging talent teams (especially software), developing ADAS/AD domain controllers, acquiring sensor firms and self-development, testing autonomous driving technology in various scenarios (industrial park, highway, parking, etc.), expanding autonomous fleets for road test, building test fields on their own or together with others, establishing operation and data management centers, and allying themselves with more partners.
Tier1 suppliers suffer a slump in profits and even a bigger loss because of huge investment in autonomous driving, but there is good news that orders are increasing.
Veoneer’s operating loss for 2019Q1 jumped to USD128 million compared with USD16 million in 2018Q1; its R&D expenses rose to USD156 million from USD106 million in 2018Q1; capital expenditure surged from USD31 million to USD59 million largely for camera capacity expansion, according to Veoneer’s 2019Q1 financial results in the table above.
Among Chinese Tier1 suppliers, Huizhou Desay SV Automotive Co., Ltd., a leading player in ADAS and autonomous driving field, also sees its profit decline. The supplier’s operating results for 2019Q1 indicate that its net income attributable to the shareholders of the listed company stood at RMB43.54 million, a 72.82% plunge on an annualized basis, which was caused by a nosedive in China’s 2019Q1 automobile sales and the company’s huge investment in research and development of new technologies. In 2018, the company reported RMB5.4 billion in revenue, with annualized sales from orders for its new products outnumbering RMB7.0 billion.
In April 2019, Huawei made its debut as a Tier1 supplier at Auto Shanghai, and exhibited solutions such as MDC, intelligent connectivity, Huawei Cloud (Octopus) and three types of sensors.
Huawei’s entry will intensify the already fierce competition among Tier1 suppliers of ADAS and autonomous driving solutions.