Could you give us an overview of Mobileye and its range of autonomous vehicle solutions?
Today, Mobileye is the market leader in ADAS across multiple dimensions, with our technology in more than 150 million vehicles around the world, large-scale production relationships with 85% of the top 15 automakers, and technology powering 66% of Europe’s 5-star rated vehicles.
Our product portfolio is modular by design, enabling OEMs the ability to scale driver assist to higher levels of autonomy cost-effectively. This modular approach to autonomy, where we gradually increase the capabilities of solutions, provides the industry with a clear path from eyes-on/hands-on ADAS to eyes-off autonomy.
Our spectrum of solutions focus on enhancing safety and convenience to the benefit of our customers through delivering a wide range of features. We like to talk about our product portfolio in terms of hands-on/off and eyes-on/off as well as driver/no driver. Where it begins is with computer vision-based driver assist or base ADAS, a hands-on, eyes-on product that has served as the core of Mobileye’s business for many years, where we have about 70% of global market share. This form of active safety is most ubiquitous and is a purpose built, highly efficient, windshield-based camera interpreting the environment through sophisticated software honed over decades running on our purpose-built EyeQ system-on-chip (SoC). We then take that same simple execution and enhance the capabilities with our crowd-sourced mapping system labeled Road Experience Management, or REM™. Called “Cloud-Enhanced Driver-Assist,” this solution offers connected, real-time information about the driving scene: lane markings, road priority, traffic light-to-lane association, hazard detection, and much more. As base ADAS is becoming increasingly standard, map-based information is the most significant way to offer enhanced features and achieve the next leap in ADAS performance in the eyes-on, hands-on category. Building on this base, we introduced our first eyes-on, hands-off platform for automakers, which we call “Mobileye SuperVision.” This system uses surround vision with 11 cameras; REM; and Responsibility Sensitive Safety (RSS), our driving policy software originally developed for automated vehicle safety. Together these technologies provide automated driving capabilities for human-driven vehicles – and, with over-the-air update capability, the latest in comfort and safety can reach consumers at the push of a button. We have more than 100,000 vehicles on the road equipped with this solution integrated into Geely Group products, with more on the way.
SuperVision acts as a bridge from ADAS-to-AVs. With the core technology of SuperVision, we expand the capabilities with more compute and active sensors to deliver eyes-off, hands-off consumer AV solutions. Mobileye Chauffeur is our self-driving system designed for consumer-owned vehicles with autonomous capabilities, beginning with highways up to 80 mph and expanding from there. Chauffeur will provide 360-degrees of coverage through two independent and redundant sensing subsystems (Camera and Radar/Lidar) offering what we call True Redundancy, as well as REM AV maps and RSS, increasing both scalability and safety. We then have our mobility-as-a-service solution, called “Mobileye Drive,” which is a turnkey self-driving system that is being integrated in autonomous public transit services such as rideshare vehicles, shuttles, and buses.
How have autonomous driving technologies and ADAS changed over the last few years?
We’ve seen a real shift across the industry from speculative announcements to pragmatic, business-case driven initiatives. Five years ago, the biggest challenge was developing the AV technology itself. Today, the technology exists and has hit the road for testing. Now we need to validate its safety, and we’re well on the path to getting the data we need. The greatest challenge now comes from the business case for AVs, which is why we are seeing more companies asking themselves, “how do we monetize this?” We believe that there will be two futures for AV tech. One that unlocks private, safe, automated travel for consumers when they purchase a vehicle equipped with a self-driving system; and another that opens up mobility-as-a-service solutions like robotaxis. We are building both futures in parallel based on the same core tech building blocks, and we’re actively engaged with multiple partners to roll out our technologies in the next few years. We’re unique in that regard – our systems have been designed since the start to scale globally and take advantage of cost savings in mass production to help support the business case. The other area where things have changed is in the sensor technologies. A lot of what is in R&D right now, like imaging radar and more advanced lidar, will go into production in the latter half of the decade. Our imaging radar is strategic, as it provides LiDAR-like output at significantly lower cost, enabling the scaling of both consumer-owned and fleet-deployed eyes-off systems.
What are some of the advantages that Mobileye’s camera-based ISA offers over the available combination of cameras and low-resolution map solutions?
Mobileye became a pioneer in ADAS by introducing a new, more cost-effective solution for driver assist using computer vision and a single monocular camera. The impact was so significant because our approach made it possible for ADAS to proliferate and in effect, democratize vehicle safety. Our ISA solution aims to do the same.
By taking advantage of our two decades of experience maximizing the performance of camera-based driver assist, along with a massive video database of over 250,000 hours of driving from all over the world (considerably larger than any competitor database), we were able to rapidly incorporate a solution that recognizes all of the hundreds of traffic speed signs in Europe.
In fact, we are the only technology supplier in the automotive space that has been able to achieve homologation approval and full GSR compliance across the EU-bloc with a front-facing camera / computer vision only solution. This is a huge motivator for OEMs wanting a low cost, but high performance solution that can meet the forthcoming GSR mandate which eventually will be included on even the lowest-priced vehicles. Mobileye has amassed speed sign information from all over the world for over 15 years, which has enabled us to refer to area-specific details in our production programs.
What strategic advantages does Mobileye gain by being the first mover in homologating vision-only Intelligent Speed Assist (ISA) solutions, and how does this positioning aid the company in its commercialization?
We can come to the table with absolute confidence that our solution will be more efficient, easier to integrate with no changes to existing hardware and, most importantly, cost less than a multi-partner solution (e.g., camera-only vs. camera + map). This also serves as further validation of just how capable Mobileye is at its core – with computer vision. As well as our data advantage, having images of hundreds of European traffic speed signs was key to this development.
Are OEMs permitted to opt for Mobileye ISA as an independent solution alongside other ADAS solutions from different suppliers?
We are currently offering Mobileye’s ISA solution to vehicles which have EyeQ SoCs – generally, a majority of the worldwide automobile production every year.
How will the ISA system be updated to adapt to evolving traffic regulations and the addition of new speed limit signage over time?
Six independent labs across five different European countries have tested and confirmed that Mobileye’s ISA software meets or exceeds the EU’s required standards, with additional testing and certification underway. In the future, Mobileye will continue advancing the system to ensure new sign recognition over the next 14 years per GSR certification requirements.
Mobileye also has proprietary sign signature technology, which enables the integration of rare signs with very few examples. It also allows the post-production addition of new signs into our catalogue. This is already part of our solution in China where we incorporate rare signs into our production catalogue. Another example of how we use this sign signature system is for post-production to cope with a new 65 kph sign that was added in Cyprus last year.
What are some of the key trends in AD and ADAS you are seeing, maybe in terms of technology or customer expectations?
The introduction of hands-off / eyes-on systems, from Mobileye via Zeekr (a part of the Geely Group) as well as others, especially in China, has created a sense of urgency among other automakers to deliver their own competitive solutions. The growing interest from automakers in SuperVision-based products is evidence of this momentum. The end users, car buyers around the world, are becoming increasingly aware of new safety features and are coming to expect the very latest in new vehicle models.
In terms of the technology itself, the trend which started a few years ago as “OTA” or over-the-air software updatability has now become a part of the “SDV” or software defined vehicle strategy longer term. We’ve delivered a number of SDV capabilities and features remotely now in partnership with global automakers, like the VW group and Geely group, for both our cloud-enhanced ADAS program as well as our more advanced SuperVision product. ADAS and AD are very much a pillar of this trend. On cloud-enhanced ADAS, we cannot overlook how important REM has been and the immense value a high-fidelity mapping solution like ours adds to a base ADAS solution.
What were some of the technical, regulatory, and industry challenges Mobileye faced while pioneering the vision-only ISA solution, and what measures did the company implement to surmount these hurdles?
Technical – The vast variety of types of road signs from country-to-country presented a significant computer vision challenge. Using our database of video from wide-ranging geographies, built over twenty years of validating and launching ADAS programs for OEMs, we built out a catalogue of sign recognition country by country and in consideration of implicit and explicit inputs. The ability to efficiently search all of clips in our visual database using image or text (what we call internally, “ME search”) enabled fast completion of the needed data to support and validate the full list of road signs.
Regulatory – Once we surpassed the technical challenge, it was then a question of how we position the ISA product to follow a method of continuous improvement, including new signage introductions. We also had to build the product brief and business case around the length of time required to become a viable solution under the GSR regulation – which is a 14-year compliance minimum.
Industry – There was industry skepticism that a GSR-compliant solution was not possible with camera-only, which we have proven to not be true. We are actively turning skepticism into surprise and acceptance. In the weeks since introducing the solution we received interest from several automakers.
Is Mobileye planning to expand the vision-only ISA system to other global markets, and what is the anticipated timeline for its commercialization in these markets?
Mobileye focuses on where the demand creation is happening. In this specific case, the European Union regulatory authorities will be among the first to implement an intelligent speed assistant mandate, with countries outside of the EU, such as Israel, following suit. There could be demand from automakers who see the value in deploying it in markets before regulatory mandates take effect, but we’ve generally experienced this type of application to be more regulation driven. For the EU, the ISA program was under research and development for about two years. In countries and regions where there is less complexity and variety in terms of explicit items like the physical road signage, deployment can happen much quicker.
In general, what is your outlook for the year ahead? And, more specifically, for Mobileye?
We are continuing our laser-like focus on deploying our product portfolio. For other new technologies and announcements, you will have to wait and see.
