Citi Bullish on Luminar Amid New ADAS Partnership with Nissan
2022.04.25 17:36
Citi Bullish on Luminar (LAZR) Amid New ADAS Partnership With Nissan
Yesterday, Nissan (OTC:NSANY) said it is developing a new driver-assistance technology that it expects will significantly reduce traffic accidents and shape the future of autonomous driving.
The Japanese carmaker demonstrated how its new technology can automatically carry out collision-avoidance maneuvers at its facility. The company’s new driver assistance technology utilizes information from state-of-the-art light detection and ranging (LIDAR) technology, radar and cameras.
The technology also detects road obstacles and analyzes the current traffic situation to perform lane changes if needed.
“Nissan has been the first to market a number of advanced driver assistance technologies. When we look at the future of autonomous driving, we believe that it is of utmost importance for owners to feel highly confident in the safety of their vehicle,” said Takao Asami, Senior Vice President, Nissan Motor Co.
Asami feels confident that its new driver-assistance technology will drastically boost owners’ confidence, and contribute to lowering the number of traffic accidents. The automaker has teamed up with multiple innovative companies to develop the ground truth perception technology, including Luminar Technologies (LAZR).
Citi analyst Itay Michaeli reflected positively on the new partnership.
“Our initial takeaways are: (1) A clear positive for Luminar as the Nissan collaboration marks the first with a major mass-market automaker (~4mln units), providing encouraging validation for both the tech and future BOM outlook. This makes us incrementally more comfortable with our out-year Luminar estimates. (2) Nissan’s expected wide-adoption of this new ADAS suite appears broadly consistent with how we’ve previously modeled the supplier ADAS/AV content TAM through 2030E,” Michaeli wrote in a note.
By Senad Karaahmetovic
