Avishay Moscovici, Innoviz Technologies: “We want to become the number one supplier of LiDARs for the automotive industry”

“Innoviz is a technology company located mostly in Israel, helping the autonomous driving endeavour. Our mission is to make the world a little bit safer by providing the means to drive more safely than before, having the computer do the driving rather than human beings to reduce the number of accidents.

We want to become the number one supplier of LiDARs for the automotive industry. We already have first and second generation of LiDARs. First generation is already deployed in BMW vehicles. We have Volkswagen as a major customer for the second generation of LiDARs. We also have clients in Asia and other regions.

What we basically do is the LiDARs themselves, the hardware, and also the software which is processing that information and provides information for the computer to drive safely,” Avishay Moscovici, Chief R&D Officer, Innoviz Technologies said at Automotive R&D Power Breakfast organized by Automotive Today.

“The company was founded in 2016. Back then we already announced the first generation of LiDARs. In 2023 the first BMW vehicles went out from the factory with our LiDARs in. The second generation was announced in 2020, and these LiDARs will go into Volkswagen vehicles by 2025-2026.

We are based in Israel, but we have developments in Europe (Germany and Romania). We have just started in Romania; we are growing here. We have founded a center of excellence. We are also present in USA and Asia because these are big markets for us.

There are different levels of autonomous driving, 5 of them. Most of the cars that you are familiar with are at Level 2. So, they allow you to track lanes, they follow the car in front of you, they might brake automatically, but there is a huge difference between Level 2 and Level 3.

Level 3 represents a huge jump because you can do something else in the car while the computer does the driving. In this case, the responsibility is on the carmaker. If there is an accident, it there is a computer fault, the liability is on the OEM. In order to do that jump, automakers need to secure themselves heavily with the right set of sensors, the right set of software.

We have started to see the first Level 3 autonomous cars on the streets. There is a lot of work on Level 4 going on as well, but we are still not there.”