Toyota Supplier Denso Acquires Fujitsu Ten, Accelerates R&D of Driverless Technology |

Denso, the top supplier of automotive parts in Japan, announced on September 9th the acquisition of Fujitsu Ten, a Fujitsu-based radar system manufacturing and unmanned system development company.

Prior to this, Fujitsu Tian was held by Fujitsu, Toyota and Dentsu, and its shareholdings were 55%, 35%, and 10% respectively. Denso's acquisition of 41% of Fujitsu’s shares increased to 51%, and it has not been disclosed yet. Amount of the transaction. The change in the shareholding structure will be completed after the end of the 2016 fiscal year (March 2017).

Chart: Fujitsu-Ten shareholding structure change plan (from Denso official website)

At present, Fujitsu-Tian has tens of thousands of employees globally. Its sales in fiscal year 2015 amounted to 363.3 billion yen (about 23.5 billion RMB). Behind the surging figures is the dilemma of rising operating costs. The company urgently needs to find new growth points. .

On the other hand, as regards electrical installation, it is currently working hard to develop autopilot-related technologies and is eager to reinforce existing technical strengths. Therefore, the two companies hit it off and they have this acquisition. In the future, Denso will cooperate with Fujitsu Tenn to develop electronic control units, millimeter-wave radars, auxiliary/unmanned technologies, and other electronic devices.

Denso is so eager to make improvements in the driverless area. Analysts believe that this is related to its parent Toyota.

Currently, Toyota is actively researching and developing driverless cars and is preparing to produce results around 2020. Denso is naturally placed high on expectations as Toyota's tethered and many years' component suppliers. In recent years, Denso has also been advancing for Toyota in the area of ​​driver assistance systems, but there is a gap in intimacy: last year the new Corolla model bypassed Denso and used the more advanced “Accident Prevention System” provided by Continental AG. ". This is undoubtedly a great deal, and it is clear to Denso that it is important to strengthen the research and development of automatic (assisting) driving technology. Only this will be able to compete against the powerful competitors - the German mainland (and Bosch).

Buying Fujitsu Sky is just one step. Previously, Denso also invested in the image recognition technology company Morpho Inc., which is headquartered in Tokyo, to strengthen its competitiveness in the field of environmental identification. In April this year, it cooperated with NEC to develop a microcontroller for the autopilot system. In May, ADAS was established in Germany to develop image recognition technology...

Some results have also been seen. Recently, there have been reports that Denso has developed a technology that uses a single-lens camera to recognize pedestrians’ body orientation, height, and distance from cars in real time in just 56 milliseconds. ADAS.

Of course, all major auto parts suppliers in the world have already deployed in unmanned areas and have also stimulated electric equipment. Not too long ago, Volvo announced that it would cooperate with Autoliv, a Swedish car seat belt and air bag supplier, to develop driverless software; Delphi, a car supplier, also invested heavily in developing fully-automated driving system solutions with Mobileye...

Yes, Denso is accelerating its efforts to keep pace with other top suppliers. At the same time, competition in this area will become increasingly fierce.