Meet Startup @TW Interview : oToBrite in Partnership with Electric Vehicle Startup Xpeng Motors to Supply Innovative Auto Parking Systems

Taiwanese startup oToBrite has clinched a deal with Chinese electric car maker Xpeng Motors, a rival of Tesla, to provide its vehicles with auto-parking systems and sophisticated roof cameras.

Xpeng, which began selling its first electric vehicle, the Xpeng G3, late last year, is backed by Chinese tech giants Alibaba Group Holding and Xiaomi Group, as well as Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group.

The move comes as AI is increasingly used in different industrial spheres, including driverless cars, with self-driving technology development company Waymo and Tesla prominent examples of companies in this field.

oToBrite President Lotus Chen says his company stays ahead of the competition with its advanced parking information data collection techniques.

“ We have been collecting a variety of pictures and information about Asian parking lots for our database, “ Chen said.

The Xpeng G3 uses oToBrite’s auto-parking system, Chen added.

Its “system can detect available parking lots with 70% accuracy."

oToBrite was founded in 2013, with production, research and development all based in Taiwan.

Chen said that aside from these competitive core technologies, the prices his company set were pretty flexible compared with those offered by other technology giants.

“As a startup, the way we do the things with potential customers is flexible and negotiable since the giants already have their own stiff rules,” Chen said.

“We can sit down with customers and find out what can we do for them to meet their expectations.”

With AI-powered deep-learning technologies, radar fusion technology and images captured by four cameras installed all over the vehicle, oToBrtie’s system can detect free spaces, obstructing objects and the parking grid, before it calculates the size of the parking space, and integrates the vehicle’s driving data to give instructions to the wheel, throttle and brake.

Chen is a veteran of Taiwan’s technology scene with a career that has lasted some 30 years. A former venture capitalist, analysts consider him to have a sharp eye when he picks industries to join or invest in.

He was chief technology officer at ASUS and developed the company’s first social network for its consumers, ZenCircle, to promote ASUS’s ZenFone smartphones.

Chen says while similar companies have been focusing on advanced driver assistance systems, oToBrite has chosen to mainly focusing on auto parking systems.

Original report : Meet Startup @TW English News

Link : https://meet.bnext.com.tw/intl/articles/view/44346