Japan’s ‘$1 Chip’ Drives Nearly Half Of All Autonomous Cars – Sales Booming

The age of self-driving cars is drawing closer, and bringing a new age of technology along for the ride.

As we wait for connected infrastructure, such as traffic lights, bridges, and automated road lanes to catch up, it’s the car doing most of the work through sensors, cameras and radars.

And nearly all of the makers of autonomous vehicle technologies rely on a Japanese company you might never have heard of - Nippon Ceramic. 

Nippon Ceramic makes a ‘computer chip’ that drives most of the sensors needed to make autonomous cars work, and sales are booming. 

Company president, Shinichi Taniguchi, said in an interview with Bloomberg that the company has recently stepped up its manufacturing capacity to meet demand. 

Panasonic and Denso are among its biggest customers, which on-sell the finished sensor units to Volkswagen, General Motors, Ford and others. Nippon Ceramic’s competitors include NEC and Hitachi.

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