Macnica (hereinafter Macnica; head office: 1-6-3 Shin-Yokohama, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama; President: Nakajima Kiyoshi Nakashima; capital: 11,194 million yen), which imports, sells, and develops semiconductors and network equipment, is pleased to announce that it has concluded a distributorship agreement with Tier IV, Inc. (hereinafter "Tier IV"; head office: Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture; President: Takeda Kazuya) for the sale of autonomous driving-related technologies and will begin selling the company's autonomous driving-related products.

Tier IV has developed an open source autonomous driving software (OS) "Autoware" and an autonomous driving system kit "AI Pilot" that implements it as standard, and in December 2017, it was the first in Japan to be used on public roads. We conducted an experiment on a remote-controlled autonomous driving system and succeeded in level 4 (unmanned driving) autonomous driving. Furthermore, we are promoting the development and demonstration of autonomous driving technology, such as the development of a fully autonomous driving compact electric vehicle (EV) intended for short-distance movement in urban areas and hilly and mountainous areas.

Macnica will equip Tier IV's AI Pilot in autonomous driving vehicles made by Autonomoustuff (hereinafter "AS", headquarters: Morton, Illinois, USA, CEO: Bobby Hambrick), and will sell and provide Level 4 autonomous driving proof-of-concept vehicles to customers.

With this agreement, Macnica will utilize the know-how it has cultivated over many years as a technology trading company to sell AS's autonomous driving demonstration vehicles and Tier IV's autonomous driving related technology to domestic automobile manufacturers and automobile-related parts manufacturers. , we will contribute to business expansion by helping Japanese customers solve their problems. We will also provide it to universities and research institutes researching and developing AI algorithms for autonomous driving as well as businesses entering the new mobility market, such as robot taxis and delivery robots.

Furthermore, in the future, various companies such as telecommunications, construction and construction machinery, public finance, insurance, and leasing, as well as national and public institutions, local governments, etc. will be involved in demonstration experiments of new service models centered on autonomous driving technology. In cooperation with Tier IV, we will propose one-stop solutions for autonomous driving, such as providing demonstration vehicles, support for embedded development of various hardware and software, data acquisition, analysis services, etc.

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