According to the report from The Korea Economic Daily, Samsung’s subsidiary Samsung Electro-Mechanics will supply 80% of the camera modules used by Tesla. The contract is valued between KRW 4 trillion to KRW 5 trillion (USD 3.2 billion to USD 4 billion), which makes it the largest contract ever in electronic components. Samsung Electro-Mechanics has beaten its competitors LG Innotek and Primax Electronics to become the largest supplier of Tesla’s camera modules.
Under the agreement, Samsung will provide 80% of the camera modules to Tesla, and LG Innotek will provide the remaining 20%. The camera modules manufactured by Samsung Electro-Mechanics will be installed in the entire Tesla lineup, from Model 3, Model S, Model X, and Model Y to Cybertruck and Semi trucks.
The new camera modules will be Samsung’s 4.0 version, which will have 5 million pixels, five times the clarity of the previous generation 3.0. These cameras will power Tesla’s pure vision autonomous driving technology and Sentry Mode, among other features. Samsung will begin mass-producing the 4.0 camera modules as early as July.
Earlier, in July 2021, Tesla also signed a massive USD 436 million contract with Samsung Electro-Mechanics for camera modules for Cybertruck.
In addition to the camera modules, Tesla’s FSD 4.0 chips will also be produced in Samsung’s Hwaseong factory in Korea. Insiders say that Samsung and Tesla have jointly developed the chip, and samples have been produced. Although the Tesla FSD 4.0 chip uses the 7-nanometer process technology, which is not as powerful as the 5-nanometer chip, it will allow for higher production quantities.
Tesla’s autonomous driving system is a pure vision solution, and the performance of the camera modules will directly affect its actual performance. The latest version of Tesla Autopilot is equipped with eight cameras with a resolution of approximately 1.2 million pixels, while Samsung’s next-generation camera module will have a resolution of 5 million pixels.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.