Aeva Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:AEVA) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Soroush Dardashti: Yeah, sure, Antoine, happy to answer that. So, I think generally obviously OEM-to-OEM vehicle type to vehicle type and level automation, there is differences and approaches from between across these folks, there is differences in the timings. I think some of the can assume from what we hear in the industry, some of the very, very high level, super high level automation obviously has, timelines wise, is what we are seeing is pushed out. But from those L3 plus and ADAS applications from automation, that’s actually where a lot of the focus is and this has been critical for our case in terms of our advancement throughout the opportunities evidenced by the fact that we’ve been able to actually provide units to our customers and start delivering samples so they can actually validate, but also importantly, that now these OEMs starting to actually make progress towards RFQ stages.

So we’re now in multiple RFQ programs as a result of our ability to ship last year with Aeries II and there are a number of decisions that are happening. We expect to happen this year and one of course, case in point of this clear evidence is that this top-10 OEM that we talked about, which is an established leader in automotive, as I mentioned on the call with significant scale and we’ve been working with this OEM for some time now, and this OEM was tested with other three LiDARs in the prior development stages since our close collaboration is now in the next stage is actually decided to our LiDAR technology, the four LiDAR as the long range LiDAR on the fleet vehicle. So that’s, to your point about what the advantages that the folks are seeing; I think that’s now starting to take shape and it continues to build on our belief that the industry over time is going to transition to FMCW, but again, we are pretty encouraged by the progress we’ve made and excited to start off the year with this growing momentum here.

Antoine Chkaiban: Thanks that for the color and maybe just as a quick follow up. So you mentioned that you’re progressing well on a growing number of vehicle programs, the advanced RFQ stage with leading OEMs and so maybe if you could just give us like a sense of how things have progressed relative to say 90 days or 180 days ago, so we can better visualize how momentum is picking up. That would be — that would be amazing.

Soroush Dardashti: Yeah, sure. Look, as I said, as a direct result of our ability to actually ship product to customers and also some of the customers now decisions happening this year, and we are now fortunate to be advancing to those RFQ stages and advances on multiple programs with decisions happening in the next number of months. One, two is we are seeing some of those OEMs after they start actually implement and use our technology to really start realizing how they can leverage the key dimensions such as velocity, the differentiation of our — of our technology. And this in large part is helping some of those folks to achieve some of the high level standards that they could not achieve before with other solutions, right?

So that I think is some of the traction and actually evidence that we’re seeing from the customer before we expect to continue working through these program opportunities, RFQs with these customers as well as supporting this top-10 OEM as they work towards production as I mentioned with the targeted SOP of 2025.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Joe Moore with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.