Magna Opens Startup Program “Leading Mobility” To Connect With European Innovators

With 327 manufacturing operations, 100 product development, engineering, and sales centers in 29 countries and over 161,000 employees focused on delivering value to its customers the leading global automotive supplier Magna has built an impressive infrastructure to foster innovation. No stranger to startups and emerging companies, Magna regularly makes use of this infrastructure to give innovative solutions in the industry a home to develop and thrive.

Seeking Innovative Startups Leading Mobility

With its current Startup Program “Leading Mobility”, the corporation is looking for innovations in four key areas: electrification, autonomous driving, connectivity, and new mobility:

• Electrification: As an essential component of future mobility, electromobility transforms vehicles into more than just the vehicle – driving as efficiently and economically as possible.
• Autonomous Driving: Technologies that enable self-driving vehicles, including sensors and processors among others are especially interesting.
• Connectivity: Increased demand calls for new solutions in the areas of urbanization, safety, and cybersecurity.
• New Mobility: Technologies and services which offer improved quality, timing, or cost of the mobility experience of tomorrow are wanted.

“The collaboration with disruptive startups is the cornerstone of shaping the future of the industry – which is what we are aiming for”, explains Ian R. Simmons, VP Business Development and R&D, the motivation behind the Startup Program.

Aiming At Co-Developing New Industry Standards

As one of the industry’s key players, Magna has recognized that shaping the future of the mobility industry requires the collaboration and co-development between strong partners. Seeing that a significant potential for disruption and innovation is coming from young companies, the leading automotive supplier actively encourages startups to co-develop new industry standards across sectors. “Our goal is to ensure a good, competitive future for the mobility sector by fostering the technologies startups are working on,” Simmons points out.

In regards to the Startup Program Leading Mobility, Magna will typically partner for development and proof of concept (PoC) if a solution qualifies. Further, as one of the top 3 Tier 1 automotive suppliers globally, Magna has the infrastructure in place to support product development in multiple fields and technologies. With Leading Mobility, the corporation supports product-, process-, material-, or data-related innovation. This outlook for partnerships includes the ability to commercialize a solution and get to market.

Open Communication Policy To Strengthen Innovation

Because Magna leaves all doors for communication open, a wide range of startups are welcome to enter their existing solutions applicable in the automotive and mobility sector to Leading Mobility.

Having worked with a number of startups and young companies already, the automotive company knows how to turn promising synergies into success stories. Just this year, Magna unveiled the high definition ICON RADAR which scans the environment and was developed in partnership with tech startup Uhnder. The technology, which helps to close the gap between level 3 and level 5 to reach full reliable autonomous driving, will be brought to market in 2019 thanks to the collaboration of the corporate and the startup in engineering and product development. More examples of successful collaboration include TerraLoupe, HOMYHUB, Powerplace.io, and Drover.

For Leading Mobility, Magna continues to work with the startup and innovation scouting company StartUs Insights, headquartered in Vienna, Austria. “Magna’s acknowledgment of startups at the forefront of digitalization and creative disruption is a sign that these companies are the future of the industry and a viable partner to learn from,” adds David R. Prasser, Founder & CEO at StartUs Insights.

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