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Silicon Valley startup Aeva Inc and Japanese automotive supplier Denso Corp on Tuesday said the two will collaborate on bringing a key sensor for self-driving cars to the "mass market."

Aeva, founded by two former Apple Inc engineers, makes a lidar sensor that helps cars gain a three-dimensional view of the road and can also detect how quickly distant objects are moving. Founded in 2017, Aeva is in the process of becoming publicly traded through a reverse merger with blank-check firm InterPrivate Acquisition Corp in a deal that has raised $563 million.

Aeva's sensor works on a principle called frequency modulated continuous wave, or FMCW, which is different from rivals such as Velodyne Lidar and Luminar Technologies.

Denso is the world's second-largest automotive supplier, working closely with automakers such as Toyota Motor Corp , which owns nearly a quarter of the company. Beyond saying the two they are targeting a mass market, Aeva and Denso did not disclose further details of the collaboration, such as what the final cost of Aeva's technology would be to automakers.

Aeva last year announced a deal with German automotive industry supplier ZF Friedrichshafen AG to put its lidar sensors into production, and in 2019 took an investment from Porsche Automobil Holding SE, the majority-voting shareholder of Volkswagen AG.

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