Autoliv Acquires Radar System Business

Autoliv, one of the world’s biggest automotive safety system manufacturer, has just announced the acquisition of Visteon’s radar system business. Autoliv’s announcement follows the purchase of the leading automotive radar business from Tyco Electronics. With this transaction, Autoliv got physical assets, intellectual property, order book and engineers with expertise in radar-based Driver Assistance and Active Safety functions.

“While this acquisition is small, with less than $5 million in sales and five highly skilled engineers, it fits very well our own existing radar business”, said the Autoliv CEO Jan Carlson. “Our radar specialists have worked together with the Visteon team over the past few years. This partnership has resulted in industry-leading Blind Spot and Rear Cross Traffic Detection Systems that are currently in production at multiple OEM customers.”

“The acquisition not only ensures that this productive cooperation continues, it also gives us opportunities to further strengthen our position in Active Safety Systems”.

Autoliv offers a broad range of Active Safety functions based on high performance Radar, Night Vision, ad Mono/Stereo Vision Systems. “We have the technologies in a market that many predict is about to take off”, explained Jan Carlson.

Autoliv is one of the worldwide leaders in automotive safety systems, as it develops and manufactures automotive safety systems for all major automotive manufacturers in the world. Though its 2009 sales amounted to $5.1 billion, the company had some difficult situations to deal with. Last year, the Autoliv steering plant in El Nadhour, Tunisia, caught fire due to some poor welding work done during the Christmas holidays. Fortunately, there were no human injuries.