DMS Cars on Road: 1Q25 Update
Smart Eye is the winner in DMS PR. For DMS delivery, it is Seeing Machines.
Shown below is the updated picture of DMS cars on road estimates by calendar year for Smart Eye and Seeing Machines.
A brief history: Smart Eye got off to a flying start in deliveries and was first to reach the milestone of 1 million cars on road with DMS, around 2Q22. Smart Eye benefited hugely in the early years from its partnership with Aptiv and raced into a commanding lead while Seeing Machines was locked in an exclusivity with Takata for DMS in General Motors Super Cruise. That Takata exclusivity ended in 2017 and then Seeing Machines began the race to catch Smart Eye, partnering first with Veoneer, then Magna, then Valeo, and recently added Mitsubishi Electric Mobility. It passed 1 million cars on road in 2Q23, beat Smart Eye to 2 million (in 2Q24) and then again to 3 million (1Q25).
Smart Eye is estimated to have reached 2 million cars on road in 4Q24, so about six months behind Seeing Machines. It doesn't release hard data and estimates have to be made, but even allowing for a wide margin of error it is clear Seeing Machines was far ahead of Smart Eye in terms of deliveries in both 2023 and 2024. For 2024 the data imply Seeing Machines delivered about 3.5X the volume of Smart Eye, so Smart Eye's claims of being the market leader are challenging to resolve from a delivery perspective.
Smart Eye claims leadership in "design wins" but the key issue is that a "design win" doesn't map onto production volumes and can even be cancelled after nomination so may subsequently produce zero. Quarterly delivery is the key metric to watch as a guide to leadership, hence my focus on following it.
Source: Smart Eye
How the relative positions of the two suppliers shift in 2025 will become clearer as the year progresses. For first quarter 2025, Seeing Machines delivered 358,000 vehicles with DMS, just less than Smart Eye's total 2024 estimated deliveries of 375,000. The data imply Seeing Machines will reach 4 million cars on road in third quarter 2025.
1Q25 update