Japanese semiconductor-maker Renesas Electronics Corp. has opened a laboratory in Shanghai jointly with a local affiliate of Germany's Volkswagen group to boost research and development for automotive electronics applications.
Renesas will mainly provide the lab with its RH850 automotive microcontroller along with its R-Car system-on-chip, which processes information from automotive sensors, and its expertise on software.
The lab is the Japanese company's first joint research base with an automaker in China, a Renesas spokeswoman in Tokyo said Monday.
Fifteen employees of SAIC Volkswagen Automobile Co., a Chinese-German joint venture and leading carmaker in the world's largest automobile market, will undertake development work at the lab, she added.
"Through our close collaboration in the field of vehicle body electronics and in new fields such as a digital cockpit and smart connectivity, we aim to develop a hardware and software platform that will enable us to attain a leading market position," Wu Qingwen, executive director of SAIC Volkswagen Automobile, said in a statement released Monday.