Lidar maker Luminar’s Mexico factory opens ahead of schedule

Lidar maker Luminar Technologies’ new contract manufacturing facility is up and running ahead of schedule.

Expected to open later in the second quarter of this year, Luminar’s Monterrey, Mexico, factory is producing and shipping its Iris sensors to Volvo, company spokesperson Milin Mehta told Automotive News.
They will be installed in the Swedish automaker’s EX90 electric crossover, expected to be available as a new model in 2024.

Luminar’s Mexico factory is owned and operated by Celestica, a Canadian multinational firm that provides companies with supply chain electronics manufacturing services. Luminar owns the factory’s equipment and automated line.

Celestica operates another low-volume production facility for Luminar in Monterrey.

The new factory is 118,000 square feet. It has the capacity to produce 250,000 sensors a year, but that can be increased to 500,000 annually. The facility features 40,000 square feet of clean room space that meets International Organization for Standardization specifications.

A construction project underway will extend the factory by another 200,000 square feet. This new wing will give Luminar more space to conduct performance and quality tests on its lidars. It will also add production space to make millions of sensors annually, the company said in a statement.

“This enables an increase in capacity by well over an order of magnitude as compared to our existing manual line to meet our growing automaker requirements on volume,” Luminar CEO Austin Russell said. “The successful bring-up of the automated factory is a major milestone and continues to show we can execute.”

Construction of Luminar’s Mexico facility started in July 2022. The factory was equipped in December 2022.

In the coming months, the company will turn its manufacturing attention to Asia. Luminar is expected to give investors an update on its Asian facility, the location of which has not been revealed, on its first-quarter earnings call May 9.