MONTERREY, Mexico—Luminar has opened a new highly automated, high-volume assembly plant here. The factory is dedicated to producing the company’s Iris automotive lidar sensors.

“Industrialization is the fundamental challenge to enable…our high-volume series production wins. The successful bring-up of the automated factory is a major milestone and continues to show we can execute,” says Austin Russell, founder and CEO of Luminar. “This enables an increase in capacity by well over an order of magnitude compared to our existing, manual line.”

The new assembly plant is operated by electronics manufacturing service provider Celestica. Spanning 118,000 square feet, the factory will have initial capacity for up to 250,000 sensors per year, expandable to approximately 500,000 sensors per year. The facility includes 40,000 square feet of clean room space.

Celestica is in the process of building an additional 200,000 square feet extension to the factory, which will enable state-of-the-art testing for performance and quality.

The new facility is scheduled to complete a rigorous validation process throughout the second half of 2023 to meet automotive standards.