![Statement from Quanergy on Bloomberg Story](https://www.ai-online.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/7909_quanergy5.jpg)
Bloomberg published 15th August, a negative story about Quanergy and the LiDAR industry. The negativity within the article was based primarily on anonymous sources, including disgruntled former employees and some of our competitors.
In developing this article, Bloomberg and Quanergy management had multiple discussions where we clarified and corrected the false information others have relayed to these reporters to serve their own interests. Additionally, Bloomberg spoke to several of our investors and partners, on the record, who shared their support and enthusiasm for Quanergy and the technology we are building. Bloomberg chose to ignore the support from our investors and partners and instead deliberately maintained the negative narrative based on their anonymous sources.
We were warned by investors and partners contacted by Bloomberg that given the tone of Bloomberg’s questions, Bloomberg was likely planning to write a negative article. Bloomberg themselves told us after getting rebuttal from our investors/partners and from us, that they still planned to proceed with writing “a fairly critical portrait of the company.” Our General Counsel sent a note to Bloomberg expressing our deep concern that their report will be intentionally one sided and damaging to the company, and that they omitted to state any intention to include information from sources (investors and partners) to whom Bloomberg spoke and who contradicted the statements of their negative sources. Despite efforts to share facts with Bloomberg, they proceeded to publish the article with negative information from anonymous sources. We have written records of the positive responses provided by our customers and partners to Bloomberg, and which Bloomberg decided to exclude.
However, like our supportive investors and partners, Quanergy remains optimistic about the innovations we are creating and bringing to market. Since we have the most capable solution in our space, we are not surprised when occasionally competitors and reporters try to attack us and cause damage to our reputation. We understand that leaders get attacked. In reality the article shows that we are the main threat to other suppliers.
When Quanergy was founded in 2012, we endeavored to develop technology that had the power to make a real difference in the world. We have long had a keen sense of what this technology was capable of, and never let the industry-wide focus on self-driving vehicles limit our sense of what LiDAR might be used for.
Over the past six years, Quanergy has developed both mechanical and solid state LiDAR sensors, which combined with our first-of-its-kind intelligent LiDAR perception software produce some of the most advanced LiDAR solutions on the market today. We have put an enormous amount of thought, research and resources into building LiDAR-based solutions that can solve real-world problems. Some of these, like our automotive technology, are more forward-looking, while others, like our smart spaces solutions, are being implemented right now across many different industries.
In recent years, we have set our sights on developing a truly solid state LiDAR sensor, which we believe will change the LiDAR industry as we know it. Solid state sensors have several benefits over their mechanical counterparts; namely, that they are smaller, less expensive and are much more reliable due to our design, which does not include any moving parts inside the sensor, unlike some of our competitors. These factors make solid state sensors ideal for the automotive market, and are, in our opinion, the only path forward for true mass market adoption of autonomous vehicles.
Made properly, the fundamental promise of LIDAR technology is to give machines and those who operate them unprecedented levels of situational awareness. This is a bold undertaking and as such, has taken us time to get right. In creating our solid state sensor (S3), which is the first solid state sensor to get commercialized, we have had delays, like most new revolutionary technologies that are truly innovative. However, Quanergy is committed to ensuring that the only products we release to the market are ones that have the highest quality standards in the marketplace. We firmly believe our investors, customers and employees will understand and ultimately appreciate this approach.
The Bloomberg article states incorrectly that we knowingly shipped defective products several years ago. Bloomberg used the fact that our products improved over time to claim that we shipped inferior products in the past. As manufacturing and quality professionals know, continuous improvement is a quality concept that all world-class companies have and we can point to several examples of our commitment to quality. Quanergy recently achieved ISO 9001:2015 certification. Last month we announced the achievement of IATF 16949 automotive production certification for the S3 solid state sensor. The current version of our M8, released in February 2018, has had zero RMAs (returned merchandise), confirming exceptional quality. In addition, due to our high level of confidence in the quality of our products, based on field data, we will soon be announcing a two-year warranty on our sensors.
Today, Quanergy is working with dozens of companies to deploy our S3 technology and hundreds of customers using our M8 sensor. Additionally, we have sufficient funds that will allow us to operate for the foreseeable future. We, as well as our investors, remain extremely bullish about our opportunity to continue leading the LiDAR market, not only in the automotive sector, but as we diversify our business and bring this technology to transportation, industrial automation, robotics, security, mapping and other applications.
We believe that Quanergy remains at the front of companies developing this world-changing technology and look forward to sharing exciting advancements in the coming months.
-Quanergy Management
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