April 16, 2020 - TOKYO, JAPAN: Hitachi Automotive Systems, Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501, "Hitachi"), today announced that the company completed the acquisition of all shares of seneos GmbH ("seneos") on April 15, 2020. Through this transaction, seneos, a German automotive device software developer, became a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Automotive Systems.

Hitachi Automotive Systems supplies products and systems in growth areas such as electrification and is expanding its customer base of European automakers, growing sales of new products and solutions. seneos is a software development system engineering service company focused primarily on the automotive components sector and boasts an impressive track record in software applications and designs for mainly European automakers.

Moving forward, Hitachi Automotive Systems can harness the software development capabilities that seneos has built in Europe, enhance the competitiveness of its products and systems, and further grow sales. seneos' software design and application development capabilities will be leveraged throughout its products and systems globally to enable a faster response to automaker needs and to accelerate development of advanced vehicle solutions with integrated control systems.

As modern automobiles become increasingly sophisticated with advanced features such as electrification, autonomous driving, and connectivity, the number of software applications used per vehicle has been increasing. Today, an automobile has 10 times or more lines of code than an airplane* . The acquisition of seneos will reinforce Hitachi Automotive Systems' front-end engineering capabilities to strengthen development of software for auto parts. The acquisition will also improve the Company's ability to develop complex software in accordance with local business needs, standardized software architectures, and software development processes. *Source: NXP Semiconductors

Hitachi Automotive Systems will continue to offer solutions to societal issues through technological innovation by leveraging group synergies across powertrain, advanced chassis, autonomous driving and advanced driver assistance fields. The company will continue to contribute to realizing a sustainable society where people can live healthy, safe and comfortable lifestyles.