Bird & Bird advises Sojitz Corporation on its investment in Twinner
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Bird & Bird has advised Sojitz Corporation (“Sojitz”) on its investment in Twinner GmbH (“Twinner”), a German car autoscanner developer, digitalizing vehicle interior and exterior data. In addition, Sojitz and Twinner entered into a commercial cooperation under which Sojitz has obtained distribution rights for Twinner in Japan.
Twinner has established itself as leading company in the segment for automotive scanning and digitalizing systems. It developed a scanner system, “Twinner Space,” which generates a digital twin of the vehicle within five minutes utilizing AI cloud technology to provide a 360-degree panoramic scan of the vehicle’s interior and exterior. As a result, it is possible to assess the vehicle through detection of the car’s condition (interior and exterior scratches, dents, scuffs, bent car frames, repair history, body painting history and state of tire grooves). In the used car distribution market, it is difficult to provide transparency on the condition and history of each vehicle. Twinner Space provides dealers with digital data that be utilized to effectively assess and market vehicles and will be provided under a subscription-based model.
Japan’s first Twinner Space unit will open to the public in July 2022 for scanning vehicles at its installation site in Sojitz Auto Group Tokai Co., Ltd. (Kiyosu, Aichi Prefecture). Sojitz aims to greatly increase both the quality and quantity of information available for vehicles, and Sojitz sees Twinner Space as an important component for its online car distribution platform that will contribute to digital transformation (DX) in the car distribution industry.
Sojitz Corporation was advised by the following Bird & Bird lawyers: lead partner Dr. Stefanie Orttmann, LL.M., partner Alfred Herda, associates Jan Medele and Stephan Dittrich (all Corporate / M&A, Dusseldorf), partners Lennart Schuessler (Dusseldorf) and Dr. Miriam Ballhausen (Hamburg) as well as counsel Lea Noemi Mackert, LL.M. (Dusseldorf), all Commercial. Sojitz Corporation has been a client of Bird & Bird and Client Partner Dr. Matthias Lang for many years.